Anger, Discrimination, and Violence in Western China

Several times in the past decade, I have visited and lived in Xinjiang, a vast region of striking ethnic diversity in western China. I first visited as a tourist, where the train dropped me off in the capital, Urumqi. After a 60-hour train ride from Beijing, I was not only glad to get off the train, but instantly captivated by this intriguing, remote spot on the map—still in China, but so un-Chinese. My relationship with this city went from summer explorations of mountains, deserts, ethnic minorities, and hearty food, to language study at the local university (Uighur and Kazak), to having my own apartment during a year of dissertation fieldwork. The experience of winter, a brutally cold and bleak season of coal-heated buildings, thick air pollution, and people bundled into heavy coats, was a most astounding contrast to the glorious blue skies of blazing summer and the abundance of fruits, meats, and breads in the open markets.

As a geographer, I was there to observe society and collect materials for my dissertation. The latter took me out of the city on long distance, never-a-dull-moment sleeper busses to the desert towns and mountainous county capitals, even more remote, simpler, and rugged than Urumqi. Once back in the city, where I spent the bulk of my time in winter, I was regularly confronted with an undercurrent of violence and crime such as I have not experienced elsewhere.

Every time I went shopping at a major supermarket or department store, I, as everyone, had to turn in my bags, including my handbag, or lock it up in one of the lockers. A guard prevented anyone from entering the supermarket carrying a bag. This was how supermarkets safeguarded against theft.

There were guards everywhere. While this is partially a

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Chinese habit, for it expeditiously provides employment to millions of otherwise unemployed young men, there was, as with everything in Xinjiang, a local flavor to it. Guards stood at fast food restaurants, at open markets, and at the bookstore.

Petty theft, the kind we know to associate with overcrowded public transportation or large events, is not only something well-meaning friends warn the tourists about; it actually happens a lot. Everyone has stories about it, such as my friend David, a long-time Urumqi resident, who had a small camera stolen out of his coat pocket. He thinks there is only one place where it could have happened: it was while he was passing through the double doors as he entered a shopping corridor. As his hands were busy with doors, someone reached into the unprotected pocket. Pickpocketing, in other words, is a highly developed work skill in Urumqi.

But for whom? The Uighur people blame the Han and the Han blame the Uighurs. The Uighurs are the endemic ethnic group, having been in the majority for much of the last 1,000 years. The Han, as the ethnic Chinese call themselves, have been the invaders for much of that same time span. After 1949, there was relative peace and inclusion. Only in the last decade, through deliberate and strategic in-migration policies, has the government tipped the balance (though they fake the statistics) such that Urumqi now has a Han majority.

Violence came to a head in July 2009, as riots erupted in the city, and more than 200 people were killed, mostly Han. As I observe it, the powder keg had finally exploded. In 1999, 2001, and 2004, I watched, noticed, and listened to the mistrust and pejorative remarks, the subtle insults, and especially the discrimination. I often wondered how Uighurs tolerated the job discrimination, overt reminders of political inferiority, and economic inequality. For example, Uighur women and men need to be especially talented or loyal to the Communist Party to get ahead professionally. They feel obliged to send their children to Chinese school if they want them to get ahead. They sell out their cultural values on one hand and resent learning Chinese on the other.

Academic pressure is tremendous everywhere in China, but the assault on Uighur and other ethnic minority cultures (including

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Tibetan and Mongolian) has been ramping up since the 1990s. A state goal is to make Chinese the one national language and stamp out the others. From 1949 onwards, the State and the Party espoused ethnic harmony through appreciation of diversity, which some say was even partially achieved in Xinjiang; now the slogan “harmonious society” is ubiquitous, demanding implicit submission to the paternalistic directives from Beijing.

It is no wonder that Uighur men are seething. Petty crime is rampant in Urumqi and so are frustration, an inability to get hired, and a constant reminder that name and appearance can mark one as a second-class citizen. There is bullying at every level of society. Bureaucrats deny paperwork or charge extra for Uighurs. Arrests and executions are reported all too frequently. Bosses hire Han with lower qualifications over Uighurs and other ethnic minorities with better qualifications. Manual laborers have no recourse when they are paid less (or not at all) by abusive, corrupt bosses in construction. White collar professionals speak carefully, always underscoring all the benefits the state has showered on them, even as they are aware of the inequalities, and the corruption at the top. This went on for years.

What ignited the powder keg in Urumqi was a rumor implicating Uighur men in the rape of Han women at a toy factory in Guangzhou, 1,800 miles away. A brawl at the factory left several Uighurs dead, and the rumor turned out to be false. Protest marches in Urumqi demanding an investigation were stemmed by police, but still escalated over the course of several days into riots, dozens of burning vehicles, and over 200 dead and 1,000 injured. It took battalions of riot police to quell the violence. The revenge of the Uighurs begat revenge by Han men and the streets were roiling with bands of marauding men wielding blunt weapons. It took so long to get under control that citizens demanded the resignation of Wang Lequan, the veteran hardline Xinjiang Communist Party chief, and eventually got it.

The Chinese state consistently argues that it is bringing civilization and development to its minority areas. It does not single out Uighurs in this, as the plight of the Tibetans has sadly illustrated for years. The state casts ethnic minorities as

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“backward” (luohou 落后),people needing the state’s paternalistic guidance to achieve modernity. The Chinese literature has explored this polarity for many years, but with little progress or insight into deeper processes. A recent book, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, provides further perspective on at least one feature of recurring violence in Xinjiang.

Revenge, discussed by Pinker as an “inner demon,” was overtly exercised in Urumqi in July 2009 after the Guangzhou factory incident. Revenge appeared in public violence, in crowd behavior, and towards individuals after demonstrations seeking an investigation yielded no results. Shops, homes, busses, and cars were destroyed, sparked as much or more by the years of repressed anger than by the Guangzhou deaths. Interestingly, Pinker writes that anti-social revenge, as reported by the World Bank, is more violent in countries with weak Rule of Law. China ranks only in the 25^th percentile worldwide on the Rule of Law.

The Chinese state seeks to control all of its citizens through the use of strict, conformist social control, overt police presence, and systematic reminders of state power. China’s version of the Civilizing Process, where it seeks to assimilate ethnic minorities into an idealized, superior Han culture is antithetical to Elias’ “civilizing process”—which Pinker uses to underscore his message about the decline of violence in Western society over the centuries. If revenge is a human urge and a base form of violence, and Han and Uighur in Urumqi coexist with a barely disguised disdain and occasional eruptions of brutality, then understanding what better angels may find their way to China eventually is correlated to Pinker’s analysis of centralized authority to use force, but the use of reason and humanism are not normative there. The contemporaneous relationship of petty crime to more violent crime in Urumqi is as much a function of the perceived vacuum of authority and trustworthy institutions of law and order as it is to the inconsistent quality of education and humanistic knowledge formation in China today. Conversely, reducing ethnic violence or achieving a “harmonious society” could benefit from the infusion of Pinker’s central argument—for China to outgrow its myopic framing of what it means to be civilized. None of that explains the prevalence of petty crime in Urumqi today, suggesting a weakness of applica-

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tion of Better Angels to non-western contexts.

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