The Chinese government\u2019s difficulties with the Uighur minority in its westernmost region are increasing, despite Beijing\u2019s efforts to integrate Uighurs with the country\u2019s Han-speaking majority.<\/p>\n
Published: Monday, 3\/10\/2014<\/p>\n
The Chinese government\u2019s difficulties with the Uighur minority in its westernmost region are increasing, despite Beijing\u2019s efforts to integrate Uighurs with the country\u2019s Han-speaking majority.<\/p>\n
Uighurs make up 10 million of China\u2019s 1.3 billion people. Mostly Muslim, they came under Beijing\u2019s control in 1949, when communists began to rule China.<\/p>\n
Uighurs have consistently resented Han Chinese efforts to control their region, which Beijing has flooded with Han-speaking immigrants. Uighurs see this government effort as aimed not only at reducing their economic and political prospects, but also at obliterating their culture and religion.<\/p>\n
They have become increasingly violent in their resistance. This month, a knife attack, apparently carried out by Uighurs at a railroad station outside their region, killed 29 people and wounded 143 others. Previous violent Uighur resistance had occurred within areas of strength.<\/p>\n
Beijing has not shown particular aptitude at dealing with its minorities. In recent months, Tibetans have increased self-immolations. Beijing took offense at President Obama\u2019s meeting at the White House last month with Tibetans\u2019 spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, even though Washington soft-pedaled the event.<\/p>\n
No government should reward violent attacks. Yet Beijing might try adding dialogue and inclusion to its repertoire of means of working with China\u2019s ethnic and religious minorities.<\/p>\n
It is hard to imagine that the Beijing government can believe in 2014 that retaliatory violence and economic submersion can work as ways of dealing with minority populations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Chinese government\u2019s difficulties with the Uighur minority in its westernmost region are increasing, despite Beijing\u2019s efforts to integrate Uighurs with the country\u2019s Han-speaking majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}