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Monday 21 September 2009
Reconciling Han and Uygurs is no easy task - but it must be done
Nearly three months after a deadly brawl between Han Chinese and Uygur workers at the Early Light toy factory, calm has returned to the Guangdong city of Shaoguan.
Reconciling Han and Uygurs is no easy task - but it must be done
Ivan Zhai 19 September 2009
Nearly three months after a deadly brawl between Han Chinese and Uygur workers at the Early Light toy factory, calm has returned to the Guangdong city of Shaoguan.
The damage was swept under the carpet simply by segregating Uygur workers from Han workers. The 700 or so Uygur workers in the factory have moved to another plant and stay out of sight of the residents in Baitu town.
Nothing was said about what should be done to prevent a similar incident in the future, or what lesson the government could learn in its ethnic-minority policy after paying such a heavy political price, including the riots in Urumqi , which were triggered after news about the brawl reached the capital city of Xinjiang in July.
There are still thousands, even tens of thousands, of Uygur workers in cities like Huizhou, Zhaoqing and Shaoguan in the Pearl River Delta. What should the local governments do with them after the riots? Should they segregate them from Han workers, or help them better adapt to factory life and communicate with Han workers?
Factories in the delta were encouraged to hire Uygur workers in 2007 as part of a poverty alleviation drive for the far western region.
According to Xinhua, in the first half of 2007, 900,000 Xinjiang export labourers, most of whom were Uygurs, earned a total of 1.3 billion yuan (HK$1.5 billion) elsewhere.
The number of Uygur workers still in the delta after the riots has not been disclosed by the government. But an official from the county of Shufu outside Kashgar, where the Baitu workers came from, was quoted by mainland media after the unrest as saying that 3,400 people from the county alone were working in Guangdong factories.
Matching a poor county with a richer counterpart in a coastal city has been a long-standing poverty alleviation policy for Beijing.
But after the Shaoguan brawl, many have asked if the government has underestimated the cultural differences, not only between Han and Uygurs, but between a traditional Uygur society and a factory setting.
Han workers from the countryside experience difficulties adapting to factory life in crammed dormitories, with long shifts and mundane schedules, and this is amplified for Uygurs, who face additional cultural barriers of language, lifestyle, and diet.
According to a recruiter in Huizhou, her factory, Cosun Group, had stopped recruiting Uygurs from the beginning of this year because 85 per cent of the 300 Uygur workers they hired in 2007 returned home within a year.
Uygur workers were also not economically attractive because extra costs were needed to provide them with a special Muslim diet, Uygur supervisors and sometimes translators, recruiters told the Post in an earlier report.
But the largest cultural barrier of all seems to be language. As the dust settles in the small town of Baitu, many residents are thinking whether the tragedy, in which two died, could have been prevented if Uygurs and Han could communicate better.
According to Baitu residents, only a third of Uygur workers in the Early Light factory could speak Putonghua. The brawl was triggered when a young woman took a wrong turn and ended up walking inside a Uygur men’s dormitory. She let out a scream and ran out when a Uygur gestured to her, then the rumour spread that Han female workers had been raped. A bloody fight ensued.
Bridging the cultural gap was not an impossible feat - at least before the Xinjiang riots. Li Xiuying, a Guangdong official in charge of ethnic and religious affairs, was quoted by Xinhua as saying: “Uygurs aged from 18 to 29 are eager to learn. But their distinct lifestyles and culture and poor Putonghua isolated them to some extent from their Han colleagues.”
Guangdong authorities missed the windows of opportunity to help Uygur workers better adapt to their new environment in the past few years. With mistrust now running deep between Uygurs and Han, it seems a daunting task. But efforts to foster understanding of both communities, outside and inside the factories, should still be made.
2 comments:
Reconciling Han and Uygurs is no easy task - but it must be done
Ivan Zhai
19 September 2009
Nearly three months after a deadly brawl between Han Chinese and Uygur workers at the Early Light toy factory, calm has returned to the Guangdong city of Shaoguan.
The damage was swept under the carpet simply by segregating Uygur workers from Han workers. The 700 or so Uygur workers in the factory have moved to another plant and stay out of sight of the residents in Baitu town.
Nothing was said about what should be done to prevent a similar incident in the future, or what lesson the government could learn in its ethnic-minority policy after paying such a heavy political price, including the riots in Urumqi , which were triggered after news about the brawl reached the capital city of Xinjiang in July.
There are still thousands, even tens of thousands, of Uygur workers in cities like Huizhou, Zhaoqing and Shaoguan in the Pearl River Delta. What should the local governments do with them after the riots? Should they segregate them from Han workers, or help them better adapt to factory life and communicate with Han workers?
Factories in the delta were encouraged to hire Uygur workers in 2007 as part of a poverty alleviation drive for the far western region.
According to Xinhua, in the first half of 2007, 900,000 Xinjiang export labourers, most of whom were Uygurs, earned a total of 1.3 billion yuan (HK$1.5 billion) elsewhere.
The number of Uygur workers still in the delta after the riots has not been disclosed by the government. But an official from the county of Shufu outside Kashgar, where the Baitu workers came from, was quoted by mainland media after the unrest as saying that 3,400 people from the county alone were working in Guangdong factories.
Matching a poor county with a richer counterpart in a coastal city has been a long-standing poverty alleviation policy for Beijing.
But after the Shaoguan brawl, many have asked if the government has underestimated the cultural differences, not only between Han and Uygurs, but between a traditional Uygur society and a factory setting.
Han workers from the countryside experience difficulties adapting to factory life in crammed dormitories, with long shifts and mundane schedules, and this is amplified for Uygurs, who face additional cultural barriers of language, lifestyle, and diet.
According to a recruiter in Huizhou, her factory, Cosun Group, had stopped recruiting Uygurs from the beginning of this year because 85 per cent of the 300 Uygur workers they hired in 2007 returned home within a year.
Uygur workers were also not economically attractive because extra costs were needed to provide them with a special Muslim diet, Uygur supervisors and sometimes translators, recruiters told the Post in an earlier report.
But the largest cultural barrier of all seems to be language. As the dust settles in the small town of Baitu, many residents are thinking whether the tragedy, in which two died, could have been prevented if Uygurs and Han could communicate better.
According to Baitu residents, only a third of Uygur workers in the Early Light factory could speak Putonghua. The brawl was triggered when a young woman took a wrong turn and ended up walking inside a Uygur men’s dormitory. She let out a scream and ran out when a Uygur gestured to her, then the rumour spread that Han female workers had been raped. A bloody fight ensued.
Bridging the cultural gap was not an impossible feat - at least before the Xinjiang riots. Li Xiuying, a Guangdong official in charge of ethnic and religious affairs, was quoted by Xinhua as saying: “Uygurs aged from 18 to 29 are eager to learn. But their distinct lifestyles and culture and poor Putonghua isolated them to some extent from their Han colleagues.”
Guangdong authorities missed the windows of opportunity to help Uygur workers better adapt to their new environment in the past few years. With mistrust now running deep between Uygurs and Han, it seems a daunting task. But efforts to foster understanding of both communities, outside and inside the factories, should still be made.
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