China, Your Words Are Meaningless - Put Up or Shut Up

China features in today's news, in two events related to terrorism and rebellion. ~~~~~ Attackers threw bombs from two SUVs as they plowed through shoppers at a busy street market in China's restive northwestern region of Xinjiang on Thursday, killing 31 people and wounding more than 90, according to local officials. Eyewitnesses said the cars drove toward each other, tossing explosives as they went, and then plowed into each other head on, causing further explosions. The attack in the city of Urumqi was the bloodiest in a series of violent incidents over recent months that Chinese authorities have blamed on radical separatists from the country's Moslem Uighur minority. Xinjiang Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Moslems. They make up about 45% of the region's population and 40% are ethnic Han Chinese. China re-established control in Xinjiang in 1949 after crushing a short-lived rebellion in the state of East Turkestan. Since then, China has undertaken large-scale immigration of Han Chinese, and Uighurs fear erosion of their traditional culture. Some Uighurs say their traditions are being crushed - a charge that sounds very much like the Tibetan charge that China is sending Han Chinese as immigrants to Tibet in an effort to destroy Tibetan culture and bring Tibet under control. Uighur activists contend that restrictive and discriminatory policies favoring the ethnic Chinese immigrants are fueling the bloodshed. Experts say that the knowledge that Moslems elsewhere are rising up against their governments also contributes to the insurrection. An air flight from Shanghai to Urumqi was diverted Thursday and landed at Nanjing for security reasons, the official Chinese Xinhua news agency reported. In other related Chinese government action, security measures have been announced for key areas of Beijing. Xinjiang lies in China's far west, bordering Central Asia. China says it is pouring money into the region. In 2009, tensions erupted and riots in Urumqi left 200 people dead. Beijing blames the tension between China and the Uighurs on a series of violent incidents by Uighur separatists, including an attack in Beijing, where a car ploughed into pedestrians in Tiananmen Square, killing five people, and attacks at railway stations in Urumqi and Kunming. Earlier this week, Chinese courts jailed 39 people as part of what the authorities called an operation to curb the spread of audio and video materials inciting terrorism. Those jailed included a 25-year old who had incited hatred in comments made in chat rooms and a father who had preached extremism to his son, the Xinjiang Supreme Court said. ~~~~~ Also today, Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have referred the Syrian crisis to the International Criminal Court for investigation of possible war crimes. The vetoes prompting angry responses from the proposal's supporters who said Russia and China are blocking justice and should be ashamed. This is the fourth time the two countries have used their veto power as permanent Security Council members to prevent action against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Sixty-five countries supported the French-drafted resolution that demanded a path to justice in the conflict, which has entered its fourth year, has cost 160,000 lives and has displaced millions of people since it began in March 2011. France circulated the proposal last month after briefing the Security Council on the photographic evidence of systematic mass killings of detainees, some by starvation, provided by the anonymous "Caesar." The draft resolution called for an ICC mandate to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Syria. Russia's veto was signalled in advance, but supporters of the draft resolution insisted the proposal still had symbolic and moral value. ~~~~~ Dear readers, China always demands that it be treated as a full-partner world power. Yet, China is systematically destroying the Tibetan and Uighur cultures. It has secret gulag prisons where political dissidents are tortured. It is engaged in using naval aggression to force its Asian neighbors to accept China as their regional superpower. It blocks its citizens' free access to the Internet. It sponsors a military-led cyberspying net to steal commercial know-how and technology. It refuses to do anything to try to bring the Syrian civil war to an end, preferring to side with an equally uncivilized Russia. This is not a country that deserves to be treated as a world power or a regional superpower...or any kind of positive and civilized power at all. And no amount of posturing will change this. China, your words are meaningless -- put up or shut up.