![]() |
-NOVEMBER, 1997- |
![]() |
Click on the calendar date in the chart below to see articles posted for that day.
01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 |
11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
31 |
Click on the article title below to view the article. Follow the 'Back to Top' links to return here. Follow the 'Back to Article Index' links to return to the group of articles corresponding to that article's post- date.
11/16/1997 | China's policy of tolerance questioned in Xinjiang |
11/08/1997 | China begins building world's largest dam |
China's policy of tolerance questioned in Xinjiang
November 16, 1997 Web posted at: 9:50 a.m. EST (1450 GMT)
XINJIANG, China (CNN) -- China says its policy of creating a strong, united nation includes tolerance for its religious and ethnic minorities. But human rights activists say there is little evidence of that tolerance in the so-called autonomous Xinjiang region, nested between Tibet, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.
A defiant region for 22 centuries, Xinjiang is home to 18 million people, half of them Uighurs (pronounced wee'-gers).
The Arab descendants speak Turkic, use the Arabic script, and many appear more Western than their Chinese Han counterparts. The Uighurs practice Islam, and are the legacy of the Arab traders who worked the Silk Road that provided China with its first trade link with the West, dating back to about 100 B.C.
Quest for independence
Before China's Communists came to power in 1949, Xinjiang was an independent country called the Eastern Turkestan Republic. Today, a growing number of Uighurs want to win back their independence.
Earlier this year in Beijing, a group of Uighur separatists bombed a bus, killing two people. In June, in Xinjiang, five people were publicly executed after hanging the banned flag of Eastern Turkestan from the statue of Communist China's founder, Mao Tse-tung, in Kashgar's main square.
In the last 12 months alone, more than 1,000 ethnic Uighurs have been executed and more than 10,000 people have been arrested for political reasons, human rights activists say. Those reports are unconfirmed.
It is perhaps China's ever increasing dependency on Xinjiang that leads Beijing to flex its muscle in the province.
Oil is plentiful beneath the sands of Xinjiang's many deserts. And, China recently struck a deal with Kazakhstan to build pipelines connecting the former Soviet Republic with China's east.
Culture attack
For decades, Beijing has tried to undermine the Uighur presence by watering down the group's culture.
Roughly 30 years ago, there were about 200,000 Han Chinese in Xinjiang. Today there are more than 6 million, and an estimated 5,000 arrive daily. The migrants bring new farming practices into the agri-rich region, and the Uighurs, reluctant to change their centuries-old ways, find themselves out of work and homeless.
The Uighur children are schooled in Mandarin, and in the teachings of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao. From a young age, they are taught to remain loyal to China, and to expose those who are not.
Beijing also views the province as a dumping ground for China's undesirables. In the last three years, 40,000 convicted criminals have been "re-educated" in labor camps, then forced to settle in Xinjiang as reformed laborers and farmers -- taking even more work away from the Uighurs.
The Chinese have also moved to close off the Uighurs religious worship. For more than 300 years, daily prayers echoed through Kashgar's most important mosque. But the Chinese have shut it down, now allowing worshippers to pray there twice a year. About 1,500 other mosques have been closed in the last six years, shutting down not only places of worship, but also places for possible political gatherings.
Muslim clerics deny that anything other than religious work goes on inside their mosques, and say they do not interfere with politics.
But clergymen are also vague when asked to describe what China deems as illegal religious work. "I can say what I can say, what I should not say I will not say," said one religious leader.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Back to Top
Back to Article Index
China begins building world's largest dam
November 8, 1997 Web posted at: 11:46 a.m. EST (1646 GMT)
YICHANG, China (CNN) -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin led a celebration honoring the beginning of the building of the world's largest dam as workers began sealing off a dike to divert the Yangtze River.
China's engineers will now begin erecting a permanent wall, nearly 600-feet high, to harness the Yangtze, the world's third-longest river, and provide a huge source of hydropower for the world's most populous nation.
For China's leaders, the event is the realization of a dream dating back to 1919, when revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen first proposed building the dam.
China begins building world's largest dam
"The age-old dream of the Chinese people to develop and utilize the resources of the Three Gorges section of the Yangtze has come closer to being true," Jiang told the crowd of 5,000 who came Saturday to celebrate the official kickoff of the dam's construction. "The diversion of the Yangtze is a great moment in the modernization of our country."
When the dam is complete, it will be capable of pumping out 18,200 megawatts of electricity from 26 generators, each equal to a medium-sized nuclear reactor.
The price of progress
The building of the Three Gorges Dam, in Hubei province, is modern China's most ambitious construction project, and one of the most controversial in the world. It is also China's largest construction project since the building of the Grand Canal in the 10th century.
From start to finish, the project will cost up to $29 billion. More than one million people will be relocated -- 100,000 of them by the end of this year.
When the towering 1.2-mile wide wall is complete, in 2009, it will be used for the metamorphosis of one of China's most scenic and most pristine landscapes.
The result will be a 370-mile-long lake that will consume 19 counties, 153 towns, 4,500 villages, and the scenic canyons that have inspired poets and painters for centuries.
Communist China's founding father, the late Mao Tse-tung, once wrote a poem in which he dreamed of "walls of stone" to hold back "clouds and rain till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges."
Environmentalists say the rising water will doom migratory fish, eradicate rare plants and create water pollution. China says harnessing the river will control flooding and provide much-needed power.
Powerful divisions
"This great event proves that only socialism has the virtues to concentrate power to deal with this great project," Jiang boasted to the river crowd. But as the Western-leaning communist touted the virtues of socialism, he thanked the world's capitalist investors who will be helping to complete the project on time. "We should bring the initiatives of those foreign-funded enterprises into play and make use of their advantage in capital and technology."
But China won't be counting on help from the United States. The U.S. withdrew its technical support in 1993 because of doubts about the dam's effectiveness in flood control and environmental concerns about the project.
Critics say China could minimize its costs and the project's disruption by choosing instead to fortify existing dikes and to build smaller dams upstream. That would enable engineers to control flooding while increasing China's capability of drawing hydropower, critics say.
There is also concern that the giant lake will become a cesspool as one billion tons of industrial and human waste are projected to flow into the reservoir.
Chinese leaders insist the damage to the environment will be minimal and the disruption to the lives of the 1.2 million people who are being forced to move will be small.
Speaking to the river crowd on Saturday, Jiang tried to reassure the families who will be moved, telling them their relocation is the "highest priority to the success of the Three Gorges Dam."
Only the Nile and the Amazon rivers are longer than the Yangtze.
Correspondent Rebecca MacKinnon, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Back to Top
Back to Article Index