Never before has the Chinese state news agency responded so rapidly to a 'crowd incident' - Chinese state jargon for rioting. And Sunday's rioting in Urumqi, the capital of the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, was brutal, leaving 140 dead, 800 injured and hundreds of vehicles burnt out.

News analysis by correspondent Marije Vlaskamp (translation mb).

"You can travel to Xinjiang on a flight of your choice. If you register with your press card and give your flight number, we will have the authorities pick you up at the airport. This is necessary given the exceptional security measures," was the comment from a news agency spokeswoman.
 
This is an unusual course of events. Normally, China shuts down access to areas of ethnic unrest as quickly as it can - Tibet and the surrounding provinces, for example. Last year after Tibetans rose up against Han Chinese rule, half of western China was almost hermetically sealed off by the security forces. There was no access for any independent observers. And a year after the rioting, China repeated the entire operation.
 
Molested
It was a foretaste of the kind of treatment Xinjiang can now expect, only the repression there will be even more severe. In the rioting in Lhasa 'only' 89 people were killed, while in Urumqi the figure is at least 140. How a peaceful demonstration was able to escalate so dramatically remains unclear. Thousands of Uighurs had assembled to make a protest to the authorities. They were demanding an investigation into the deaths of two fellow Uighurs who had been working in a factory town in southern China. They were beaten to death by Han Chinese, in response to a rumour that the Uighurs had molested a Han Chinese girl.
 
When the police started rounding up demonstrators, the protest turned into an orgy of violence. Eyewitnesses report that there were people with clubs and knives among the demonstrators.
 
Separatists
The Chinese government is investigating the cause of what they say were disturbances by 'separatists', organised by Uighurs in exile. As usual the finger is being pointed at Rabiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman who now lives in the United States having served a jail sentence for separatism. "Kadeer telephoned to China on 5 July, and websites have incited unrest," says the governor of Xinjiang, Nur Bekri.
 
Despite his title, the Uighur governor is not the most powerful man in Xinjiang. The real power lies with his Han Chinese colleague Wang Lequan, the head of the provincial Communist Party secretariat. This is how China keeps a tight rein on the country’s more than 50 ethnic groups.
 
Vast steppes
It is this system that is the source of so much Uighur discontent. Once the vast deserts and steppes were the homeland of this Turkish-related ethnic group. After a brief existence, this Islamic Republic of Turkestan collapsed due to internal divisions. Not only the Chinese but also Islamic minorities and the Russians attempted to seize control of rudderless Xinjiang, but it eventually fell into the hands of Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong in 1949.
 
After the annexation, the Chinese government sent in shock troops for a Han Chinese colonisation of the 'Wild West'; the bingtuan. These military-led production units, who took over responsibility for the cotton fields, fruit growing and mineral resources, still exist. What's more, each year thousands of Han Chinese from the overpopulated east move to Xinjiang, in search of work and space.
 
Suicide attack
As a result, 40 percent of the province’s population of 20 million are now Han Chinese. Uighurs say they feel like a minority on their own soil, and that due to discrimination they are not even benefiting from the economic development.
 
Every so often, a bomb goes off in the province: an amateurish blast using a bottle of petrol, or a professional suicide attack, claimed by the 'East Turkestan Islamic Movement'. And Beijing responds with yet more repression.
 
The permanent lack of freedom combined with heavy-handed policing is the root cause of Sunday's bloodbath, say Uighur exiles. Not separatism, but a provoked people who feel steamrollered by the Han Chinese modernisation machine.
 
This would suggest that what is needed in the province is not repression but measures to ease ethnic tensions, but that is not something China would consider. According to Beijing's worldview, all ethnic minorities are happy, and separatists, supported by foreign 'hostile anti-Chinese forces', simply disturb the harmony that exists under the Red Flag.
 
Sympathy
This may be what the Chinese want to prove to the journalists flown in to see the aftermath of the disturbances in Urumqi. Beijing has learnt from Tibet that international opinion cannot be influenced by a statement from the state news agency alone. Perhaps pictures of charred bodies and dramatic reports by survivors will engender understanding, or even sympathy, for Beijing's explanation of its Uighur ‘Bloody Sunday’.

Watch the video: Chinese State Television (YouTube/CCTV)