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Updated Saturday, July 11, 2009 9:34 am TWN, By John J. Metzler, Special to The China Post

Cultural fault lines jolt China

BENNINGTON, Vermont -- The ethnic uprising in mainland China's far Western province, has sent seismic political jolts to Beijing. The rioting by Turkic Muslims in the vast Xinjiang region reminded Beijing's Marxist Mandarins that non-Chinese minorities be they Muslim or Buddhist as in Tibet, are not exactly on the same page as the rulers of the People's Republic. Given that in October the People's Republic will celebrate the 60th anniversary of communist rule on mainland China, such ethnic rumblings in their far Western region are particularly embarrassing as much as they could be foreboding.

Embarrassing because PRC President Hu Jintao was forced to hurriedly leave the G-8 Economic Summit in Italy to return to China; this humiliating loss of face for the communist leader in the midst of an international gathering was a bitter pill. Foreboding, because the PRC authorities have flooded affected cities with military forces and pledged “severe punishment” to the ringleaders. China's rulers may handle the disorders the old-fashioned way in this remote but beautiful region, spanning the Old Silk Road. The communist party's Politburo convened in Beijing and promised that stability in Xinjiang was the “most important and pressing task.” The civil unrest was likely the largest in China since Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Inter-ethnic violence in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi saw bloody clashes between Uighur Muslims and the Han Chinese. Hundreds died. Yet while the roots of the unrest are deep, they rest in the fact that the region's Muslim majority (45%) is being diluted by Han Chinese settlers who now comprise 40% of the territory. As in Tibet, the local population is being deliberately diluted as a way to change the demographic reality on the ground.

But beyond the political platitudes, the bottom line remains that Xinjiang has long been a restive region which happens to comprise one sixth of the PRC land mass. While Islam has been suppressed under communist rule, the political wild card remains that Xinjiang or East Turkestan as it is also known, just happens to border a number of former Soviet Muslim states who gained their independence when communist rule collapsed in the former USSR.

When Uighurs who are ethnically Turkic look east, they glare upon the vast sea of China where 92 percent of the population is ethnic Han. When they glance West, they look upon countries like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, former Soviet satraps that are now independent.

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