Two sides of China\u2019s policy in Xinjiang \u2014 and two sides of China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping \u2014 have been on display during Mr. Xi\u2019s visit to the tense western region, where he enthusiastically endorsed policies to integrate the Uighur ethnic minority while warning that his government would be unforgiving toward separatist violence.<\/p>\n
By CHRIS BUCKLEY
April 29, 2014, 2:59 am<\/p>\n
Two sides of China\u2019s policy in Xinjiang \u2014 and two sides of China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping \u2014 have been on display during Mr. Xi\u2019s visit to the tense western region, where he enthusiastically endorsed policies to integrate the Uighur ethnic minority while warning that his government would be unforgiving toward separatist violence.<\/p>\n
Since taking office in November 2012, Mr. Xi has cast himself as a paternal leader devoted to improving the lives of ordinary people, but also as a firm proponent of a security state dedicated to defending social stability and one-party power. Both aspects featured as Mr. Xi visited Xinjiang, which has been shaken by deadly attacks and riots by members of the Uighur ethnic minority. In March, a group of Uighurs slashed<\/a> 29 people to death at a railway station in Kunming, in the southwestern province of Yunnan.<\/p>\n Reports by Xinhua, the state news agency, showed Mr. Xi on Sunday and Monday in Xinjiang in all the postures that Communist Party leaders adopt toward the region and its Uighurs, a largely Sunni Muslim people whose language and culture are much closer to those of Turkic groups in Central Asia than to those of China\u2019s ethnic Han majority.<\/p>\n Photographs and television footage showed Mr. Xi as an amiable figure, chatting with Uighurs and officials around a table sporting baked flatbread and local snacks. They showed him smiling with a group of Uighur schoolchildren. They showed him wearing the distinctive, four-cornered \u201cdoppa\u201d cap worn by many Uighur men. Yet they also showed<\/a> Mr. Xi inspecting security troops in protective helmets and vests, and examining spears, clubs and other weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cMore sweat in ordinary times, so there will be less blood spilled in times of war,\u201d Mr. Xi told police officers in Kashgar, a city in southwest Xinjiang, an area beset by particularly volatile tensions between Uighurs and the Chinese authorities. \u201cThere must be effective means to deal with violent terrorist elements.\u201d<\/p>\n