Xinjiang Authorities Issue Plan Combining Rural Reform With Continued Political Controls

Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) issued an opinion in December 2008 to accelerate rural reform and development, combining policies aimed at improving conditions in rural areas with steps to continue tight political controls in the region. The Opinion on Deepening the Promotion of Rural Reform and Development (Opinion), issued by the XUAR Communist Party Committee and XUAR government on December 8, follows national plans issued in 2007 and earlier in 2008 to promote development in ethnic minority regions. The Opinion sets 2020 as a target date for realizing reform goals and describes as one of its basic principles the need to "grasp reform and development in one hand and unity and stability in the other." The plan precedes a work report by XUAR government chairperson Nur Bekri, posted January 8, 2009, on the Xinjiang Daily Web site, calling for increased measures to promote stability, while also outlining development objectives for the coming year. (For related information, see also a January 6 article on the Xinjiang Daily Web site providing an analysis and forecast of economic and social conditions in the XUAR.)

The Opinion outlines general measures to promote reform and development in areas such as land contracting, agriculture, finance, employment, the environment, health, and education. Measures include:

• Integrating economic and social development between rural and urban areas and implementing preferential development policies in the southern XUAR to close the gap in conditions between southern and northern regions of the XUAR (Point 6). The Opinion's attention to the southern XUAR coincides with news of specific measures to support the region. The central government will subsidize 53.4 billion yuan for a five-year period starting in 2009 to support development in three southern XUAR districts, according to a January 4 report on the Xinjiang Peace Net. The government also has proposed providing free high school education to students in these three districts, in a measure designed both to promote vocational skills and uphold "social security and stability," according to the Communist Party secretary of the XUAR Education Department, as quoted in a January 8 report from the People's Daily.

• Promoting steps to retrain rural residents, shift them to different sectors of employment, and promote programs to export the local labor force (Points 15 and 16). As reported by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) in its 2008 Annual Report, the government maintains a labor transfer program that has sent young ethnic minority men and women to jobs in the interior of China. Overseas reports have indicated that local authorities have coerced participation and mistreated workers.

• Developing rural health care, including rural health cooperatives (Point 23). As noted in the CECC 2008 Annual Report, the central government announced plans to increase public spending on healthcare in rural and remote areas, with particular attention to China's western and interior areas. The government announced nationwide plans for healthcare reform in January 2009, according to a January 18 report from Xinhua.

The Opinion also describes steps to promote continued political controls, including:

• Strengthening the management of religious affairs, including by strengthening implementation of a two-point system to monitor mosques and religious leaders, by continuing to impose political training on religious personnel, and by forbidding "underground" scripture readings and private pilgrimages (Point 30).

• Deepening political propaganda education campaigns in the areas of ethnic unity and anti-separatism reeducation (Point 29).

• Point 22 includes among measures for educational development, a call for accelerating the promotion of "bilingual education," a policy which has undercut legal protections for the use of ethnic minority languages (Point 22).

• Point 26 includes a call for developing social welfare undertakings in areas such as helping the poor and disabled, providing disaster relief, and aiding orphans. The CECC 2008 Annual Report reported, however, that elsewhere the XUAR government has taken steps to curb the development of civil society groups, including Islam-focused groups that have aimed to address social problems.

The politicized content of the December Opinion, coupled with the XUAR government's poor track record in promoting equitable development, call into question the Opinion's potential to guide improvements in rural conditions and protect rural residents' rights, including ethnic minority rights. As noted in the CECC 2008 Annual Report, although economic reforms and development projects have raised living standards in the region, they have also furthered unequal allocation of resources that favor Han Chinese and have served as a platform for advancing political controls. The government has tied some development projects to the promotion of "social stability" and used development projects to channel migration to the XUAR, resulting in broad demographic and assimilation pressures in the region.

For more information on conditions in the XUAR, see section IV--Xinjiang in the CECC 2008 Annual Report.