The Hindu, 30 August 2011
By Ananth Krishnan

Fears of violence have prompted a widespread deployment of security forces across much of China’s far western Xinjiang ahead of a major trade fair, which opens here on Thursday and is aimed at boosting the region’s fast-growing trade links with Central Asia.

Officials in this sprawling, grey regional capital described the security arrangements ahead of this week’s China-Eurasia Expo as unprecedented, with large parts of this industrial city placed under 24-hour surveillance and street patrols.

At the heart of this city, on Renmin Lu — the People’s Street — paramilitary and military troops, armed with rifles, patrolled in convoys of green People’s Liberation Army (PLA) trucks. In smaller neighbourhoods, hundreds of 12-men patrols, involving, according to local media, some 7,000 ordinary citizens, dressed in green military uniforms but armed only with baseball bats, kept watch.

The security deployment comes in the wake of violence and unrest that left at least 30 people killed in attacks earlier this month, in the region’s southern cities of Kashgar and Hotan. Security was also tightened this week in Kashgar, which lies close to China’s border with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Two dozen PLA soldiers, armed with riot shields and rifles, kept watch over the Id Kah mosque at the centre of the city, while four PLA trucks occupied the centre of a deserted People’s Square, usually a popular public space.

The China-Eurasia Expo, the biggest hosted by the regional government, is being held to boost Urumqi’s — and Xinjiang’s — profile as a commercial hub, particularly to spur fast-rising trade between the region and energy-rich Central Asian neighbours.

“When there is a big event like this, there are always concerns that something will happen,” Pan Zhiping, a terrorism expert at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, told The Hindu in an interview.

“It is very difficult to stop such incidents. I don’t think a big event is going to happen, but small conflicts can happen.”

Ethnic violence

Xinjiang has seen intermittent unrest between Han Chinese and the native Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic ethnic group. In July 2009, at least 197 people were killed in ethnic violence in Urumqi. Since then, many residents said, mistrust has lingered between both groups. Now, few Han Chinese can be seen in Uighur neighbourhoods.

The government hopes the trade fair will draw investment and boost the city’s development. “The fair is going to bring a lot of investment and business,” said an official at the Tebian Electric Apparatus Stock Company (TBEA), one of the region’s biggest energy companies, which is hosting a 1,000 square metre pavilion. “We have had trade fairs in the past, but this expo takes [trade promotion] to another level as it is also, for the first time, being supported by the central government.”

The city has also spent millions on redeveloping its poorer districts, tearing down older predominantly Uighur neighbourhoods and building modern apartments. The plans have divided opinion, with some welcoming modern living standards, but others complaining of inadequate government compensation forcing them out to the suburbs.

Both government officials and scholars have called to channel rising investment to better address inequalities between Hans and Uighurs. At a conference here on August 20, Wang Yong, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), called on China’s State-owned Enterprises (SOEs), which account for 70 per cent of Xinjiang’s industrial output, to boost local employment, instead of only hiring Han Chinese, and not “expand blindly [and] abuse resources.”

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari will be the chief guest at the fair’s opening. He would use the fair “to share his vision about enhanced connectivity between Pakistan and China to shorten trade and travel distances between the Gulf and Western regions of China,” the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

Businesses here are, however, particularly targeting the markets of Central Asia. “We are more interested in Central Asia,” said one businessmen in Kashgar, who is one of the biggest exporters of fruits and produce. He declined to be identified. “Pakistan is too unstable to do business,” he said.

While organisers say the trade fair covers “Central and South Asia,” India was not formally invited to participate, officials said.

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