COMMENT: XINJIANG UNREST

After Tibet, it is Xinjiang’s turn to experience the full wrath of China’s fury. Of course, the unrest in Xinjiang is not going to endanger the Communist Party of China’s hold over power. In some ways, it might even temporarily strengthen its position with the Han Chinese by playing up ethnic violence against the country’s majority.

But, in a larger context, it also shows that the Party is not omnipotent. Even with all its repressive instruments of control it still failed to anticipate the extent of Uighur resentment.

Of course, the Uighur population is going to pay a heavy price for voicing their anger over the killings of some Uighur workers in a toy factory in Guangdong province over the fake news of raping a Han girl. Already, the security forces have killed a large number of protesters and many more have been arrested.

The point to make is that the increasing use of state violence to control and repress its own people tends to further de-legitimize the Party’s rule. True, in cases like Xinjiang and Tibet, the Party tends to exploit Han chauvinism against its restless minorities.

But the sudden eruption of such popular violence, even with the Party’s monopoly power, does seem to expose it as a paper tiger of sorts. And with social unrest growing in different parts of the country due to all sorts of factors (growing unemployment, urban-rural gap, entrenched corruption and so on), Xinjiang and Tibet could become the mirror image of the Party’s waning control.

To put it succinctly, China is too big and too uneven for the Party’s perpetual control.