Xinjiang: Now the core, not the periphery of China’s growth and security concerns
By Peter Lee
There’s been rare good press for the PRC covering its initiative to promote security, economic growth, and sanity in “AfPak,” and there’s been the usual bad press concerning a vituperative PRC attack on three American historians on the seemingly esoteric question of “Manchu sinicization.”
The two issues are interrelated, and intersect in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which is inevitably and understandably described as “restive” thanks to friction between the indigenous Uyghurs and Han Chinese carpetbaggers.
The PRC’s enormous commitment to Pakistan – $46 billion worth of investment and infrastructure, clustered around a highway from Pakistan’s Gwadar port over the Himalayas to Kashgar, in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region – appears to be the real deal. It’s not only backed up a visit by PRC supremo Xi Jinping; it complements the PRC’s overall “New Silk Road” strategy for Central and South Asia as the US draws down in Afghanistan and backs off from Pakistan (and pivots to the Pacific to balk the PRC’s maritime aggrandizement to the east). Given the real and potential political and security vulnerabilities—will India stand idly by, or yield to the temptation to diddle? – it is big, risky bet on Pakistan.
It’s also a big, risky bet that elevates the Xinjiang Autonomous Region – basically the PRC’s northwest quadrant – from dissatisfied “Wild West” backwater to the northern anchor for the Gwadar project and the focus of PRC development, infrastructure, growth – and security – concerns.
http://atimes.com/2015/04/xinjiang-now-the-core-not-the-periphery-of-chinas-growth-and-security-concerns/