No Referendum for China

Although held far away in Europe, the recent referendum in Scotland has fuelled fears in China that proponents of independence in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan might draw additional inspiration and then employ the Scottish precedent to help legitimate their efforts. The Chinese are certain that the loss of Scotland would have deprived London of its global political and economic clout, something Beijing is striving to attain.

Although held far away in Europe, the recent referendum in Scotland has fuelled fears in China that proponents of independence in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan might draw additional inspiration and then employ the Scottish precedent to help legitimate their efforts.

The Chinese are certain that the loss of Scotland would have deprived London of its global political and economic clout, something Beijing is striving to attain. Hence, the Chinese media have focused on the danger of the Scottish scenario for China, among other things because the history of its problematic territories has absolutely nothing in common with the United Kingdom.

De facto independent from continental China as a result of civil war, Taiwan has been long studying the use of a referendum as a channel to marshal popular will for bolstering its legal status, paying no attention to the position of Beijing. As a response, back in 2005, China adopted the Anti-Cessation Law that would allow Beijing to use "non-peaceful means" if an attempt was made to unilaterally handle the matter through a referendum. Tibet and Xinjiang also differ from Scotland, since their supporters of independence are much more radical and supported extensively from abroad.

Chinese author and economist He Qinglian, who moved to the United States and rose to fame in late 1990s by criticizing reforms in China, has identified the key "revelation" of the Scottish referendum for China – since the government is failing to maintain stability in its restless periphery through the use of huge cash infusions, Beijing should open negotiations with the Dalai Lama and moderate Uyghur leaders. In order to alleviate tensions in Chinese society, Mrs. He has advised Beijing to "return the power to the people."

However, Beijing has made it clear that it will preserve the country's unity. It symbolically reacted to the Scottish referendum last September 23 with a court in Urumqi handing down a life sentence to ethnic Uyghur Ilham Tohti, a former lecturer at the Central Nationalities University in Beijing, for supporting separatism in Xinjiang. The verdict has exploded in the West, but China has remained unimpressed, with its Foreign Ministry labeling the declarations as interference in internal affairs under the pretext of "defending democracy and human rights." Chinese media has come down hard on foreigners who conceal their subversive intentions with references to morality and justice.

The court decided that Mr. Tohti was responsible for creating a group engaged in compiling and distributing publications aimed at advancing the secession of Xinjiang, at inciting ethnic discord and at distorting the causes of unrest. The defendant allegedly hailed protesters as heroes and stated that "the Uyghurs must resist the government in the same way as they did during the Japanese aggression."

CCTV
It symbolically reacted to the Scottish referendum
last September 23 with a court in Urumqi handing
down a life sentence to ethnic Uyghur Ilham Tohti,
a former lecturer at the Central Nationalities
University in Beijing, for supporting separatism
in Xinjiang.

Beijing did not see Mr. Tohti as the intellectual spokesman of the Uyghur movement and a counterpart in the dialogue on the high-degree autonomy for the region. Special attention was given to his use of a university chair and his own website for propagandistic purposes. One excerpt from his case in particular is notable. In November 2010, Mr. Tohti posted a "survey of ethnic relations in Xinjiang," claiming that it was based on polls held in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, which indicated that 12.3 percent of the respondents view independence as a tool to settle Uyghur-Han relations, while 81.3 percent favor high-degree autonomy. However, the investigation could not find any polls carried out by Mr. Tohti whatsoever.

The Chinese government is increasingly concerned about the rise of radical Islam in Xinjiang, as never before has the place seen civilians assaulted by Uyghur militants so frequently and cruelly. Over 200 lives have been lost this year alone. The wave of violence escalated in October 2013 in Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing, where a vehicle broke through a fence and caught fire. Last March, a knife-wielding gang attacked civilians at the railway station in Kunming in the southeastern province Yunnan. In May, a bomb exploded at a market in Urumqi. In July, a slaughter in Shache County, Xinjiang, along with the response from local security forces, took almost 100 lives. Most troublesome appears the murder in Kashgar of an elderly Imam loyal to the government, which testifies to a split within the Uyghur community and attempts by the radicals to subordinate moderates under their command.

The authorities responded with tougher control and harsher sentences, usually with death penalties given to the convicted murderers. Substantial rewards have been promised for information on terrorist activities. Xinjiang has recently taken up selling individual tickets for intercity bus traffic that register personal data.

The government is particularly worried about the spread of terrorist information over the Internet since it inspires radicals and can triggers their activism. The defendants in the Kunming case claimed that their attack had been to a large extent provoked by video and audio materials distributed by foreign extremist groups. Chinese media also report that some Uyghur militants have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant to gain experience and establish links with international groups.

wikipedia.org
The Lanzhou — Urumqi High-Speed Railway

However, the Chinese authorities believe that measures to control the Internet and the movement of people are far from sufficient and would like to adopt a comprehensive counterterrorism law expected to become effective in 2015. For the time being, temporary punishments have been introduced against critics of heretics, pagans and renegades, since the debate centers not around theology, but rather conceals the fundamentalists' attempts to control religious communities, a menacing trend for national security.

Beijing hopes that economic development will overpower radicalism by imbedding a modern mentality into Uyghur thinking. But instability has already proven harmful for Xinjiang’s economy, with the flow of tourists diminishing for the first time in two decades. Regional GDP growth is also slowing down, even though by early 2014, large-scale investments had accelerated it to a level of 10.2 percent, compared to an average 7.5 percent across the rest of China.

In May 2014, President Xi Jinping held a conference on Xinjiang in order to formulate the official stance that would combine severe measures to capture terrorists "with a net stretching from the Earth to the skies" with intensified ethnic integration and an improvement of understanding between the Uyghurs and the Han via co-existence, co-education and co-work. The path to unity is seen as lying through economic prosperity, employment and accessible education. At such, the Uyghurs will obtain better opportunities for education in those universities located in more developed regions of eastern China.

Last summer, the authorities of Tsemo County in Xinjiang launched an extraordinary initiative promising to pay 10,000 renminbi (about USD 1,500) annually over five years to each new Uyghur-Han family. Such families will also enjoy preferences in obtaining housing, medical insurance and remuneration for the education of their children. Responding to criticism about pecuniary interference into private life, the local government pledged to refrain from advertising the project, but insisted on continuing to implement it. Nevertheless, the local budget is unlikely to be strained, since interethnic marriages in Xinjiang are rarest of all marriages across China.

A more realistic plan emerged in the town of Hotan where the Uyghurs make up an absolute majority. Renouncing attempts to bring different nationalities under the same roof, the local government prefers to gather them in a prosperous harmonious village meant to contain 600 houses with greenhouses and fruit gardens. Future residents are to be selected from Uyghur and Han applicants so that they could live and work side by side.

These small steps only bolster the multibillion projects designed to ensure that Xinjiang is firmly attached to central China. The high-speed railway Lanzhou-Urumqi is ready for commissioning and is sure to improve access to Xinjiang. As part of the New Silk Way strategy, Xinjiang is becoming a key segment of the Europe-bound transportation corridor. Beijing is working hard on other momentous plans in trade, tourism and investments, since it just cannot afford to lose control over this important territory.