Originally published by AFP, 15 March 2010

BEIJING — China will sharply increase investment in Xinjiang in hopes that higher living standards for ethnic Uighurs in the restive region can quell long-standing unrest, state press said Monday.

“The social situation can only become stable when the problem of people’s livelihood is solved,” China Daily quoted Xinjiang’s Communist Party secretary Wang Lequan as saying.

“Economic development is the solution… (we expect) investment in fixed assets will jump sharply.”

Violence between Muslim Uighurs and China’s ethnic Han majority exploded in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi last July, leaving nearly 200 dead and 1,700 injured, according to the government.

It was the biggest racial strife in China in decades.

Monday’s report did not say how much cash would be poured into the resource-rich region neighbouring Central Asia or where it would be concentrated.

But it quoted Wang saying a detailed plan would be introduced at a key central government meeting on Xinjiang to be held in May.

The region’s roughly eight million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people, have long accused China of political, cultural and religious repression.

Many also say the region’s economic development has benefitted mainly the Han.

Wang was speaking Saturday at the just-closed national parliament session in Beijing where Xinjiang officials had said earlier that massive central government funds had been poured into the region.

Xinjiang chairman Nur Bekri said at a March 7 press briefing that Xinjiang’s 2009 fiscal revenue was 38.8 billion yuan (5.7 billion dollars), but spending reached 147.4 billion yuan thanks to an infusion of central government money.

The ruling Communist Party also decided during a January meeting on its Tibet policy to increase spending there.

Riots broke out in the Himalayan region’s capital Lhasa in March 2008, spreading across the Tibetan plateau.

China says 21 people were killed by “rioters” and that security forces killed one “insurgent” but Tibet exiles say more than 200 people were killed and some 1,000 hurt during the unrest and the subsequent ongoing crackdown.

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