As a winter chill settled across China\u2019s far northwest, 489 people boarded a chartered train in the city of Urumqi for the 50-hour ride to the country\u2019s opposite corner, in semitropical Guangdong Province, to take up new factory jobs.<\/p>\n
By EDWARD WONG
NOV. 6, 2014<\/p>\n
BEIJING \u2014 As a winter chill settled across China<\/a>\u2019s far northwest, 489 people boarded a chartered train in the city of Urumqi for the 50-hour ride to the country\u2019s opposite corner, in semitropical Guangdong Province, to take up new factory jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can adapt to life in Guangdong, I would consider opening a restaurant and settling down there,\u201d said one passenger, Tahir Turghun, a farmer in his 30s, according to an article in the state-run newspaper Southern Daily<\/a>. He said he had never traveled outside the western region of Xinjiang, and when the opportunity to work in Guangdong arose, he immediately registered himself and his wife.<\/p>\n As violence upends the social order in swaths of Xinjiang, where resistance to Beijing\u2019s rule has been growing among ethnic Uighurs<\/a>, officials there and elsewhere in China are pushing new measures \u2014 like chartering entire trains \u2014 to bring Uighurs and members of other ethnic minorities to parts of the country where the Han, the nation\u2019s ruling ethnicity, are the majority.<\/p>\n Strengthening the labor export program is a major component of a push by the central government to try to assimilate Uighurs, a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking people, into mainstream Han culture. But such programs have themselves contributed to past ethnic hostilities, including an explosive episode in 2009.<\/p>\n The policy comes from the top. At a two-day work forum on Xinjiang<\/a> in May, President Xi Jinping expressed support for sending more Uighurs to work and be educated in Han areas \u201cto enhance mutual understanding among different ethnic groups and boost ties between them,\u201d according to a report by Xinhua, the state news agency.<\/p>\n That was preceded by a conference in September 2013 in which other top party leaders called for local governments across China to help find work for members of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. (Uighurs in Xinjiang complain about losing jobs to Han migrants, whose relocations to the region are supported by the state.)<\/p>\n Assimilation is only one element of the party\u2019s strategy to quell ethnic unrest in Xinjiang. Security forces there have arrested large numbers of Uighurs, saying some are terrorists, and courts have issued death sentences. In September, judges in Urumqi sentenced Ilham Tohti<\/a>, a moderate Uighur professor of economics who lived in Beijing, to life imprisonment for what officials called separatist activities.<\/p>\n Guangdong Province plans to import 5,000 workers from Xinjiang over the next three years, according to China Daily<\/a>, an official English-language newspaper. More than 1,000 have made the move this year. On Oct. 20, the Guangdong government posted online guidelines for the program; among the rules were that workers must undergo \u201cideological and political review\u201d and that a local official from Xinjiang must accompany every 50 workers.<\/p>\n The group that left Urumqi on Oct. 29 was the largest to date for the labor program; officials from both Xinjiang and Guangdong attended a departure ceremony for the train. The future factory workers aboard appeared to be mainly ethnic Uighurs, judging from their names and places of origin as reported by state-run media.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have all gone through the training, political review and physical examination,\u201d Cheng Peng, a local official who accompanied the workers, said in a telephone interview from the train. \u201cThe training subjects include ethnic unity, the law and Mandarin Chinese, as well as the factories\u2019 regulations and routines.\u201d Ethnic unity training \u201cis about how the ethnic minorities communicate with mainland Han people, like in etiquettes and manners,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Because of recent outbreaks of violence, including a deadly knife attack<\/a> carried out by Uighurs last March in a train station in southwest China, \u201cpeople have a bias against Xinjiang people,\u201d Mr. Cheng said. \u201cWe need to establish a new image.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Cheng is an official in Shufu County near Kashgar, which he said had been sending laborers across China since 2006. Though neither he nor the state media reports mentioned it, the county\u2019s policy of exporting Uighur labor set the stage for a factory brawl<\/a> that led to deadly ethnic rioting in Urumqi in 2009, in which at least 200 people were killed.<\/p>\n The brawl took place at a toy factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong, in June 2009, after several weeks in which 800 Uighur workers from Shufu County had gradually arrived at the factory. Rumors that Uighurs had raped two Han women spread among the factory\u2019s 16,000 Han workers, and a four-hour melee erupted. Two Uighur men were killed and 120 other people were injured, according to official reports.<\/p>\n A large protest by Uighurs in Urumqi followed, calling for an investigation of the Guangdong violence. That culminated in the Urumqi riot, which was the deadliest outburst of ethnic violence in China in decades.<\/p>\n At that time, people in the Kashgar area said various means had been used to ensure the export of Uighur labor, including threatening reluctant families with enormous fines. Some Uighur men said they were particularly upset at the recruitment of young, unmarried Uighur women. Some families, though, said they welcomed the economic opportunities provided by the labor export program.<\/p>\n