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In China, a pipeline spurs ethnic
conflict
IMuslim minority calls oil riches a curse
By Jehangir S. Pocha The Boston GlobePublished:
November 7, 2006
LUNNAN, China: The flame from a looming oil tower
illuminates the endless desert like a beacon of hope.
Oil and natural gas - lots of it - have been
discovered beneath the sands near this industrial town
in the center of isolated Xinjiang, an automomous
region in northwestern China. As in Iran and Saudi
Arabia at the turn of the last century, the energy
boom in the region's Tarim Basin and Taklimakan Desert
is focusing global attention on an area rich in
history but forgotten by the modern world.
To satisfy the energy demands of its fast-growing
coastal cities, China is building a 4,200-kilometer,
or 2,600- mile, pipeline from here that will traverse
the craggy steppes and sparsely populated villages of
the old Silk Road, and run directly to Shanghai and
possibly to Beijing. But the manner and terms under
which the government is extracting resources from
Xinjiang angers many of the region's 7.5 million
ethnic-Uighur Muslims.
Many Uighurs want independence from China, and they
accuse Beijing of using the energy resources to
tighten its grip on Xinjiang. They also say the region
receives little benefit from its own energy reserves
because energy production is controlled by China's
state-owned companies, consumed by China's coastal
cities and taxed in a way that the central government
gets most of the revenues.
The Chinese government is just robbing these resources
from us without giving anything to the Uighur people,"
Alim Seytoff, general secretary of the
Washington-based Uighur American Association, said in
a telephone interview. The group, made up of Uighur
exiles, is spearheading the quest for independence.
The Chinese government insists that it is committed to
Xinjiang's development and that the energy resources
will transform life in this remote and poor area,
where incomes are one-tenth of those in Beijing,
according to official census reports.
Wang Lequan, the secretary of the Communist Party in
Xinjiang and the de facto regionial leader,
acknowledged that about 75 percent of the taxes
collected from the Xinjiang oil fields went directly
to Beijing.
"But a lot of it comes back as transfers," or federal
funding allocated to Xinjiang, he said to visiting
Western reporters.
Wang spoke passionately about how oil and the
development model that modernized other parts of China
are now transforming Xinjiang. For example, he said,
the state-owned firm that controls most of the energy
fields in Xinjiang is connecting ancient towns
separated by wide expanses of desert by building a
network of highways.
Free natural gas is supplied to people who live near
the Tarim Basin, and Wang said that this is preventing
protected poplar trees in the area from being cut down
for fuel.
But many Uighurs say that the government is handing
out crumbs while stealing the cake. Resentment against
Beijing and its oil exploration is palpable in the
antique mosques and teeming bazaars that crowd the
narrow streets of Uighur towns.
"The Han Chinese? have broken every promise they made
to us," said Abdel, a student in Kashgar in southern
Xinjiang, who like others here refused to identify
himself fully because of fear of reprisal.
The Xinjiang oil and gas finds already are proving a
boon to China's energy picture at a crucial moment.
The country's rapidly growing economy has sent the
national energy bill soaring. China spent $65 billion
on energy imports last year, mostly from Iran, Angola,
Sudan and Saudi Arabia, according to the National
Development and Reform Commission in Beijing.
The production from Xinjiang will enhance China's oil
security by cutting energy imports from those
countries and give Beijing greater control over its
energy supplies, officials say.
Xinjiang was once remote and backward, but now the
Tarim Basin is China's largest energy-producing region,
said Sun Longde, president of the state- owned
PetroChina Tarim Oilfield. He said that the company
expected sales from oil and gas to double to $2.5
billion this year, and by 2010 it will be producing
about 100 million tons of oil a year - worth about $50
billion at today's prices.
The disagreement over energy resources is the latest
conflict between the government and dissident Uighurs,
whom China considers a separatist threat. Rights
groups accuse the government of arbitrary arrests,
unfair trials, and torture and religious
discrimination in Xinjiang.
In the 1930s, the Uighurs and other Turkic tribes in
the region, who until then had been on the fringes of
various Chinese empires, formed an independent state
called East Turkestan. In 1949, China annexed East
Turkestan and turned it into an autonomous region
dubbed Xinjiang, or new frontier. Beijing flooded the
area with ethnic-Han migrants, pushed locals to learn
Mandarin and restricted the practice of Islam.
In the mid-90s, Uighur separatists seeking to revive
East Turkestan carried our widespread protests, and
even bombings, in Xinjiang. In some instances, they
carried out attacks outside of Xinjiang, in 1997
planting a bomb in a Beijing bus that killed two
people.
China has often been accused by human rights groups
like Amnesty International of using the Sept. 11
attacks and the war on terrorism to clamp down hard on
Uighur opponents of its rule.
Divisions between ordinary Uighurs and the Han, who
form the majority of the mainland Chinese population,
are reflected even in the oil fields.
Most of the oil workers are Han migrants from
surrounding areas. At the Lunnan oil station, where
the energy pipeline to eastern China begins, none of
the hundreds of workers is Uighur, said the manager,
Sun Tairong, who spoke to reporters on a recent tour
arranged by government officials.
"Their education is a problem; and I can't understand
any Uighur," he said, adding that most of them cannot
speak Mandarin.
Rukiye Turdush, a spokeswoman for East Turkestan
Information Center, a pro-independence group based in
Ottawa, said Uighurs also believe that Beijing is
using its energy infrastructure in Xinjiang to expand
its influence in the neighboring oil-rich and
strategically important countries of Central Asia.
In 2000, China formed the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization with the central Asian nations of
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, as
well as Russia. Robert Karniol, Asia editor for Jane's
Defense Weekly, said that in addition to seeking easy
and cheap access to Central Asian energy reserves,
China is also using its ties with these Turkic Muslim
states - which might feel empathy for the Uighurs
because of ethnic sympathies - to keep them from
supporting the independence cause.
For now, the Chinese strategy seems to be succeeding.
The pipeline carrying Xinjiang gas to Shanghai will
soon be extended into Kazakhstan, and the offices of
many Uighur activists in the Central Asian republics
have been closed, according to their governments.
Seytoff, the Uighur activist in Washington, said he
has almost come to hate the black gold that gushes up
from Xinjiang's yellow sands.
"Our oil has become our curse," he said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/07/news/china.php
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