Oil, Camels, and Broadband
There are a couple of interesting stories on The Japan Times website at the moment - Dateline: Xinjiang, Notes from Uighur Country and Tale of two cities. Both stories are by Jeff Kingston who is Director of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan Campus, in Tokyo and were written during a visit to Xinjiang last December.
The stories are complementary - the first describes his travels around Xinjiang - Urumqi, Kuqa and our own Korla, whilst the second is focused more on the situation of the Uighyrs here in Xinjiang. Combined, the articles give a reasonable overview of life here.
Korla in 1982 had a population of 40,000 and today, 20 years later it has a population of 400,000. This enormous growth was kickstarted, as Kingston points by the oil industry. And he quite correctly points out that the involvment of the Uighurs in the oil industry is mostly limited to physical labour. What I think he fails to notice is that the vast majority of Uighurs are financially better off than they were 20 years ago, and that while tension does remain, the situation here is quite peaceful.
No Comments, Comment or Ping
Reply to “Oil, Camels, and Broadband”