In July 2009, this simmering ethnic conflict boiled over into open violence as Uighur demonstrators gathered in the region’s capital of Urumqi. Not only are the the Uighur community discriminated against at work, but they now live under constant surveillance, with religious practice and freedom of movement strictly controlled by government representatives. Escalating tensions have led to the imposition of a significant military presence to suppress what Beijing calls a growing “terrorist threat”. The influx of Han migrants has fuelled Uighur discontent as the two communities compete over limited jobs and resources. It is believed that sometime within the next 20 years, China will surpass the USA as the world's largest economy. It even commissioned a detailed study of the "Take-off of the American West in the Early Decades of the Last Century." Today, China stands at the beginning of what many scholars predict will be the "Chinese century". Surprisingly, when launching the project in early 2000, the Chinese government drew comparisons between its strategy of development to that of the opening of the American "wild west" in the early 1900s. Decades of enforced migration have brought the Han population in Xinjiang from 5% in the 1940s to around 40% today. As with similar policies in Tibet, the Chinese government offers economic incentives to draw Han people to these frontier provinces, ostensibly to ‘promote stability’ and encourage development. In China’s “Great Western Development Drive”, a campaign launched in 2000, Xinjiang and its natural resources were identified as crucial to China’s energy-hungry economy. This minority is struggling to defend its culture and traditions as China continues to dilute its population through government led Han migration. The majority of its inhabitants are Uighur Muslims, a Turkic people who have more in common with their Kyrgyz and Kazakh neighbours than with the Han Chinese who have colonised them. Thousands of miles inland, on China’s western frontier, lies a vast, sparsely populated region called Xinjiang.
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