The Chinese authorities have for some time been pursuing an intense work of sinicization of the areas inhabited by ethnic minorities hostile to the central power. They did it with Tibet and they are doing it now with Xinjiang, an autonomous region where 46% of the population is ethnic Uyghur, a Turkish-speaking people of Muslim religion. Among the means to achieve the proposed objective there is also that - all in all more pleasant than others - to encourage mixed marriages.
In short, in Xinjiang, an annual income of 10 yuan is added to two hearts and a hut, if one of the two hearts belongs to the Han ethnic group, the dominant one in China, and the other to the indigenous ethnic group. And that's not all: mixed couples are also entitled to more comfortable homes, better health care, special attention in job interviews, access for their children to higher quality schools, and many other advantages.
To use a slogan dear to Xi Jinping, families made up of one exponent of the Han ethnic group and one of the Uyghur ethnic group have a fast track to the "Chinese dream". Uyghur independence, which dates back to the first half of the twentieth century, had its most dramatic peak in 2009, when about 200 Han and Uyghur people died in a series of ethnic clashes in Ürümqi, the capital of the autonomous region. After the incident, the Beijing government has intensified the process of integrating Han ethnic groups into the region and in general, according to a procedure already tested in Tibet, the eradication of indigenous cultural traditions and the introduction of Chinese culture.
Attachments: China Post
