China's Struggle to Contain Ethnic Unrest Continues

Violence has been escalating in China's restive Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region once again, highlighting the country's struggle to maintain stability in its ethnically diverse border regions. In past weeks, several deadly clashes have erupted in the province, many of them directly targeting local police and security forces. In response, and ahead of the fourth anniversary of similar bloody riots that left nearly 200 people dead in Xinjiang on July 5, 2009, the military and other authorities have ramped up security in the far-western region.

Unrest is common in Xinjiang, where ethnic and religious minority groups resent Beijing's heavy-handed attempts to establish central control as well as the influxes of Han Chinese settlers into the region as part of Beijing's effort to dilute the ethnic concentration. As a result, Beijing has been experimenting with more conciliatory policies toward the minorities. However, with Beijing struggling to balance its desire for improved minority relations with the imperative to maintain stability along the Chinese periphery, the escalating violence in Xinjiang may make such policies more difficult to implement.