All is not well in China and there appears to be competing views on the heavy handed crackdown. The uneven distribution of power and opportunity comes back to strike once again. As the economy remains soft in China (Western demand isn't coming back for some time) it wouldn't come as a great surprise to see even more civil unrest. The Independent:
"Frankly, coming up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, it gives China a bit of a black eye to have these on-going problems," said Dru Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California.
The Communist Party has for decades swung between hardline policies that aim to crush dissent and weaken ethnic identity and softer approaches to make minorities feel they can have a dual identity, both Chinese and Tibetan or Uighur. Those who favour the latter approach will likely use the violence as evidence that Beijing cannot rule its vast hinterlands by coercion alone. But China has poured cash into Xinjiang and Tibet along with its troops, and many Han Chinese think that with development subsidies, the construction of schools and clinics and some affirmative action, the government has already done enough.
"In the past, there have been policies in favour of minorities, but many minorities have not been able to take advantage of these policies," said Bo Zhiyue, a China politics expert at Singapore's East Asian Institute. "I don't think there's a fundamental policy problem, but it's a fundamental governance issue." he added, expressing a view shared by much of China's elite.
Uighurs, however, say they have been left behind economically as Han Chinese dominate development opportunities, and are unhappy that they cannot practise their religion, Islam, as they wish. They also resent an inflow of migrants from the rest of China.
