The Chinese government doesn't release figures on unemployment among ethnic groups. But a leading Uighur intellectual, Ilham Tohti, an economics professor at the Central Nationalities University in Beijing, has estimated that 1.5 million Uighur workers -- the equivalent of half the adult males -- are unemployed.
In an interview aired by Radio Free Asia in March, he warned that there could be "no peace without equal development between Han immigrants and native Uighurs." Tohti has since disappeared from public view and is believed to be under house arrest.
Xinjiang (the name means "new territory" in Chinese) is the equivalent in modern Chinese mythology of the American Wild West -- a vast, desert-like terrain with oil and mineral deposits that have inspired a gold-rush mentality. After the Communists came to power in 1949, the military sent demobilized soldiers here.
For centuries the Uighurs were renowned as traders and money-changers. With their cities built on oases of the old Silk Road, they had access to the lucrative trade between Asia and Europe. Trade soared in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's manufacturing prowess.
But after 2001, China tightened borders, fearing that separatists were receiving arms and training from Islamic militants.
Massive urban-renewal projects resulted in the demolition of the mud-brick labyrinthine alleys where Uighurs ran shops out of storefronts attached to their homes. Relocated to Chinese-style apartment complexes in the suburbs, they are unable to raise money to open new businesses.
Chinese migrants today come willingly to Xinjiang, drawn by annual growth rates of more than 10%. Over the last decade, the central government has invested more than $100 billion to make Xinjiang more appealing.
"There's a special army going to the west," the railroad ministry boasted on its website in March. It said 109 trains had carried 210,000 people from three cities in central China to Urumqi to work in construction, energy and agriculture.
It is likely that the passion for heading west has cooled in the last week.
Perhaps the only consolation for unemployed Uighurs is that thousands of the newcomers are trying to flee -- if they can get tickets from scalpers who are charging five times the normal prices for bus and train tickets out of town.
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barbara.demick@latimes.com
david.pierson@latimes.com
