Chinese president skips G8 after Urumqi riots

China's President Hu Jintao arrives to attend a news conference with Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Rome July 6, 2009.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao is flying back to Beijing following rioting in the northwestern region of Xinjiang and will miss this week's G8 summit hosted by Italy, state media said on Wednesday.

"Chinese President Hu Jintao cut short his stay in Italy after concluding a state visit to the country and left for home early Wednesday due to the situation in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region," the official Xinhua news agency said.

State Councilor Dai Bingguo will attend the G8 summit in Hu's place, the report added.

Bloody ethnic clashes in the capital of Xinjiang earlier this week killed 156 people and wounded more than 1,000.

The G8 summit is due to open in the central Italian city of L'Aquila later on Wednesday and Hu had been scheduled to join the talks on Thursday.

Hu arrived in Italy on Sunday and had visited Florence on Tuesday.

Italian news agency Ansa said the Chinese president would fly directly out of the nearby city of Pisa.

Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who are now in the majority in most key cities.

Han Chinese armed with iron bars and machetes roamed the capital city, Urumqi, on Tuesday seeking revenge on Uighurs.

(Writing by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Rome; Editing by Alex Richardson)