China Trying to Bully Its Neighbors over East Turkestan and Uyghurs

Click the link below for more on PRC's reaction to Japan's allowing the World Uyghur Congress to hold meetings in Tokyo last year:

Japan and China at odds.

The Drive

East Turkestan (called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the People’s Republic of China) is as big as France is. But it has the population of greater New York City and includes a large geological depression split in two (the Junggar Basin with the Gurbantuggut Desert to the north and the Tarim Basin with the Taklamakan Desert to the south) by the Tian Shan Mountains.

Known by various names throughout its turbulent history, East Turkestan is a hostile place to live. I’ve seen reports alleging that more than 90% of the region is unfit for human habitation. After the drive from Urumqi to Karamay (about 190 miles, slightly less than the distance between New York and Boston or between Santa Barbara and San Diego), I didn’t find that hard to fathom; it’s easy to see why it’s so sparsely populated.

From Urumqi west was a respectable four-lane interstate-type of road called Lianhuo Expressway. At Hutubi, a nondescript city about 40 minutes out, we got onto a narrow two-lane road that would be comparable to a state highway in the U.S.

Only this was through tundra-type land (more desert-like in summer). Flat, featureless. Think Nevada on the way to Area 51. Or through Nebraska and Kansas toward the Rockies. Only flatter and more nondescript, if that’s possible. And blanketed with more than a foot of snow.

Only at a Ku Klux Klan rally could I imagine more white. And even then, I’m not sure.

The views were expansive. Far to the west, all the way to Kazakhstan, more than a hundred miles away, were unobstructed views of the Dzungarian Alatau Mountains. As the highway wound and turned more northerly, the flatness of the land allowed the Altay Mountains bordering Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia to come into unblocked view.

We passed through only several small towns, which were really no more than small gaggles of buildings and houses clustered together, as if huddled to help protect each other from the fierce winds whipping through the basin.

The going was slow, too, both temporally and literally.

Because of the impossibility for communication with Scott, I was left to my own observances of the surroundings and my own thoughts questioning whether or not I’d made the right decision to live in the middle of, apparently, nowhere. Time slowed to a crawl.

Often, our drive would slow to a crawl, too. Not because of snow- or ice-covered roads, mind you (it was, fortunately, a sunny day; speaking of which, rarely have I seen such clear, blue skies), but because of all the non-automobile traffic on the road.

Tractors. Horse-drawn carts. Herds of cattle. Wandering goats. The occasional drunk.

The most common things I saw – aside from snow, flat terrain, and animals – were gas stations. This isn’t too surprising when you remember that East Turkestan lies atop vast reserves of oil.

Ahhaaaa…

Now you see why Beijing has so much interest in the East Turkestan. Well, aside from just plain enjoying oppressing dissenting peoples and suppressing differing cultures.

After several days of driving (okay, it was really just several hours), there it was, literally appearing out of nowhere: a restaurant. There was nothing else but tundra, snow, and mountains in the far distance. Imagine driving across the face of the moon in a big Buick and then, suddenly, a restaurant appeared in the midst of barren nothingness.

Well that’s what it was like.

So, we stopped for lunch, which wasn’t as memorable as the bathroom was. That’s not to suggest that lunch wasn’t good – it was – but it is to suggest that I had never frequented a bathroom like that one, nor have I since.

The bathroom was apart from the building where we ate, which in and of itself isn’t so memorable. That the “toilet seat” was actually a wooden plank and that the “toilet” was actually a large hole in the ground about twenty feet deep and maybe fifty feet across made it unforgettable.

Oh, and the stench from the mountain of crap from the countless number of people who had done their business over the course of a just-as-immeasurable period of time made a slight impression, too.

Suddenly, my lunch didn’t seem as tasty as it had been.

As we continued the drive, I wondered – again – what I had gotten myself into. This time, though, I was contemplating not politics or lack of basic freedoms but instead my soon-to-be-living conditions. Nothing I had seen from Urumqi to Karamay had given me any impression that I was in anything but a third-world country.

But I wasn’t necessarily turned off by it. Quite the contrary, actually, as I was mentally preparing myself to deal with those type of conditions.

Several years earlier, I had lived in the slums of Singapore. I had traveled through the rundown Baltic states of Europe – Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia – in the dead of winter. I had spent time in the simple countrysides of Slovakia and Hungary. I had walked and gotten drunk amidst the skid rows of Nepal. Through it all, I had seen poverty unlike anything I’d seen in the worst parts of Los Angeles, Chicago, or New Orleans.

But this seemed like it would be worse.

Three questions rotated in my mind like an iTunes playlist stuck on repeat: How was I going to recruit teachers to teach here? How was I going to find students who could afford tuition? Was I really going to invite my relatively new girlfriend to come and live with me here?

I tried to tell myself that there was no way a large, successful English-language franchise was going to open a school in a remote area of the world (Urumqi has the distinction, if I’ve not mentioned this before, of being the farthest city in the world from an ocean or sea).

I had succeeded in believing that things were only superficially squalid. And then we reached the outskirts of Karamay, and what I saw made the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts seem palatial and pristine: crumbling mud homes with no windows or doors; too-thin children wandering aimlessly between the huts, and hobbled older people gathered around large barrels that sent thick black smoke into the sky.

What struck me most about the people I saw were their thin coats, ratty sweaters, and lack of shoes – nothing that offered much protection from the bitter wind and cold.

With no one capable of discouraging me from expecting a city of anything other than a gaggle of grimy ghettos, we drove up Yingbin Road, one of the main roads leading over a bridge and into Karamay.

2012 London Book...Fair? Not So Much

It happened last year, but the link below is just another show of how substantial is the PRC’s reach and how strong their will to repress dissent. Shame on the London Book Fair for allowing itself to be strong-armed.

Not So Fair After All