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China replaces party boss in East Turkistan

AFP

Wang Lequan in a file photo taken during a meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, in China on 6 March 2009. Wang Lequan, who had served as secretary of the Communist Party in East Turkistan since 1994, was replaced by Zhang Chunxian, the secretary of the Communist Party of Hunan province.

File photo/AP/Alexander F Yuan/China

China has replaced the Communist Party boss in its restive East Turkistan (Ch: Xinjiang) region, nine months after an explosion of ethnic arrest left nearly 200 people dead and 1,700 injured, state media said Saturday.

The party’s Central Committee announced that Zhang Chunxian had been appointed chief of East Turkistan, Xinhua news agency said, replacing Wang Lequan. No reason was given for the change.

Wang’s new post is deputy secretary of the political and legislative affairs committee of the Central Committee, the report said.

Zhang, 57, had been a party secretary in Hunan, previously serving as minister of transport.

The announcement comes after Xinhua reported Friday that China’s top leadership had decided to ramp up development in the northwestern region, where ethnic Uyghurs have long complained of missing out on economic growth.

It said the move was aimed at securing “long-term social stability in the region”, which was torn by violence between mainly Muslim Uyghurs and China’s Han majority last July.

The explosion of unrest in East Turkistan’s capital Urumqi was the worst ethnic strife in China in decades.

East Turkistan’s roughly eight million Uyghurs, a Muslim, Turkic-speaking people, have seethed under Chinese control, alleging political, religious and cultural oppression by Beijing.

A key gripe has been what many Uyghurs see as lop-sided economic development benefiting Han immigrants to the area.

The vast, energy-rich region of punishing deserts that borders on central Asia is one of China’s poorest areas.

But its economy has been among the country’s fastest-growing in recent years thanks to stepped-up development of its energy resources to meet soaring demand in China’s main population centres in the country’s east.

Copyright © 2010 AFP

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