The Uighurs
In a way, the uprising and riots in Xinjiang are probably the most important story in the world right now. Not in the sense that these disturbances are likely to change to large-scale changes in Chinese policy or governance, but in the sense that they are representative of the biggest challenge for the ascending great power.
For the Chinese government, there is one great problem with their model of smart authoritarians guiding economic growth: a lack of respnosiveness to their citizens. And the way citizens let their government know they aren’t listening to them is through riots. These riots are usually over one of three issues, so far as I can tell: the environment, government corruption/malfeasence and treatment of ethnic minorities. In all three cases, you have the government pursuing some greater goal, industriliation, growth, centralization etc, and ignoring the grievances of marginalized minorities — whether they be social, geographic or ethnic minorities — which then turn into full fledged riots because of the lack of accountability in the Chinese system.
What makes these riots so important is that they, and riots like them, will ultimately lead to three options for the Chinese government*. They lead to greater accountability and more citizen participation, they lead to an even harsher series of crackdowns or they lead to violent ethnic fragmentation because the political system simply can not respond to so much dissent from those who are trampled on by their drives for development and unification/centralization.
*I’m sorry for writing in the columnist-prophetic voice. It’s something I really don’t like, but I couldn’t really think of another good way to express what I’m trying to say.
