Xinjiang、Uighers and the Asian Development Bank

The news of this week seems to be focused on the violence rocking Xinjing, a province in the far west of China. This domestic political problem of the PRC might at first glance have little to do with the ADB, but this is not quite the case.

Firstly, the ADB is more involved in China's Western development than the World Bank, and indeed provides a better statistical picture of the economic problems there. The most significant of these problems is inequality. Income inequality in Xinjiang province is the worst in China, moreover Xinjiang on the whole is lagging behind the more developed Eastern provinces. Worse, this income inequality seems to be favoring the Han majority Chinese over the Turkic speaking Uigher minority. No surprise then that violent protesters and calls for secession from the PRC crop up again and again.

China has recognised the problems of inequality as a source for social disruption, and under Hu Jintao (formerly a Tibet hand), China has begun to focus on the vast interior. The ADB, and Japan in the ADB, have played no small role in this about face of the Chinese Government. Until the mid-nineties China would hear nothing about the need for social/environment development in the Central provinces and continuously prioritized the industrial development of the Eastern provinces. In the aftermath of the 1995 Lop Norr nuclear tests (coincidentally in Xinjiang Provence), Japan become increasing concerned that their ODA/Aid and the ADB's loans were subsiding the Chinese military. Japan's concerns about the Chinese military, and nuclear weapons specifically, prompted the GOJ to produce a new ODA/Aid Charter. Japan also took the fight to the ADB, and started to push for the ADB to prioritize the West and Central provinces and poverty reduction focused loaning to the social and environmental sectors, both geared towards less direct military spillover.

Eventually, China came to agree to these terms - although a new sector of so-called social infrastructure had to be invented as a compromise in the early 2000s. China recognised that the ADB would have greater legitimacy in dealing with Xinjiang and the Xinjiangese development problems than the Central Government in Beijing, especially due to the difficult race relations between the Han Chinese and minority Uighers. This has brought the ADB increasingly into Xinjiang. But while the ADB is focused on development, it is clear that its operations in Xinjiang are for reasons of domestic and international politics.