Struggle at the Center of Asia: China vs. the Uighurs. Mike Jeffers Reports

The Politics of Profit
The government estimates that the region holds 256 billion barrels of oil and 38 percent of China’s coal. Throughout its history, Xinjiang was a vital travel and trade corridor, but now its primary strategic value is energy: Most of the oil and gas that China imports from Central Asia comes through a pipeline between Xinjiang and Kazakhstan.

Xinjiang has obviously had a crucial role in fueling the soaring Chinese economy, especially now that the country is producing a large percentage of the world’s consumer goods. For Beijing, stability in Xinjiang is an imperative in its national strategy to maintain economic growth.

The railway that connects the sprawling cities along China’s coast to the once-inaccessible outposts of Xinjiang is now efficient and affordable. The highways to Xinjiang from other provinces, as well as the ones connecting cities within the region, are wide and smooth. It’s an indication of China’s willingness to utilize its biggest resource — its 1.4 billion people — to build bridges over big rivers and dig tunnels through mountains in the most rugged and far flung corners of the nation.

The government presence is evident in some ominous ways: There are checkpoints, presumably to monitor drug trafficking, which has also been a problem in Xinjiang because of its proximity to the poppy fields of Afghanistan. The People’s Liberation Army and Air Force also maintain a large presence in Xinjiang.

I often saw special police teams and military units of 10 to 20 soldiers patrolling the streets of Urumqi and Kashgar.

From Korla, I traveled to Kuqa. Once a commercial hub on the Silk Road, the city now feels unruly and left out of the development happening in other parts of Xinjiang. For the first time I felt nervous walking down the main thoroughfare after dark. Large groups of deeply tanned and bearded Uighur men sit outside drinking strong spirits and snacking on plates stacked with lamb skewers.

From Kuqa I continued to Kashgar, this time on the train. Kashgar is an old city and major Silk Road hub that has bustled with trade for more than 2,000 years. It is much closer geographically and culturally to Southwest Asia than to Beijing.

Riding in a taxi from the train station into town, I noticed black Audis with special license plates for government officials and high-ranking Communist Party members zooming past donkey-pulled carts bringing boxes of pomegranates, melons, bales of wool and live sheep into town from the countryside. The Bank of China is on the east side of the main square, but most symbolic of China’s control over the restive region is an enormous statue of Mao Zedong towering over the center of the city.

Finally I saw what is left of old Kashgar. A cluster of winding roads and adobe houses hundreds of years old sits on the north and west sides of the Id Kah Mosque. In front of the mosque is an enormous square, lined with shops selling souvenirs to Chinese and foreign tourists. I met my friend in Kashgar, a 25-year-old Uighur I’ll refer to as Yusuf. He guided me around Kashgar and explained how the central government has recently decreed that most of the traditional adobe homes of Kashgar are not up to earthquake standards and will soon be demolished.

I saw Uighur women wearing full-length black burqas, and many of the men wore their beards long despite a recent regulation that Uighur men working as civil servants in Kashgar are no longer allowed to wear facial hair at all. The city is closer to Tehran and Islamabad than to Beijing and has been a hotbed of rebellion and independence since it first came into contact with the Han Chinese more than 2,000 years ago.

I went door to door searching for opinions on the official decision to tear down the old city and rebuild the homes in modern styles — and maybe reduce the chances that people here could disappear in the ancient mazes of these streets, which have proved difficult for the government to scrutinize. I could not find anyone willing to talk to me. Yusuf told me that most residents are reluctant to talk to anyone that may be a journalist. But one small, tanned man with large green eyes and a neatly trimmed beard wearing a skullcap said he grew up in this neighborhood, and his father and grandfather had lived in the same home before him. He is saddened about the decision to rebuild the neighborhood. Yusuf added that these neighborhoods are part of what makes Kashgar a magical destination for travelers. But the city has been on edge since August 2008, when an attack on a border patrol station killed 16 policemen. The police called it a terrorist attack.

I visited the famous Sunday market. Old bearded men negotiate and barter for sheep, donkeys and the occasional horse. Central Asian traders, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Uighurs, continue a tradition that has gone on for centuries.