China ramps up efforts to stop deadly ethnic violence

A police truck with loudspeakers arrived behind the crowd and played a looped recording that told the crowd to go home.

"Xinjiang is a place for all ethnic groups," the recording said.

A helicopter then flew over, dropping bundles of single-page leaflets onto the crowd -- copies of a speech made by the regional Communist Party chief calling for calm and ethnic unity.

In another incident earlier in the day, three Uighurs were chased by Han Chinese at an intersection. Two got away, but one was beaten for 30 seconds by a crowd -- some of whose members shouted, "Strike! Strike! Strike!" -- before being rescued by police, according to Agence France-Presse.

The agency also reported that about 200 Uighurs armed with sticks, pipes and rocks demonstrated in front of a police cordon after trading insults with Hans on the opposite side.

The rioting broke out Sunday after what was supposed to be a peaceful march by Uighurs protesting the killing last month of two Uighur men at a factory in southeastern China's Guangdong province. It is unclear how many of the 156 people reported killed that day were Han; Chinese authorities have not released names of the victims.

In many neighborhoods of Urumqi there was evidence of the violence: shops and restaurants destroyed, a brand-new supermarket with all its windows shattered. The remains of two Han-owned car dealerships, charred black with overturned sedans, faced a desperately poor traditional Uighur neighborhood.

"I saw a mob with sticks and rocks beating people. I think they killed someone outside my business," said Wang Hua, 26, pointing to dried blood splattered on the wall of his auto parts store.

"It was a bunch of jobless hooligans. They knew my store was Han."

Nearby, men squatted on the dusty pavements, shielding their eyes from sand kicked up by cars driving down unpaved alleyways. Many could barely speak Chinese.

Hiu Wenbin, a 25-year-old taxi driver, said economic resentment had fueled the violence.

"You see so many unemployed Uighur men. . . . There are more and more Han people doing business here. . . . They don't really hire Uighur people."

"This won't die down," Hiu said of the violence. "I don't see either side letting it go. These Uighurs see how rich these Han business owners are -- of course they want to burn their places down."

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david.pierson@latimes.com

barbara.demick@latimes.com