Word: hanning
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...region whose Mandarin name, Xinjiang, means simply "New Frontier" - perhaps a reflection of the fact that the region was only brought under Beijing's control in its entirety during the 19th century rein of the Qing dynasty. And this week they have found themselves in violent confrontation with Han Chinese, who have become a significant majority in the capital, Urumqi, thanks to Beijing's settlement policies...
...subsumed into the new state forged by China's victorious Communists after 1949, with Beijing steadily tightening its grip on the oil rich territory. Its official designation as an "autonomous region" belies rigid controls from the central government over Xinjiang, and a policy of settling hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese there that has left the Uighurs comprising a little less than half of the region's roughly 20 million people. (See pictures of the race riots in China...
...There was fear that the violence might spread overnight. The government enforced a curfew, and in the morning Uighur districts appeared largely undisturbed. On July 8 small groups gathered in both Uighur and Han areas, but few people were carrying clubs and knives. There were reports of scattered attacks, but no large-scale violence. Dozens of trucks and hundreds of troops lined Renmin Road, a major east-west corridor that roughly separates the Uighur and Han districts...
...State-run media and sound trucks were rebroadcasting a speech by Xinjiang's Communist Party Secretary, Wang Lequan, encouraging residents to focus their anger on "outside forces" rather than on Uighurs. "Comrades, this sort of action is totally unnecessary," he said of the Han street mobs. "Our government forces are enough to defeat the evildoers...
...healing the wounds of the past week will be much tougher. Li Qingcheng, a 43-year-old Han bus driver, suffered injuries to his head, back and hands when a mob of Uighur men attacked his bus during the riot on July 5. He said the men smashed the bus windows and then went after passengers. "This society has gone crazy," he said from his bed at Xinjiang People's Hospital. "This was a good society, and then they did something like this...