Paramilitary police officers patrol as a Han Chinese woman looks at in Urumqi, western China's Xinjiang province, Monday, July 13, 2009. Photo by Eugene Hoshiko:AP

The trouble started on the evening of June 25, 2009 in a toy factory in Shaoguan in Guangdong Province. Uighur workers from Xingjiang Province had a massive brawl with Han Chinese workers that resulted in two Uighur deaths and over 100 injuries. News of the incident agitated the Uighurs in Xinjiang Province, over 2,000 miles away from Guangdong, who were unhappy with how the government handled the event. On the afternoon of July 5, over 100,000 Uighurs poured out in the streets of Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, to protest. The riot lasted for over 10 hours. According to the official data, there were at least 184 deaths, including 137 Han Chinese, 46 Uighurs and 1 Hui during this conflict. Over 1,000 were injured, over 200 shops were destroyed, and hundreds of cars and buses were burnt. More than 1,000 were arrested.

Understanding the current unrest requires understanding the history and geography of the region. Although the governing regime has changed, Xinjiang has been part of China since 60 BC. Islam was eventually introduced, by war and peace, and over 1,000 years ago it became the dominant religion. There are at least 13 recognizable ethnicities in Xinjiang. Besides the two major groups Uighur and Han, other minorities include Kazakhs, Hui, Mongols, and Russians. The groups have long been divided by race, by language and by religion. Uighurs belong to a wing of Sunni Islam, but most Han Chinese are atheists. The Uighurs have their own official language which is more similar to that of central Asia than the Chinese language.

When the Communists took over Xinjiang in 1949, the Uighurs made up 80 percent of the population. But the massive Han Chinese migration to Xinjiang, a move that began under orders from the central government during the 1950s, has resulted in a demographic shift in the province. According to the 2007 census, of the over 21 million people in Xinjiang Province, about 47 percent are Uighurs, and 40 percent are Hans. Counting other ethnic groups, 53 percent are not Uighurs. Most of the latter reside in rural areas and away from the big cities, and their main income is from agriculture. Recently, some Uighurs started making a living as migrant workers in other parts of China. Han Chinese in Xinjiang mainly reside in cities and in Production and Construction Corps compounds (the residual of mass immigration in early years). For example, in the capital Urumqi, Han Chinese now make up 75 percent of the city’s population.

Although the Chinese language is taught in public schools, not all local children go to public schools, or go to schools at all. Without good education and language skills, they are not competitive in the labor market. The government has some affirmative action favorable to Uighurs in college education, some government employment, and sometimes even more lenient criminal punishment. However, there are other policies unfavorable to the Uighurs and other minorities, precluding them from employment in sensitive areas such as finance, military, and communication. Private businesses and enterprises that emerged since the economic reform in the 1980s only employ people with good education and qualifications, which put the ethnics, other than Han Chinese, into very unfavorable situation.

Xinjiang is the western-most province of China, and the area is 1.66 million square kilometers, one sixth of China’s total land area. It borders Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Not only it is a big agricultural area, but Xinjiang is also abundant in natural resources, including oil and gas, coal, and minerals such as gold. The Shenhua Coal field in Xinjiang holds 40 percent of China’s total coal reserves. The earliest oil field found in China, the Dushanzi oil field, is in Xinjiang. There are two oil and gas rich basins there, the Junggar Basin in the north and the Tarim basin in the south. About 20 oil and gas fields have been discovered and 15 of them have been developed and are producing in those basins. Xinjiang is also the most important transit depot for pipeline-imported oil and gas. Click here (pdf) for a map of China’s oil and gas infrastructure.

However, local per capita income is not proportional to the economic development and GDP increase in the area. Agricultural goods, oil and gas have been developed and transported by giant state-owned companies mostly operated by Han Chinese while the locals, especially those who don’t have good jobs, are still living in rather primitive economic conditions. Since 1980, while Han Chinese have been forced to follow the one child policy, ethnics have been allowed to have three children per family. With limited job sources, a fast growing population, and the language barrier, the Uighur households are far poorer than those of Han Chinese. Many Uighur youths cannot find proper jobs locally and have to become migrant workers.

While the situation in Xinjiang has calmed down in recent days, the ongoing animosity between the Uighurs and the Han Chinese portends future clashes in the region. Whether those conflicts will affect the region’s ability to exploit its vast energy resources is a question that must surely worry the central government bureaucrats in Beijing.