Deadly Uighur riots may force policy debate in Beijing

By Emma Graham-Harrison - Analysis

BEIJING (Reuters) - The script is jarringly familiar. Bodies lie on riot-scarred streets of an ethnic minority area, troops fan out, unrest rumbles on and Beijing denounces overseas enemies bent on splitting China.

Less than 18 months ago, when the violence was in Tibet, China's response appeared knee-jerk -- a harsh crackdown and tight security ever since.

But as discontent played out in energy-rich Xinjiang this week, analysts say there was almost certainly a parallel round of debate taking place within the secretive Communist Party -- about where policy on ethnic minorities went wrong.

Conservatives have been in the ascendant in recent years, presiding over a tightening of controls on religion and language and pushing a harsh response to the Tibetan violence that flared ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

But two explosions of deadly rioting barely over a year apart are an embarrassing public challenge to the rule of a government that has brooked little dissent since taking power in 1949.

"Frankly, coming up to the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic, it gives China a bit of a black eye to have these on-going problems," said Dru Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California.

The Communist Party has for decades swung between hardline policies that aim to crush dissent and weaken ethnic identity and softer approaches that attempt to make minorities feel they can have a dual identity, both Chinese and Tibetan or Uighur.

Those who favor a more conciliatory approach will now likely use the explosions of violence as evidence that Beijing cannot rule its vast hinterlands by coercion alone.

But China has poured cash into Xinjiang and Tibet along with its troops and many Han Chinese think that with development subsidies, the construction of schools and clinics and some affirmative action, the government has already done enough.

"In the past, there have been policies in favor of minorities, but many minorities have not been able to take advantage of these policies," said Bo Zhiyue, a China politics expert at Singapore's East Asian Institute.

"I don't think there's a fundamental policy problem, but it's a fundamental governance issue," he added, expressing a view shared by much of China's elite.

UIGHURS UNHAPPY

Uighurs, however, say they have been left behind economically as Han Chinese dominate development opportunities, are unhappy that they cannot practice their religion as they wish and resent an inflow of migrants from the rest of China.

"One would hope this would make many Chinese policy-makers realize how deep the problems are in the region and how dissatisfied the Uighurs are," said Gladney.

China has deflected debate about domestic policy by blaming the riots on exiled separatists, but experts say China's growing political and economic might has in fact helped stem a tide of support for independence.