So you're saying the Han are actually keeping the Uighurs afloat through investments and infrastructures? From how you described, Uighurs aren't very pleased for it. How did the Han with you reacted to their hostility? You are probably the only person on sherdog that has been there, or Central Asia even.
Yes and yes.
The Han with the group were cordial.
As for being the only person to travel there, maybe, however I bet there are a couple of guys from Central Asia who post here. Just with the forum being so large and all. One of the good things about it.
When you are in Xinjiang you do not really feel like you are in China it really has a Middle Eastern feel to it.
Xinjiang is much more impoverished than a lot of Chinese areas, however, a lot of the people writing these articles seem to take that for granted.
If you go anywhere away from the big coastal cities in key provinces you will find dirt poor local people with little resources or upward mobility. The common fellow in Anhui province is as destitute as the guy in Xinjiang, but without the special benefits.
In my opinion this is much more of a cultural, religious, and class structure clash than a case of serious oppression. That oppression does exist, the media just blows it way, way out of proportion and have limited understanding of what is really going on there imo.
This is kind of the media and China's fault...
1. The media the sensitive to the perceived "underdog" and sympathetic to the Ugyhurs.
2. China being so lol_authoritarian it is hard to buy their "line" on anything, but in this case a lot of what the regime says is closer to the truth than the Ugyhurs at least in my opinion.
3rd... the biggest problem... is that there are A. few "Xinjiang corespondents" in news orgs, I mean most of the news stories are 2nd or 3rd hand accounts.
B. The reports that are made are the type of lazy journalism that is all over the place... Google a specific aspect of the Xinjiang story and there will be 50 articles, but they all have almost the exact same narrative and facts, facts that are dubious on their face.
Much more keyboard journalism is being conducted than real fact finding, because fact finding is expensive and journalists are hey, in my opinion, becoming desktop hacks who just churn out the same stories over and over based on their peers than getting on their boots to go do their jobs.
