Beijing is the rare great power capital where visitors can still be on the receiving end of lectures about “splittism” and “foreign meddling.” After exchanging pleasantries, foreigners meeting with Chinese officialdom are treated to stern warnings not to encourage “splittists” in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. The net effect of these exchanges is to remind foreigners that despite the beautiful skyscrapers in China’s main cities and the economic sophistication of many Chinese elites, China is not quite the gentle post-modern power it pretends to be. Indeed, Chinese officials are concerned, to the point of paranoia, that their vast multiethnic empire will not hold. And, following the dictator’s playbook, rather than engage in any introspection as to just why it is that so many “Chinese” do not really want to be part of China, Beijing blames “foreign forces” and meddling from the West for their troubles.
While China should be worried about unrest, Uighur and Tibetan discontent is not manufactured by foreign forces. To the contrary, the West barely bats an eye about China’s repression. As events in Xinjiang, have demonstrated, Uighur Muslims are quite capable of expressing their discontent by themselves.
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