The demographic composition of the countries around the world is often characterized by ethnic diversities with the prevalence of ethnic minorities vulnerable to socio-economic marginalization and discrimination. Such vulnerabilities have often resulted in minority populations resenting against their government mostly represented by ethnic majority. On such account, addressing the grievances of the ethnic minorities has always been a challenging yet crucial task for any prevalent government given the sensitivity of the cause to determine the national harmony and peaceful rise of a country. Despite, world history has presented scenarios depicting severe mishandling of the resentment of the ethnic minorities by different governments in Eastern Europe and Central Africa leading to distressing events reckoning to ethnic genocide and mass-murder.
Nevertheless, every government maintains a peculiar method of resolving the grievances of ethnic minorities mostly based upon the political ideology they subscribe to. The responses of the governments can be as diverse as lately seen in the southern region of Asia. As such, the government of Nepal in its outfit of multiparty democracy constitutionally addressed the legitimate concerns of the Madhesi and Tharu ethnic minorities of Southern Nepal, while the military influenced democratic government of Myanmar instead committed atrocities against the Rohingya minority of the Rakhine state with military crackdowns.
On a similar note, the response of the government of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to address the resentment of the Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of Northwest China maintains its own peculiarity as a method to culminate the ethnic tension relating to Uyghur minority. Besides. the strategy of the CPC government to resolve this domestic conflict ignited from ethnic differences even maintains significance on the international scale as China gradually undertakes leadership in the diverse global society.
Peacebuilding resolution of the CCP government in XUAR
It has been well acknowledged that the CPC government is deploying a two-fronted resolution model in responding to the resentment of the agitating Uyghur Muslim minority to create a state of peace in the troubled XUAR. The model includes (1) pushing development and uplifting economic momentum in XUAR and (2) imposing heavy-handed security & surveillance mechanisms and stringent laws that even repress the cultural lifestyle of resenting Uyghur Muslims for the so-called cause of building sustainable peace in the very North-western autonomous region. On one hand, the government pledges to nourish and fulfill the population of this hinterland North-western province with economic prosperity by promoting industrialization, sectoral development and establishing XUAR as the strategic midpoint of the government’s flagship Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) program. While, on the other hand, the communist government deploys repressive interventions as tight security checks, intensive surveillance measures, and control on religious-cultural life of the Uyghur ethnic population in XUAR to eliminate the threat and occurrence of security crises known to be erupting from the ethnic cause. More or less, this peacebuilding resolution of the CPC government resonates with the strategy of connecting the minority ethnic population of the isolated western provinces of China with the core economic value-chain of the country mostly limited to the prosperous eastern provinces. Such is however packaged with forcible seclusion of the very minorities from their own distinct cultural and religious values that are distortedly believed to keep them away from submitting unconditionally to the Communist principles of China devised by the CPC.
Beholding the criticisms
Amid the peculiarity of this two-fronted resolution mechanism, it has received multiple criticisms that disregard the success of this strategy for the CPC government to maintain harmony with the Uyghur ethnic minority to secure ultimate peace in XUAR. Some critics fear the potentiality of these repressive methods that denies fundamental cultural rights of ethnic minorities to backfire as it may rather “risk fanning the flames of resentment that energize extremism” in marking the words of Ben Hillman of Crawford School of Public Policy from his article published in the East Asia Forum. Others including the spokesman of World Uyghur Congress, Alim Seytoff believe the authoritarian development push in XUAR to rather bring more repression for native Uyghurs.
Besides, the chances for the government’s infrastructure and economic programs in XUAR to reach the marginalized Uyghur community are also meager. With XUAR in along with other western provinces of China acknowledged to be least economically liberal in compared to other eastern provinces of China as per China Economic Research Institute’s Free Market Index, the possibilities for the centrally planned economic programs for XUAR to narrowly fall within the clutches of government bodies, State Enterprise, and individuals with political mileage is rather significant.
It is safe to conclude that the CPC government must have remained insensitive and oblivious to the actual needs of the situation and of the opposing Uyghur ethnic minorities that reside in distance from Beijing. In its attempt to build harmony with the ethnic minority mostly composing the demographic structure of this North-western autonomous region, the Chinese government must have instigated a naïve strategy to forcibly draw patriotism of the ethnically distinct Uyghur minorities towards the atheistic Chinese nationalistic values while exclaiming unconsulted development initiatives at XUAR as the consolation prize.
Analytical Perspective on Economics 