China’s ethnic moment is here with a vengeance. This was nervously endorsed by President Hu Jintao’s decision to cut short the G-8 summit to return home. The ongoing unrest in Xinjiang will bring with it a familiar sense of déjà vu. Ethnic dissent has all too often taken a violent turn in China’s restive far-western region. Beijing will also be wary of its date with history in a year littered with politically sensitive anniversaries. The 50th anniversary of the

Tibetan uprising and the 60th anniversary of Xinjiang’s incorporation into China have kept the leadership on edge. The bloody commemoration this week in Xinjiang also gave the lie to the official rhetoric of “peaceful national liberation” of the province. The clashes this week have already resulted in more than 156 people dead and 800 injured. As tensions and casualties have mounted, will Beijing be prepared to seize the moment of ethnic reckoning or will it let it pass?

Beijing will be wise not to let it pass. China’s western region is home to 55 state-recognised minority nationalities which constitute little over eight per cent of its population. But this is no trifling percentage as this makes up nearly 300 million people inhabiting up to 60 per cent of China’s territory situated along international borders. This locational identity is reflected in the fact that the Uighurs of Xinjiang are ethnically Turkic Muslim. Their homeland was, till 60 years ago, known as East Turkestan. It also enjoyed an all-too-brief spell as an independent state before China re-established control in 1949. China tried to wipe the slate clean by renaming the territory Xinjiang — which means “new land”. But the rechristening only deepened the sense of otherness in a people who mourned the loss of its name and much else with it.

... contd.