Car crash an insight into instability of Chinese society

Five people, including three in the vehicle, died, while about 40 others, including one Japanese, were injured. Local authorities said they found gasoline containers, which the car’s occupants set ablaze, inside the vehicle.

The square, featuring a huge portrait of Mao Zedong, former chairman of the Communist Party of China, is located near the Zhongnanhai district, where the party headquarters is located, and is symbolic of one-party rule. A number of antigovernment activities, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, took place in nearby areas.

Local authorities have announced they are treating the incident as a terrorist act and that they have arrested five suspects. The five arrested and the three who died in the car are believed to be Uighur.

The Uighurs are a Turkish minority group of Muslims who mainly live in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

In Uighur, local police have repeatedly attacked “armed mobs” of Uighurs in the name of anti-terrorism campaigns. After President Xi Jinping’s administration was launched, there was an incident in which more than 10 people died. The latest incident may have something to do with rising tensions in Xinjiang.

 

Separatist sentiment rising

The Uighurs have been effectively placed under the control of the Chinese Communist Party politically, and under the control of the Han people, the majority group in China, economically. Autonomy and freedom of religion exist in name only for the Uighurs. The average income of Uighurs remains low, with people having limited means of support.

Among the Uighur people, antagonism toward the party and the Han has been increasing, and a movement toward Xinjiang independence, which has long been smouldering, is now active.

The recent developments appear to suggest that control over the Uighurs has become even more difficult under the party’s ethnic minority policy, which comprise two pillars of control by force and through fiscal actions such as infrastructure development.

Following the latest incident, the communist government has placed strict controls on news reports and deleted related information on the Internet. News aired by NHK satellite broadcasting has been blocked. This is probably because they are worried that such news coverage would trigger other anti-government action.

In the Tibet Autonomous Region, adjacent to Xinjiang, the ethnic minority opposes the control of the party and the Han people the same way as in Xinjiang. More than 100 Tibetan monks and others in the region have set themselves on fire in protest, or attempted to do so.

Aside from ethnic minorities, people’s frustration and anger over Chinese society is spreading even among the Han people, who account for more than 90 percent of the population. Chinese society is becoming ever more unstable, with as many as 180,000 mass protests, including demonstrations and riots, believed to occur each year.

The general assembly of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, which decides key party policies, will convene Nov. 9. We have to pay close attention to the meeting to see what policies to address social stability President Xi comes up with, on the basis of the latest incident.