The brand-new bullet train slices past the edge of the Gobi desert, through gale-swept grasslands and past snowy peaks, a high-altitude, high-speed and high-tech manifestation of China\u2019s newly re-imagined Silk Road meant to draw the country\u2019s restive west ever tighter into Beijing\u2019s embrace.<\/p>\n
URUMQI, China \u2014 The brand-new bullet train slices past the edge of the Gobi desert, through gale-swept grasslands and past snowy peaks, a high-altitude, high-speed and high-tech manifestation of China\u2019s newly re-imagined Silk Road meant to draw the country\u2019s restive west ever tighter into Beijing\u2019s embrace.<\/p>\n
With growing determination, China is spreading its wings to the west, across its own, vast and resource-rich province of Xinjiang, and toward Central Asia and its huge reserves of oil and natural gas.<\/p>\n
The $23 billion, high-speed train link<\/a>, which is still being tested in winds that can sometimes reach up to 135 mph, is just one symbol of that broader determination: to cement China\u2019s control over its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region through investment and economic growth, secure important sources of energy and escape any risk of encirclement by U.S. allies to the east.<\/p>\n The train will run from Lanzhou to Xinjiang\u2019s capital, Urumqi; for the longer-term, China is even talking about trying to extend<\/a> the high-speed network through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Turkey to Bulgaria.<\/p>\n \u201cThe high-speed railway will build the foundation for the Silk Road economic belt,\u201d Erkin Tuniyaz, vice chairman of the regional government, told reporters after a recent news media trip on the train. \u201cXinjiang will be the biggest beneficiary of the Silk Road. It will help it open up further, increase trade, tourism and other exchanges with neighboring countries. It\u2019s a historical opportunity for Xinjiang.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, as the United States enacts a strategic rebalance or \u201cpivot\u201d toward East Asia and withdraws troops from Afghanistan, China is responding with its own \u201cpirouette\u201d in the opposite direction, turning its face toward Central Asia and the West, says James Leibold, a regional specialist from Melbourne\u2019s La Trobe University.<\/p>\n Touring Xinjiang in April, President Xi Jinping was quoted as saying that the long-term stability of Xinjiang was vital to the entire country\u2019s \u201cunity, harmony and national security, as well as to the great revival of the Chinese nation.\u201d Yet Xi\u2019s western gambit is arguably bound up in a basic contradiction.<\/p>\n For all is not well in Xinjiang, traditional home to the Muslim Uighur people, where discontent with China\u2019s iron rule runs high and a new terrorist threat has emerged in recent months, apparently inspired by a dangerous blend of separatism and radical Islam. A gruesome knife attack at a railway station<\/a> in the city of Kunming in March and a bomb attack on a street market<\/a> in Urumqi on May 22 left 66 people dead and brought the region\u2019s troubles onto the world\u2019s front pages.<\/p>\n While the dream of a new Silk Road speaks of open borders and the free movement of people and goods, China\u2019s response to that discontent and violence has been a tightening of its already strangling controls over Xinjiang: mass surveillance and closed borders, ever-stricter controls on religious practice and a \u201cstrike hard\u201d campaign against extremism that has already seen hundreds of arrests and more than 20 executions since May, all on terrorism-related charges.<\/p>\n Xi is gambling on his ability to manage that contradiction, but so far, the signs are not good, some observers say.<\/p>\n Xi has effectively doubled down on China\u2019s long-standing policy toward Xinjiang, a strategy that has three fundamental strands: strict control meant to identify and eliminate separatists; massive economic investment meant to win over other people; and a large-scale migration of China\u2019s majority Han people into Xinjiang \u2014 an ethnic dilution of the Uighurs\u2019 hold on what they consider to be their homeland.<\/p>\n The high-speed train, which will cut traveling time from Lanzhou to Urumqi to eight hours from 20, is both a symbol of that investment and a useful tool if the government wants to encourage even more Han migration west.<\/p>\n