Q+A: Deadly ethnic riots in China's northwest

By Emma Graham-Harrison

BEIJING (Reuters) - At least 140 people have been killed in rioting in the capital of China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, with the government blaming exiled separatists for the Muslim area's worst case of ethnic unrest in years.

Hundreds of rioters have been arrested, the official Xinhua news agency reported, after Uighurs took to the streets of the regional capital on Sunday, some burning and smashing vehicles and throwing rocks at ranks of anti-riot police.

WHY ARE UIGHURS RIOTING?

The riots followed a protest about government handling of a June clash between Han Chinese and Uighur factory workers in southern China, where two Uighurs died.

But the underlying cause of the unrest was probably long-standing economic, cultural and religious grievances, which have built up over decades of tight central rule and periodically erupt into violence, though never before on such a deadly scale.

"In Xinjiang one of the major sources of discontent is that there is still a major gap economically between Han and Uighurs," said Barry Sautman, a specialist in China's ethnic politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"There are also people who object to the amount of control exercised by the state with regard to religion and there are people who resent that the Han population is substantial."

WILL THERE BE MORE RIOTS?

It is extremely unlikely that there will be further rioting in Urumqi itself. Security forces moved swiftly to crush the unrest as soon as it erupted, and have established a heavy presence on the streets.

Analysts say there could be isolated incidents in other towns, particularly ones with a Uighur majority population, but China has a strong grip on Xinjiang and its geography is less of a challenge than neighboring Tibet, so the chances of sustained unrest over a long period are low.

"Although the scale of the security-force response makes a serious deterioration in public order unlikely, more limited, isolated security incidents are very possible in the current climate," Control Risks' China analyst Andrew Gilholm said in a note on the Xinjiang situation.

IS THE UNREST LINKED TO 2008 RIOTS IN LHASA?

There has been no evidence or claims of links between rioters in Urumqi and unrest in Lhasa in March last year. But Beijing's handling of the two events is similar, and the official Xinhua news agency made an explicit comparison in a commentary.

"There are big parallels with what happened in Tibet ... the government has started applying the same reading to this event," said Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.

"That is (they are saying) that the causes of this event are a plot by foreign forces with an exile at their head, and that the blame is entirely apportioned on the demonstrators."