If I've occasionally sounded starry-eyed about China, I should definitely say that it's not at all a "nice place". PBS's Frontline is running a piece tonight about the Uighur population in the far west province of Xinjiang (which you can watch online here). Imagine how well a Communist state would treat natives on oil-rich land. Or don't bother imagining it, because the Uighurs exist, live under Chinese rule, and Xinjiang holds one-third of China's oil reserves. The Uighurs are Sufi Muslims (they call Xinjiang East Turkestan) and China has used the cover of the post-9/11 environment to oppress Uighurs in general for the alleged separatists in Xinjiang.
Unfortunately for the Uighurs, this really is not the kind of situation that is necessarily going to get better with political reform in the rest of China - a democratic China is not going to be more likely to bargain with the Uighurs, any more than a democratic UK was willing to deal sanely with Ireland. Of course, maybe I'm just being pessimistic. However, Beijing is certainly not going to give away much control to their main domestic energy supply. Imagine if Albertan oil fields were governed directly from Ottawa, and the natives wanted to separate from Canada. Even in a democratic country like Canada, how would Ottawa deal with them?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Odd that. When we got them drunk and had them make an "X" on a piece of dead tree, they didn't think that meant they were signing away a continent. Silly barbarians.
Actually, this process continues today, as one of the conditions for the creation of Nunavut was the Inuit giving up a lot of claims to the mineral rights of the NWT. So yay us!
Post a Comment