Xinjiang is largely a desert wasteland cleaved in two by the Tianshan Mountains. The majority of its 22 million inhabitants live clustered in one of three sub-regional cores: the Uighur-dominated Tarim Basin to the south (centered in Kashgar), the majority Han Chinese Junggar Basin to the north (home to Urumqi), and the smaller Ili River Valley wedged in between. Today, Xinjiang accounts for 17 percent of China's total landmass — an area roughly half the size of India — but less than 2 percent of its population.
Civil unrest and militancy, whether secular political or Islamist in orientation, have been constant throughout Xinjiang's recent history, but the nature of the risk posed by unrest in the autonomous region is changing. Until recently, most of Xinjiang was undeveloped and poorly integrated with the rest of the country, and with the exception of parts of the Tarim Basin, all of the region's major oil fields were located in Han-dominated northern Xinjiang, where religiously motivated violence has been much less common. As infrastructure in Xinjiang develops, and as more of the province's oil, natural gas and coal make their way to cars, factories and power generators elsewhere in China, the stakes for maintaining security in the west will rise.
Particularly concerning will be a thin band of settlements surrounding the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang — especially Kashgar and Hotan prefectures — home to the vast majority of the province's roughly 9.5 million Uighur Muslims. Seven of the 10 largest Uighur-related attacks or incidents between 2008 and 2012 took place in or around Hotan or Kashgar. Southern Xinjiang's demographic balance, higher levels of poverty and history of militant activity help explain the Chinese government's intense focus on integrating the region into northern Xinjiang's transport networks. In June 2011, just weeks before 18 people in Hotan and another 19 in Kashgar were killed in militant attacks, the Kashgar-Hotan Railway opened passenger service, helping connect southern Xinjiang's major population centers to the Lanzhou-Xinjiang trunk line. In the future, Beijing will rely on such lines not only to promote economic development and integration but also to transport security forces in the event of raids, attacks or civil unrest.
