Beijing announced at the end of December the departure of Chen Quanguo, Xinjiang’s top leader and mastermind of the crackdown. A disavowal? Not really. The latter could climb into the security apparatus, and his legacy is not denied by his successor. A story from Straits Times from Singapore.
– From Beijing
On December 25, it was learned that Chen Quanguo, secretary of the Communist Party in Xinjiang, was stepping down after five years of repression in that region which had experienced turbulent times. Some Chinese observers have concluded that Beijing is finally softening its positions.
In 2016, Chinese authorities transferred Chen from Tibet – where he had also ruled with an iron fist – to the Xinjiang Autonomous Region (RAX), to apply such harsh, if not even harsher methods. , after the terrorist attacks in this region of northwest China. [En 2009, des émeutes à Urumqi, la capitale de la RAX, ont fait de nombreuses victimes parmi l’ethnie Han. La région a connu une vague d’attentats entre 2012 et 2014.]
The impression of an easing was reinforced by the choice of his successor – Ma Xingrui, 62, governor of the province of Guangdong (southern China), with a flourishing economy. Was Beijing thus seeking to imply that [les actions de Chen] were enough to put an end to the destabilizing forces in Xinjiang? Given his experience as the head of Guangdong, the engine of China’s economic growth, isn’t Ma the right person to develop the resource-rich economy of Xinjiang?
Chen, the next security czar?
Chen’s departure is actually not all that good news for those opposed to his draconian methods. The state-run Xinhua News Agency reports that the 66-year-old leader will be given another post, without further details. A well-informed party source says Chen could keep his seat on the party’s political bureau and be named a senior security official before or on the occasion of the 20th Congress, to be held next year. He would then be at
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Benjamin Lim Kang |
Source
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