Scaling Back Minority Rights? the Debate About China's Ethnic Policies‪.‬

I. INTRODUCTION: THE TIBET AND XINJIANG RIOTS AND PROPOSALS TO SCALE BACK ETHNIC MINORITY RIGHTS The 2008 Lhasa and 2009 Urumqi riots altered popular perceptions among China's majority Han population about China's Tibetan and Uighur minorities, and thus, Han views about the country's ethnic policy. (1) The riots included anti-Han pogroms, which Chinese media asserted were externally organized by Tibetan and Uighur separatists. (2) Popular Han resentment of minorities became more vocal, especially on the Internet, with complaints that minorities are ungrateful and that leniency toward them spurs separatism and ethnic murder. (3) Uighur attacks on Han in Urumqi during the summer of 2009 led not only to retaliation by Han in that region, but also to discrimination by Han against a different ethnic group of Muslims, the Hui, at the other end of the country, in Jiangsu. (4) Though this was not the first manifestation of Han resentment, it has had a huge effect in generating a national discourse in China about ethnic policies.