The Economist, 28 January 2014

THE LATEST flurry of news from and about Xinjiang—a fresh bout of deadly violence in the region and the arrest of an activist scholar in Beijing—suggests that Chinese authorities are not about to change their strategy for managing ethnic tensions there. But neither do they look like succeeding in bringing an end to the anger, suppression and unrest.

Twelve people were reported killed January 24th in the latest flare up of violence. And on January 15th, police in Beijing detained Ilham Tohti (pictured above), a 44-year-old professor of economics, a native of Xinjiang and a member of the native Muslim Uighur minority, which has long bristled under Han Chinese rule. Chinese officials have only cited unspecified “violations of law” but Global Times, a party-run newspaper, accused him of frequently giving “aggressive lectures” and “attempting to find a moral excuse for terrorists”.

In another article, Global Times quoted police as saying Mr Tohti “recruited and manipulated some people to make rumours, distort and hype up issues in a bid to create conflicts, spread separatist thinking, incite ethnic hatred, advocate ‘Xinjiang independence’ and conduct separatist activities”.

Mr Tohti is a well-known scholar, focussing on topics like labour and migration. He has also been an outspoken critic of Chinese policies in Xinjiang, and an advocate for better treatment of Uighurs. Last year, he was stopped at Beijing airport as he tried to travel to the United States to take up a teaching position at Indiana University.

The American government said in a statement that the case appeared to be part of a disturbing pattern of arrests and detentions of people “who peacefully challenge official Chinese policies and actions”. Scholars who are familiar with Mr Tohti’s work have also expressed concern. “It’s not a good sign,” says Dru Gladney, a Xinjiang specialist at Pomona College, in California. “It gave us some hope that some Uighurs were still able to teach classes, speak out and speak to foreign media. I’ve never known him to advocate independence or violence, or to associate with separatists.”

This is not Mr Tohti’s first encounter with police. In 2009, following severe riots that killed nearly 200 people, Mr Tohti was taken into custody for six weeks and then released without charge. “It seems like there is increased tightening all over, so maybe he won’t get off so easy this time,” Mr Gladney says.

That tightening is part of a general crackdown on all sorts of dissidents, including rather mild-mannered ones like the recently convicted Xu Zhiyong, who have merely called upon China to abide by its own constitution. But it is also part of what some scholars call China’s “carrot and stick” approach to Xinjiang, in which authorities crack down hard on dissenters and activists while also pouring resources into the region’s economic development. According to a recent essay by Scott Radnitz and Sean Roberts, American experts writing at foreignpolicy.com, the strategy is misguided. The “stick” has not succeeded in ending violence and “the carrot is not working either”.

China’s development efforts in Xinjiang, they wrote, “utilise an outdated top-down model of development that betters the region’s GDP, but not the lives of its average citizens. As a result, many Uighurs perceive China’s development plan as an attack on their very existence.”

Violence, as they predicted, has not abated. The event on January 24th was the latest in a string of deadly incidents in the region. Chinese officials said those killed were all perpetrators of “premeditated terrorist attacks”. Six of the dead were shot by police, they said, and six others died when they set off explosions. Five more were taken into custody. Reports did not say the dead were Uighurs but left little doubt about it by saying their leader “had organised illegal religious activities and spread religious extremism”.

Sixteen people, including two policemen, were killed in December in the city of Kashgar, in the region’s far west. Two weeks later police shot and killed eight in a violent clash in the nearby county of Yarkand. And in October, in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, a sport-utility vehicle ploughed into pedestrians, killing five and injuring 38 others. Authorities called it an attack by Xinjiang separatist militants.

As in Tibet, the issues at the root of Xinjiang’s problems—migration, ethnic identity, disputed history, religious freedom, economic equality and more—are complex. It is no surprise that a “carrot and stick” strategy is too simple to solve them. It would, however, be surprising if China’s latest set of top leaders, who are still relatively new to the job, were not mulling a different one. They no doubt fear that an abrupt loosening of their grip could lead to further eruptions. But it is becoming increasingly clear that tightening their grip is not the way to prevent them.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/01/more-violence-xinjiang

The E