The past week has seen China on the front pages for all the wrong reasons again. Race riots have erupted between the native, Muslim Uighur people and the Han Chinese in the far western Xinjiang province which have seen over 150 dead and over a thousand injured.

To read more in depth analyses feel free to follow these links:

 http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2009/07/06/violence-in-urumqi-details-still-sketchy/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8141657.stm

As would be expected Western media has drawn many similarities between this incident and the pre-Olympic riots in Xinjiang’s neighbouring territory of Tibet last year. Both involve friction between angry ethnic groups and the ever growing imported population of non indigenous Han people.

In the case of the Uighurs they claim that economic growth of the mineral rich region has bypassed them. An incident involving Uighur workers in a toy factory in southern China is said to have sparked the riots that gripped the world’s attention on Sunday, which were followed by counter protests by the Han Chinese and then by Uighur women on Tuesday after a huge number of their men were detained.

A curious development in the outbreak of these riots is the apparent openness with which the Chinese authorities seem to have approached them, specifically towards their allowance of free movement of international press. Last year the Chinese government were criticized throughout the world for not allowing foreign press into Tibet to cover the rising tension in the region. The Chinese seem to have learned from this mistake and are now allowing free press coverage; is this a positive step forward for openness within the People’s Republic?

I remain sceptical. Xinjiang’s government official stated that the “facts speak for themselves”, and maybe this is explains the authorities’ apparent openness. Yes, death tolls are high, but it has been said that the killing has been done mainly by the Uighur minorities and directed towards the Han Chinese, although no official figures of the ethnic breakdown of the dead has been released. The anti-riot forces also seem to have taken a relatively passive role in controlling the riots, detaining and controlling, but not killing. They have also been keen to emphasise that this is an ethnic clash; separatism supposedly not on the Uighur’s agenda. With effective use of PR and these facts painting the government in a much better light than the Tibetan riots of a year ago, maybe even showing them as the good guys (debatable); why not take this opportunity to get on the better side of foreign media?

Another similarity with the riots of last year and those of this week is the placing of blame on external powers. In 2008 it was the Dalai Lama that organised the riots, this year the scapegoat is Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman in residence in the United States.

In this case, a failure to admit that this is an internal problem and not one created by external forces will be China’s Downfall. China has always tried to maintain that it is an ethnically diverse yet socially stable and harmonious nation; the Han making up the vast majority and a few scattered ethnic groups, with their funny little customs and languages, decorating their further reaching regions. But the minorities of China make up nearly 10% of the population at over 100 million and, as we have seen in Xinjiang and Tibet, are often not content with the regime from Beijing.

Minorities are often discriminated against in their own homeland, rejected from jobs and higher positions of authority. Many are considered backward and uncivilised, holding the great Chinese nation back. It is this prejudice that causes these waves of discontent along China’s fringes, not a great conspiracy from the outside world. All nations, whether developed or not, have at some point had problems with race, religion or separatism. China cannot combat these problems unless it admits that the issues come from within its’ borders, and the sooner China realises that they will not lose face within the international community by admitting these problems, the sooner that can start on the long road to rectifying them.

 

But out of the corner of my eye, on a section of BBC News Website that wasn’t designated to Michael Jackson I hear that Google is releasing their own PC Operating System to rival Microsoft.  Good news I hear some people saying, but I think if we look at this in a bit more light we will see that Google are setting themselves up to becoming the market dominate that Microsoft never was.

 

 

Without doubt and question Google is one of the most recognised brands in the world, and with that they have been able to control greater parts of the Internet.  Buying up companies that threaten their way of life.  Over the past few years they have, rather than creating their own, bought other companies that has slowly been pushing it into Microsoft’s territory.  Only 50+ companies have been bought out right by Google but this said the google message is one of manipulation and ‘user friendly’ and most of all coming across like a wounded soldier trying to do battle with the likes of the evil Microsoft Corp.

 

Don’t get me wrong Microsoft has done this for years and still does.  But the might of Google means that there will be even less creativity and productivity as everything will become alined to just two companies.

 

 

The fact remains that Google has more of a market share that seems right and fair.  And their history shows that they will do one of two things.  The first is buy you out, as they did with YouTube, and second is to ‘try’ and create a credible alternative ie: Google Phone. They have bought, or buy, companies that have a very strong public following (it’s why Fox or News Corp bought Myspace) it allows them great access to people and allows them to further their own brand. What they are doing to killing the free nature of the Internet and the Linux network has already been earmarked as a potential victim in Googles attempted for ‘world domination’.

 

It would be sad to see a company like Google get even more mighty.  Many of the new things that have done has got a lot of people worried and rightly so as it would appear that Google is one unstoppable machine and for some reason Microsoft seem to be willing, at the moment, to let them get a head start.