Muslim extremism and Muslim separatism have ordinarily made for a spectacle that China has been able to watch emerging in Europe, Africa and in other countries of Asia. And it watched this phenomenon with a certain degree of schadenfreude.
No longer. After weeks of
bloody riots in Tibet, which has intensified China's troubles with the
Summer Olympics, the Uighurs of Xinjiang, a predominantly Muslim
province in the country's northwest, have also shown signs of great
discontent. Beijng has over the decades sent millions -- and millions
-- of Han, a favored Chinese ethnic group, into the Muslim area
basically to overwhelm the indigenous population. It's what the
Communists did in many parts of the Soviet Union, and Mao emulated
Lenin and Stalin faithfully. And, it looked like, successfully.
China will no longer be able to distance itself from the discord Muslim
groups sow in other countries without grasping that militant Islam is
also a threat within its territory.