Two weeks after unrest erupted in Xinjiang, Beijing should reassess its policies towards and relations with ethnic minorities. Instead of a strong and uncompromising response, the Chinese government needs to protect rights and provide opportunities for real autonomy. Ethnic tensions must be reduced not used to justify harsher measures.
Minxin Pei, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently wrote in the Financial Times that “without immediate policy adjustments, these tensions could mushroom into debilitating low-intensity conflicts, distracting China’s leadership from economic growth and tarnishing the country’s international image.”
“The long-term challenge for Beijing is to question the core assumptions of its current policies toward both Xinjiang and Tibet and adopt a different strategy. Such a shift will be hard. Ethnic conflict is perhaps the most intractable problem, even for democracies. For one-party states, it is almost insoluble. But with so much at stake, Beijing has no choice but to search for a political approach that will give China’s ethnic minorities, particularly Uighurs and Tibetans, genuine autonomy under Chinese rule.”
(Minxin Pei also appeared on PBS NewsHour with Alim Seytoff, a spokesperson for the World Uighur Congress (see discussion above).)
The violence in Xinjiang is unlikely to prevent China’s rise in the near future. But lingering tensions and the possibility of future unrest could damage the country’s long-term prospects.
Clip from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
