THERE IS NO CHINA:

Fear and anger in China's far west: In strategic region, Islam is political (Jehangir S. Pocha, 11/21/06, The Boston Globe

The Chinese government has tightened its constraints on the Uighur ethnic minority in western China as officials fear a rise in militant Islam. It is also acutely aware of the growing strategic importance of Xinjiang in Central Asia and the large oil and natural gas reserves under its soil.

In turn, resentment among the Uighurs toward perceived repression by the Chinese has intensified. And increasingly, the Uighurs are speaking out and demanding autonomy, thanks in part to the emergence of articulate Uighur voices at home and in exile.

Though Xinjiang is ostensibly an autonomous region of China, Wang Lequan, the local Communist Party secretary, has publicly called for Uighurs to learn more Mandarin and adopt more Chinese customs.

To dissuade Uighur youths from inheriting their traditional Islamic culture, the government has banned children from entering mosques, studying Islam or celebrating Islamic holidays.

The fear and state control under which Uighurs live in Xinjiang was apparent when some foreign journalists, who are generally not allowed into the region, were taken on a tour by Chinese officials last month.

The journalists were carefully monitored, but when they did manage to go out alone, most Uighurs were too scared to talk about any antipathy they might feel toward the government.

A man who identified himself only as Abdel rubbed his clean-shaven chin anxiously as his friends finished their dinner of goat soup and noodles.

"The government doesn't allow young people here to grow beards," he said as the sun set. "If you do, they will send you to the forced-labor camps."

Resentment against Beijing has been building here since 1949, when Mao Zedong annexed the independent nation of East Turkestan and began to assimilate it into mainland China. To do this, Beijing imposed strictures on Islam and sought to dilute the culture of the local Uighurs, a Central Asian people with a Turkic-Persian culture.

Abdel said the biggest problem Uighurs face is that of social and economic exclusion. "The truth is, where you see money there will be Han, where there is poverty you will see us Uighurs," Abdel said, refering to the China's ethnic-Han majority.

Here's the deal we should offer China: topple North Korea or we arm the Uighurs.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 2, 2006 10:58 AM