A recent shake-up in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership in Xinjiang indicates that the regime’s longtime propaganda strategy in ethnic regions is becoming counterproductive.
On Sept. 5, Mr. Li Zhi, the head of Communist Party of Urumqui, Xinjiang’s capital, was fired, along with the regional police chief and other lesser officials, following massive protests by the Han Chinese community in Urumqi.
The firings were followed by thousands of people taking to the streets of Urumqi demanding the ouster of Mr. Wang Lequan, the regional secretary of the CCP for the Xinjing-Uyghur autonomous region. Wang has kept his job.
Since taking over mainland China, the CCP had always used class contradictions to cover up ethnic tensions. After Deng Xiaoping implemented the policy of reform and opening up in the late 1970s, encouraging private ownership and foreign direct investment, the CCP itself degenerated into a corrupt and vicious “ownership class.”
If the CCP had continued to encourage class contradictions, it would have encouraged the Chinese people to overthrow the CCP itself. Therefore, the CCP’s propaganda, after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, turned to nationalism.
Many scholars have pointed out that propaganda in China that appeals to nationalism is a double-edged sword. Such propaganda can awaken the national identity consciousness of other minority groups and ignite a movement to “separate” from the nation.
The CCP has tried to use disputes among ethnic groups as a good opportunity to play political tricks and increase its own legitimacy. Thus, the CCP has started to provoke hatred among Han nationals and the Tibetan and Uyghur ethnic groups respectively, creating continuing conflicts.
The CCP’s wishes to believe that it can maintain the unity of the country, gaining support for Han rule, while simultaneously developing the economy and improving people’s living conditions, gaining support from minority groups.
On the one hand, in order to try to gain support, the CCP spends a large amount of money in Tibet and Xinjiang (although it has also seized huge amounts of non-renewable resources in both provinces). On the other hand, it has deprived people of freedom of religion and destroyed the minority culture in order to control Tibet and Xinjiang.
As a result, both sides are unhappy with the CCP. The Han people are extremely dissatisfied with the lean economic policy and lax punishment of people from minority groups who commit criminal acts. The minority groups cannot tolerate the CCP’s policies of eliminating their religion and culture as well as allowing a large number of Han people to emigrate to their region, vastly changing the local demographics.
The CCP not only very clearly knows of these dissatisfactions, but has kept conflict between the ethnic groups alive.
The Tibetans’ protest on March 14, 2008, provided the CCP a great opportunity to lobby the Han people against Tibetans and Western society. It was also a stimulus, prior to the Beijing Olympic Games, for resuscitating support for the CCP. Some Chinese who may not have been very knowledgeable about the CCP’s nationalist policies over the years were organized to hold protests overseas to support the CCP.
This year marks the 60th year of the CCP’s takeover of China, and protests have been spreading across China.
The CCP is using the incidents in Xinjiang once again to distract people’s attention, just as it did with the Tibet incidents in March 2008. Unlike Tibet, where many believe in Buddhism and are against violence, violent rioting broke out or was incited between Uyghur Muslims and the Han people. Not only Uyghurs, but also Han people were placed in danger.
Now, in the protests of two weeks ago, the Han people have turned against the CCP. This is the natural outcome of the CCP’s cynical strategy of pitting ethnic groups against one another. The dissatisfaction of the Han is what the CCP deserves for its nationalistic policy of “playing with fire.” This policy is becoming an inextricable knot.
Read the original Chinese article.
