Word: urumqi
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...streets of Urumqi there are many different views of why racial violence exploded this week. Some support the official explanation that forces at home and abroad plotting to split the western region of Xinjiang from China encouraged minority Uighurs to riot. Others say that discrimination of the Muslim group has created a deep reservoir of anger that can be ignited with little provocation. Among the competing views, two facts seem abundantly clear: animosity between Hans and Uighurs in Xinjiang's capital city is unlikely to fade, and the threat of further violence is never far away. (Read a brief history...
...Rioting on July 5 left 156 dead and more than 1,000 injured, but by the week's end Urumqi was lumbering towards normalcy. Markets and grocery stores reopened, allowing residents to catch up on days of missed shopping. Traffic resumed through most of the city, though it was still blocked on occasion by slow-moving patrols of security vehicles. Convoys of armored personnel carriers and trucks loaded with rifle-bearing members of the People's Armed Police have driven throughout the city over the past three days, usually accompanied by a sound truck broadcasting speeches from local party leaders...
...events in Urumqi seem to suggest that as long as Uighurs feel helpless in the face of what they see as encroachment by an often-hostile culture, the potential remains high for new outbreaks of violence...
...right to travel outside of China, or even within it. Those who do manage to move to China's major cities eke out a desperate living as migrant workers, often viewed with distrust and suspicion by the larger Chinese population. The immediate cause of Sunday's protest in Urumqi appears to have been a mass attack on a community of Uighur laborers in a southern Chinese factory town thousands of miles away from Xinjiang...
...Beijing casts its own role in Xinjiang as that of a benevolent force for progress, citing the economic development spurred by its billions of dollars of investment. To be sure, Urumqi is now a city of skyscrapers, but its population is almost 75% Han Chinese, and the Uighurs claim they're frozen out of jobs - and see themselves as the victims of China's own westward expansion...