Xinjiang
The Xinjiang Statistical Bureau recently announced that the economic disparities between northern and southern Xinjiang decreased in 2004. According to the 2002 Xinjiang Statistical Yearbook, more than 95 percent of southern Xinjiang’s population is non-Han and the average per capita income is half the provincial average. Northern Xinjiang has a larger concentration of Han Chinese (73 percent of Urumqi’s population is Han, for example) and is Xinjiang’s industrial base. The industrial growth rate in southern Xinjiang from January to September 2004 was the highest in the region’s history, the announcement said. Growth rates were particularly high in Kashgar (65.9 percent), Kezhou (54.6 percent), and Hetian (23.5 percent), outpacing northern Xinjiang rates by more than 10 percent. Capital investment was more than 36 percent higher in southern Xinjiang than in the north.
Beginning in 2005, Xinjiang authorities will assign "outstanding" county and city-level party secretaries and mayors to head a variety of smaller departmental offices throughout Xinjiang. In addition, government officials will assign a select corps of provincial-level party and state leaders to senior positions at the prefectural, county, and city levels.
Radio Free Asia reports that an agricultural official in the Xinjiang regional government confirmed the existence of a system of forced labor called "hasha" in remote areas of the countryside, in which laborers are not paid for their work. The report quoted the official as saying: "In the other provinces in China where there has been rapid economic development, hasha was phased out long ago . . . [b]ut here in Xinjiang, we still need it."
One Uighur man described his experience with hasha to RFA as follows: "For one month out of every year for three years we were forced to open up land that had never been settled before—it was just wilderness. We were also forced to build houses for Han Chinese immigrants who were resettling in the area."
Forum 18 reports that it observed a list of banned activities that Chinese authorities ordered local Imam Musu Ma to hang in his office in the Dungan Mosque in the town of Burqin, Xinjiang. According to the report, the list of banned activities included the following:
- teaching religion "privately";
- allowing children under 18 to attend a mosque; and
- allowing Islam to influence family life and birth planning behaviour.
Musu Ma reported that similar displays hang in the offices of virtually all the imams of Xinjiang's mosques.
The Daily Information News reports that in June, the Xinjiang High Court led a public appraisal of written legal judgments handed down in the region's lower courts. The high court recommended that judgments be drafted to reflect not only the legal resolution of each case but also the human logic of the result. A representative of the court explained that such judgments promote popular legal understanding and help mend strained human relationships.
The following text was retrieved from the Bortala Mongol Autonomous Prefecture Ethnicity and Religion Web site on December 3, 2012.