Muslim Revolt In China Leads To Clampdown

"The new high-rises, schools, and businesses in Urumqi are being built by Han Chinese for Han Chinese," he says, as the Muslim quarter of the city stagnates.

"The People's Liberation Army is well-armed and distributed throughout the region," says the official. "The Uighurs have nothing to fight back with except propaganda and small-scale guerrilla warfare."

Deng's moves to open China's borders with its neighbors have succeeded in boosting trade in Xinjiang, but they have also allowed the Uighurs to have contacts with compatriots who fled China during the violence of Mao's rule.

The creation of Muslim-ruled independent republics from the ashes of Soviet Central Asia has opened a pipeline for the smuggling of Islamic fundamentalist religious materials and other contraband into Xinjiang, say Western and Chinese officials.

There are at least five Islamic groups based outside China that support the setting up of an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang, Gladney says. He says that the Uighur diaspora extends from Kazakstan to Turkey to Germany and New York.

He adds that the stepped-up terrorist campaign and the increasing sophistication of the anti-Chinese attacks point toward "outside groups" supporting, arming, and training Xinjiang's Muslims on a very limited scale.

A diplomat from one of the former Soviet Central Asian republics says, however, that most Uighurs abroad do not back Xinjiang's secession.

He also says that the governments of Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, which border Xinjiang, do not want to fuel the fire of separatism among China's Muslims.

He says that although Uighurs have been voted into the parliaments of the two new republics, "we are small countries, and do not want any cross-border conflicts with the Chinese giant."

Gladney says it was unclear how much support the violent campaign for independence had from the majority of Xinjiang's Muslims.

"What many Uighurs want most is a greater voice in their affairs," he says. "They want freedom to build mosques, the cleaning up of nuclear test sites in Xinjiang, and a more equal slice of the economic pie."

He also says, though, that rather than opening new talks with Xinjiang's increasingly angry Muslims, Beijing has fallen back on Deng's practice of applying military solutions to political and social unrest.

"So far, there has been no sign that the post-Deng leadership will try more creative solutions to inter-ethnic clashes," Gladney says, "but many Muslims in Xinjiang are hoping for that."

[Wang Lequan, Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, said in the Feb. 24 edition of the Xinjiang Daily those who endanger state security should be punished severely, the Associated Press reported. Mr. Wang said officials should "clearly recognize the reactionary nature and threat of national separatism and illegal religious activities."]

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