On July 5, 2009, a few days before the G8 meeting, a violent riot erupted in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China’s northwest. According to the New York Times dispatch from Beijing: “The rioters threw stones at the police and set vehicles on fire, sending plumes of smoke into the sky, while police officers used fire hoses and batons to beat back rioters and detain the Uyghurs who appeared to be leading the protest, witnesses said.”1. 

       These are the most violent riots in decades in China, as hundreds of buses, motor vehicles and even police cars were burned, hundreds of innocent people also killed and injured, with homes and shops destroyed. 2.

       To many it is puzzling that riots of such a scale would erupt in Xinjiang when the region is experiencing phenomenal economic growth. The Chinese official position for the disturbance was due to external factor, and the main instigator was Rebiya Kadeer, a Uyghur woman who was imprisoned in China for six years for separatist activity. However, under the pressure from the United States, she was released under the pretext of medical parole and joined her husband in the U.S. in 2005. Her husband, Sidik Rouzi, who works for Radio Free Asia, has a close tie with the CIA. Like the Dalai Lama, Rebiya Kadeer has been promoted by a certain circle in Washington as the leader of the Uyghur people, and even nominated several times as a candidate for the Nobel Prize.

       In 2006, Rebiya Kadeer was elected president of the “World Uyghur Congress” in Munich. Prior to her German visit, her biography in German was released and well received. She was officially received by the Germany Foreign Ministry, and made her appearance at the German Federal Parliament’s Human Rights Commission and the party affiliated Foundations such as the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation. According to Germany Foreign Policy source, “Rebiya Kadeer’s appearance in the German capital has been carefully stage managed for high profile in conjunction with U.S. activities. Following the Dalai Lama’s Germany Chancellery visit, Berlin has been escalating its anti-Beijing secessionist offensive. For decades, Germany—including foreign intelligence circles—has been cultivating relations to Uyghur exile politicians.”3.

       One of the prominent exile politicians was Erkin Alptekin, who moved to Munich in 1971, and became “Senior Policy Advisor” to the director of Radio Liberty, which has close links to CIA.

       Alptekin conducted his separatist activity against China from Munich, culminated with the founding of the “World Uyghur Congress” in 2004. The World Uyghur Congress directed Uyghur exiles around the world, and many of the engaged separatist or even terrorist activities against China.3.

       In recent years, terrorist activities such as the use of violent bomb attacks against civilian targets have occurred in China, and in the aftermath of 9/11, China enthusiastically joined the international coalition against terrorism led by the United States in the hope that Washington would recognize the Uyghur separatists as terrorists. The Chinese government requested the United States hand over the Uyghurs captured in Afghanistan to China and tried as terrorists. Much to China’s disappointment, this request was refused by the United States, even after China donated hundred of millions of aid to Afghanistan. Moreover, George W. Bush stated his view on terrorism to the media before his bilateral talk with Chinese leader in Shanghai in 2001: “The war on terrorism must never be an excuse to persecute minorities…ethnic minorities must know that their rights be safeguarded-that their churches, temples and mosques belong to them.”4.

      Obviously, it is a wishful thinking on the part of Chinese decision makers to expect that the United States, the main instigator and supporter of the Uyghur secession movement would lend a helping hand to China for her fight against separatism. Since 1970s the CIA had already made contact with the Uyghur separatist leaders, and in 1998, the First International Conference of Allied Committee of the People of Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia was held in New York. Among the participants were Clinton administration officials as well as members of U.S. Congress. Erkin Alptekin, the first Chairman of the Allied Committee, urged the American government to press China to negotiate with the parties involved and called for sending the U.S. fact-finding mission to China.4.

        On May 18, 2009, a little more than a month before the outbreak of the riots in Xingiang, the Third General Assembly of the World Uyghur Congress was held in Washington D.C. with active support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED, established to carry out what was done covertly by CIA in the 1970s, was funded nearly 100% by the U.S. Congress. It in turn financed various opposition groups in engineering color revolutions in Eastern Europe and the former republics of the Soviet Union. In China, NED openly supports Chinese “political dissidents, human rights activities and Tibetan exiles,” together with Uyghur separatists, directly challenging China’s sovereignty.5.

       Indeed, China’s sovereignty was directly challenged when Carl Gershman, the president of NED delivered the keynote speech at the Third World Uyghur Congress in Washington on May 18, 2009. The conference itself was also funded by NED, and held in Capitol Hill, with hundred of members of the Congress present. China, Gershman declared, has not delivered a better life for the Uyghur people since the economic reform. “The Uyghurs face not just discrimination and harsh persecution but even the threat of cultural and religious extinction.”6. 

      Gershman asserted that the Uyghurs are denied employment opportunities, and the oil and gas revenues are “rarely if ever invested in health and education programs for the Uyghurs…. This is also a general assault on the practice of Islam and on Uyghur national identity.”6. 

      For the president of NED, the solution to the problem of Uyghurs in China is the Charter 08, a declaration issued by the dissidents in Beijing, which calls for “A Federated Republic” for China. He suggests “representatives of the Uyghur movement should meet now with signatories of Charter 08, in exile if it is not possible to conduct such discussion in China, and begin to negotiate the terms of what would constitute this ‘workable framework’ for a new federal republic of China.”6.

      It is obvious what Mr. Gershman has in mind is another color revolution in China, and the outcome to his liking would be a regime change and “A Federated Republic” of China. Such a Republic would be conformed to American geopolitical interests, in which the central government is decidedly weakened. Foreign capital can easily divide China into different spheres of influence, and she will become the economic and political colony of the United States. China will lose the independence of a sovereign nation, and instead, “a gigantic proxy for imperial powers, who will increasingly compete for dominance, using different sectors of the political elite, military, students and so on.”7. This will be a tragedy for China, as China will be a land of continuous ethnic strife and eternal conflict. Under this scenario, China will return to the 20s of the 20th century, where warlords backed by different imperial interests divided and ruled China amidst chaos, bloodshed and starvation among the Chinese people.

      Indeed, a weakened and divided China has been on the agenda and the expectation of Washington even at the time of Nixon opening to China. Henry Kissinger told the Taiwan Ambassador in Washington upon his return from the first Nixon trip to China that there was a possibility of an era of chaos and upheaval in China within five years. Nixon expressed the same view in his note to his Secretary of State, William Rogers.8.

      To further this end, the United States not only provide funds for Uyghur separatist activities, President Bush and Mrs. Bush also received Rebiya Kadeer at the conference on democracy and security held in Prague on 5 June, 2007. In his speech, the president praised Kadeer profusely:"Another dissident I will meet with here is Rebiya Kadeer, whose sons have been jailed in what we believe is an act of retaliation for her human rights activities. The talent of men and women like Rebiya is the greatest resource of their nations-- far more valuable than the weapons of their army or oil under the ground.”9.

       One wonders what kind of logic the president has, as how can a person like Kadeer who committed crimes under the Chinese law and would do her utmost to seek secession of Xingiang from China be a greatest resource for that country. Perhaps Mr. Bush stated the obvious that the use of weapons and army to detach territories richly endowed with oil and other resources from China are not presently feasible. However, the use of dissidents to destabilize China is a distinct possibility, and Kadeer would be the greatest asset for America for that purpose.

       Indeed, the use of ethnic division and cultivating relations with dissidents of a given country for regime change or to break up a country has been successfully carried out in the former Yugoslavia and Soviet block. In the aftermath of violence in Xingiang, the Chinese government blamed the incident as “a pre-empted, organized violent crime. It is instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country….Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on July 5 in order to incite…and the Internet was used to orchestrate the incitement.”10.

       Unfortunately, the Chinese government did not dare to disclose the activities of Rebiya and others were funded by the U.S. government and the governments of Western Europe such as Germany which have escalated the secessionist offensive against China in recent years. The secessionist policy is also aimed at Inner Mongolia and Tibet. These objectives are to detach these territories from China, to increase Western influence for potential neocolonial exploitations, resource extraction, and weaken China for fear she would be a future potential rival.11. 

        Incredibly, completely ignoring the serious implication for China, the Chinese authority under the pressure from the very power which tries its utmost to destabilize the country, would release a person like Rebiya Kadeer who was in jail in China to the United States. This action, in the eye of Western politicians, is a sign of weakness, and for this reason, they would have no hesitation to escalate secessionist offensive against China. 3. 

       Unfortunately too, the Chinese government has not come to terms with the question of why riots can be so easily incited, as the Xingiang incident happened only after a little more than a year of the Tibetan riots of 2008. One may recall that a harmonious society without such violent conflict was the order of the day during the first 30 years of the People’s Republic. According to Asia Times, at the time of Mao era, “The working poor of China’s ethnic groups gave much support to the CCP government, and accepted their new socialist identity. Han and non-Han people became equal economically and politically, and the idea of ethnicity was gradually faded out by the idea of class.”10.

       However, under the neoliberal economic doctrine, there was a policy change in China, and the society has become polarized, with increased poverty as a result of factory layoffs coupled with the loss of social security, health care and even educational opportunities. Even after adopting measures favorable to the minorities in the area such as one-child policy, certain privileges in employment and others, many minorities such as the Uyghurs still complain “that they are being exploited or discriminated by the Han, many Han accuse the government doing the same. In the end, as China’s economy advances, political and economic equality between Han and non-Han is being undermined.”10.

       It is obvious that in the developing country such as China, political and economic equality is essential for maintaining social stability. The riots in Xingiang in 2009 should be a wake-up call for Chinese policy makers, and they should realize that the implementation of the neoliberal economic policy resulting in the polarization of the Chinese society is one of the root causes of social disturbance. On the other hand, the escalation of the “anti-Beijing secessionist offensive” on the part of the Western governments should also remind the Chinese people that imperial powers headed by the United States have been busy for decades to devise ways and means to detach resource rich territories such as Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xingiang from China. To prevent future interference and further escalation of the “anti-Beijing secessionist offensive”, China must uphold its vital national interests and stop foreign governments from funding for separatist movements. China must start sanctions against Western commercial interests in China when her sovereignty is being challenged, and this should apply immediately to the United States and Germany in view of the recent funding and support for the secessionist activities against China. Otherwise the Chinese will have no security or safety in their homeland.

       Notes:
 
1. Wong, Edward: “Riots in Western China Amid Ethnic Tension”, July 5, 2009  New York Times
2. People’s Daily Online: “Death Toll in Xingiang riot rises to 140, still climbing”  July 6, 2009
3. German-Foreign-Policy: “Strategies of Attrition”,  October 22, 2007
4. Raman, B.: “U.S. and Terrorism in Xingiang”, July 24, 2004  South Asia Analysis.org
5. Raman, B.: “National Endowment for Democracy of U.S.”,  www.iefd.org
6. Gershman, Carl: “The Uyghurs in China: Toward Real Autonomy”,  May 18, 2009  www.uyghurcongress.org
7. Petras, James: “Rulers and Ruled in the U.S. Empire”,  P 162  Clarity Press 2007
8. Tyler Patrick: “A Great Wall”,  P144 The Centruy Foundation Book  1999
9. Wikipedia: “Rebiya Kadeer”,
10. Jian, Junbo: “Ghost of Marx haunts China’s riots”  July 8, 2009  Asia Times Online
11. German-Foreign-Policy.com  March 17, 2008