White Paper Unveiled- more of the same

Chinese officials unveiled a white paper on rural poverty reduction in China this week that makes for interesting reading. A Xinhua article on the white paper states that average per capita incomes in urban China are over three times of those in rural areas of the country. Quoted in the Xinhua article is Fan Xiaojian, head of the Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, who says, “[w]hat we are facing is an arduous task”. With rural-urban economic inequality much on the minds of officials keen to avoid tensions that could lead to the asking of some serious questions about CCP administration, this is no surprise. The Xinhua article continues, “the government will focus on poverty reduction in mountainous areas in the western provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, as well as the Tibet autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region.”

Western Development initiatives also tried to tackle a fault line in Chinese development planning- the different growth rates in western and eastern China. However, in both the recent white paper and western development a point seems to have been missed- the politically sensitive issue of an ethnic fault line in economic development rates (see Ma Rong’s Economic Development, Labor Transference, and Minority Education in the West of China). Although some tacit admission of the fault line was apparent in the initiatives of the 2010 Work Forum, the need for a frank and open discussion of poverty among non-Han Chinese ethnicities should occur. For any such discussion to be meaningful would need the input from non-Han Chinese people, and that seems to be a difficult step for CCP officials to take at present. Sadly, it is the bypassing of these kinds of discussions that leads to the very tensions that those same officials are so keen to avoid.

The evolving Shanghai Cooperation Organization

A recent China Daily article comments on the sense for Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member nations to increase economic ties. Although the grouping has it its roots as a security arrangement between China and Central Asian states, the trend toward increased economic cooperation has long been established. Jia Qingguo's article The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: China's Experiment in Multilateral Leadership charts the growth of trade between China and SCO members from 2001 (the founding of the SCO) up until 2005. Between those years, trade with Russia grew 173%, Kazakhstan 429%, Kyrgyzstan 718%, Uzbekistan 1,067% and Tajikistan 1,368%.

What does this burgeoning economic block mean for the Uyghur people? In the China Daily article, Ma Delun, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, says "The Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region could play a pivotal role by connecting these countries with China through financial cooperation". This would appear to be an opportunity for Uyghurs to act as interlocutors between the Turkic and Sinic worlds; however, Ma seems to be talking more about territory than the people within.

Economic marginalization among the Uyghur in China has long been documented, and the acceleration of that process conversely has come under centrally driven campaigns aimed at developing the Uyghur region. Western Development and the policies of the 2010 Xinjiang Work Forum focus on an overhaul of the region's infrastructure at a macro level that are aimed at linking the region to China and on into Central Asia. Investment in pipelines and transportation have been geared toward the natural resources extraction industries- a sector underrepresented among Uyghurs. Although the Xinjiang Work Forum attempted a more spacially dispersed approach to its investment in the region, grassroots initiatives pale in comparison to investment in large scale projects.

The security arrangements made under the auspices of the SCO put the squeeze on politically active Uyghurs in China and in Central Asia, there is no reason to see that an augmented role for trade among SCO states will see increased participation in economic life among the Uyghur.