UPDATE ON CHINAS SOFT UNDERBELLY-Xinjiang

The leader of a troubled western province has been replaced. He will not be missed by its ethnic Uighurs WHEN he took over in 2010 as the Communist Party chief of the western province of Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian was portrayed by state media as a young, media-savvy official with a mission: to crack down hard on its separatists but also to foster “brotherly affection” between ethnic groups in the poor, violence-torn region. On August 29th Mr Zhang was moved to a new, as yet undisclosed, job, having claimed some success in his fight against Islamist “extremism”. The region’s ethnic divide, however, remains bitter. Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic-Turkic people who make up nearly half of Xinjiang’s residents, have particular reason to grumble. Mr Zhang was sent to Xinjiang partly, officials said at the time, to improve the lot of people living in poorer, Uighur-dominated, areas (he is pictured, arm raised, meeting some of them last year). A few months earlier an explosion of rioting between Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese, who form more than 90% of China’s population, had left around 200 people dead in the provincial capital, Urumqi (see map). Officials believed that poverty and unemployment among Uighurs was fuelling unrest. Mr Zhang, however, did little to boost Uighurs’ morale (or, possibly, to impress leaders in Beijing—some analysts speculate that he may now be sidelined). Restrictions in some areas on displays of Muslim faith, such as observing Ramadan or wearing face veils, made many even angrier. So too did the security clampdown that Mr Zhang maintained after taking over from his hardline predecessor. In spite of it, the violence continued. A spate of attacks in 2014 included some of the bloodiest in years blamed on Uighur militants: 33 slain in March that year by knife-wielding assailants at a railway station in Kunming in the south-western province of Yunnan; 43 killed in April, including four attackers, at a street market in Urumqi; more than 100 shot by police or killed by attackers in July near Kashgar in southern Xinjiang. Since 2014, there appears to have been a considerable decline in large-scale violence. But it is possible that smaller-scale incidents go unreported. Despite his unusually relaxed manner with journalists, Mr Zhang did not make it easy for foreign ones to visit Xinjiang. Police kept them away from trouble-spots (in his previous role as Tibet’s party chief, Chen Quanguo, Mr Zhang’s successor, was even less keen on them). One tool that Mr Zhang used to keep tabs on Uighurs was the inaptly named bianmin, or “convenient for the people” card. This was, in effect, a new kind of internal passport, required for use by people from Xinjiang who were living away from their home district in other parts of the province. The card bore contact details of named officials in the bearer’s hometown. This enabled someone inspecting it to alert the authorities quickly, and ensure a rapid response, if a troublemaker was found. Uighurs often had to show the card at security checkpoints, when they boarded long-distance transport or when they checked in at hotels. Han Chinese rarely had to produce one. Uighurs called it the yeshil kart, or “green card”, because it made them feel like immigrants in their own country. In May, two years after introducing it, Xinjiang’s government abolished the card. Official media said one reason was that its use had given rise to bribery. Uighurs often had to pay large backhanders to get hold of one. But ordinary identity cards are still often used to monitor the movement of out-of-town Uighurs. As a result of tighter controls on internal migration, the number of Uighurs from the south of the province working in Urumqi, in the north, has fallen sharply in recent years. Street stalls in the city, at which many such migrants once worked, are now conspicuously rarer. For years after the rioting in 2009, the authorities made it nearly impossible for many Uighurs to obtain foreign passports. They feared that those who travelled abroad might be infected by international jihadism. In recent months, however, the authorities have made it easier for some Uighurs (usually better-off and better-connected ones) to get them. As with the repeal of the bianmin card, however, this does not mean that the authorities are ready to relax their grip on the region. On August 30th an attack on the Chinese embassy in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, which borders on Xinjiang, will have compounded their anxieties about global terror. Three Kyrgyz staff were injured when an unidentified suicide-bomber blew himself up outside the compound. More likely is that Xinjiang’s government is more confident in its other methods of control. These include the fencing in of Uighur neighbourhoods in Urumqi’s south, with checkpoints at the entrances. Police visit homes to identify any newcomers. A QR code is attached to the door of each apartment. An officer scanning this can view photos of authorised residents. Now that the bars of the cage are stronger, the government feels it can give the prisoners a little more room