Malcolm Moore
Malcolm Moore is the Telegraph's Shanghai Correspondent. He arrived in China in July 2008 after three years in Italy as the Telegraph's Rome Correspondent. Before that, he was the paper's Economics Correspondent.
[<a target=_blank href="http://twitter.com/MalcolmMoore" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(83, 83, 83); text-decoration: none;">http://twitter.com/MalcolmMoore[</a>
Yesterday, I was able to use Twitter to relay real-time information from Peter Foster in Urumqi about the race riots which have claimed 156 lives.
Today, nothing works. Peter is not able to receive calls or text messages. My Twitter account has been blocked, even while using the virtual private networks (VPN) that help me skip past the Chinese censors. Twitter remains blocked in general in China, but others seem to be able to access it with their VPN. I guess the problem is just with me.
The situation remains tense in Urumqi, and Hu Jintao has had to fly home to deal with the issue. No one else has enough authority to impose himself about Wang Lequan, the powerful party secretary of the region and member of the politburo. Wang’s days appear numbered, however - the events in Urumqi may well compromise his reelection to the standing committee. It will be interesting to see if Hu flies directly to Urumqi.
Turning over the riots in my mind, I concede I was wrong in my last post to suggest that Rebiya Kadeer would rise in stature as a result of the riots.
When I wrote the post, I had limited information and I jumped to the conclusion that the 156 victims of Sunday’s violence were Uighur.
In fact, it appears that the majority of the victims were Han Chinese, brutally killed by gangs of Uighurs roaming through the back streets of Urumqi. There are some horrific pictures circulating of rows of bloodied bodies and cyclists lying in puddles of blood with their heads bashed in.
I apologise for running ahead of the facts, but the idea that Chinese troops had been unable to prevent the Uighurs from murdering Han Chinese honestly never occurred to me.
Now that the sequence of events is clearer, I have a lot of praise for the Chinese security operation in the city. According to Peter Foster, who is on the scene, they managed to prevent escalating situations getting out of hand several times yesterday with calm and judicious policing.
In addition, allowing journalists to circulate and protecting them from the crowd has clearly paid dividends. Rebiya Kadeer’s claims that 400 Uighurs were killed on Sunday were dismissed by my colleagues on the ground, who have neither seen nor heard any evidence to back up her accusation.
I would encourage the authorities to stop censoring the internet now. Allowing information to circulate does not lead to greater instability - this unrest has shown that the wild rumours that develop when news is suppressed can be incredibly explosive.
My feeling is that the Han Chinese, now that they have marched and let off some steam, are unlikely to assemble in large numbers again. An enormous security operation should succeed in preventing any more chaos. But the long-term picture is still troublesome. How will the Uighurs and the Han Chinese resolve their differences?
The Chinese authorities have taken the first step, arresting 13 people in Guangdong in connection with the factory killings which proved the catalyst for the riots. But that’s unlikely to satisfy the Uighur population, which has been fed ugly and wild rumours of mass rapes and butchery.
In addition, China’s refusal to admit that Uighurs have a legitimate complaint - that they are economically disenfranchised and discriminated against - will hinder any reconciliation.
The Chinese believe that Uighurs get an easy ride from police and are allowed to get away with petty crime. They also worry about policies that allow Uighurs to carry knives and threaten hardworking Han Chinese. This needs to change. Uighurs and other ethnic minorities should be subject to the same laws as everyone else in China.
However, the complaints of the Uighurs are far more serious. They are restricted from worshipping freely, from free movement (their passports are often held by the police and visas are difficult to obtain) and they are clearly not benefitting from the economic prosperity of their province.
When I was last in Kashgar, last year, I asked Tim Johnson, a former colleague who has since departed China, what the fundamental problem between Han Chinese and Uighurs was. “There’s a total lack of respect for Uighurs,” was his reply. It is difficult to imagine that there will be a change, and the hatred on both sides will run deep in Urumqi long after security is re-imposed.
China may even be succeeding in turning the Muslim Uighurs, who have traditionally been enamoured with Western values and culture, towards the anger and disenfranchisement felt by the fundamentalists just over the border in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These riots have been a watershed moment for Han and Uighur relations, and I fear that more trouble lies ahead.[</div>
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Getty Images
Chinese soldiers in an APC drive on the streets of Urumqi in China's far west Xinjiang province on July 8, 2009. The flashpoint city of Urumqi has become China's Baghdad, a fearful resident said, as thousands of troops draw a line in the sand to prevent new ethnic unrest between the Han and Uighur people.[</div>
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Chinese soldiers march on the streets of Urumqi in China's far west Xinjiang province on July 8, 2009. The flashpoint city of Urumqi has become China's Baghdad, a fearful resident said, as thousands of troops draw a line in the sand to prevent new ethnic unrest between the Han and Uighur people.[</div>
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China riots: Uighurs stage fresh protest in Urumqi
Ethnic Uighurs carry a woman who fainted during a protest[</div>
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A soldier holds a gun during protests in Urumqi. China will slap a curfew over the capital after two days after bloody ethnic clashes. Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant[</div>
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Armed Chinese policemen march towards a group of local women during a confrontation along a street in the city of Urumqi.
Disorder in energy-rich region threatens mainland's economy
The mainland cannot afford a restless Xinjiang , economists say, because the resource-rich region makes a significant contribution to energy security.
Xinjiang sits atop as much as 20 per cent of domestic oil reserves and is expected to account for one-fifth of the mainland's annual coal output.
Xinjiang's long borders with oil-producing Central Asian countries make it strategically important to Beijing, and its expected role in the mainland's future growth sets it apart from Tibet , another ethnically troubled region, where an uprising took place in March last year.
"The unrest in both Tibet and Xinjiang is a public order issue, but the latter holds far greater economic significance," said Steve Vickers, president of FTI-International Risk, a Hong Kong-based consultancy that focuses on regional security.
Beijing's ambitious plan to construct refineries, pipelines and power grids across the region could backfire, however, as these facilities could become terrorist targets, Mr Vickers said.
Zhang Dajun, a Beijing-based political commentator, said: "China has yet to run the course of industrialisation, which means the energy produced in or transported via Xinjiang will be of increasing significance to Beijing for a long time to come."
Kazakhstan was the first country to receive mainland investment when China became a net importer of oil in the early 1990s. Both the China National Petroleum Corporation and the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), the two big state-backed oil firms, have acquired oilfields, natural gas reserves and refiners in the country.
Much of the oil and gas extracted in Kazakhstan is transported inland via a new 3,000km pipeline that passes through Xinjiang.
On top of oil and coal abundance, the Tarim Basin - in the centre of Xinjiang - is believed to hold trillions of cubic metres of natural gas underground. A 4,000km gas pipeline has been constructed to take the fuel as far as Shanghai.
Apart from Tarim, rich reserves have been found in the Turpan Basin in the east of the region and the Junggar Basin in the north.
Without its energy reserves, Xinjiang's economy pales when compared to inland provinces. Despite years of double-digit growth, the region's annual gross domestic product hovers at about 300 billion yuan (HK$340 billion), just more than 1 per cent of the mainland's total.
"In the context of the world's third-largest economy's strategy to secure its energy supply, Xinjiang has become more economically crucial than ever before," Mr Zhang said. [</div>
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[<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; direction: inherit;">中国时报
A15 | 大陆新闻 | By 林克伦 2009-07-08