Though there have been no reports of any violent incidents in the Xinjiang province of China for over three weeks now, the Chinese authorities are taking no chances with internal security and law and order in the province.
The army units, which were inducted into the province after the violent disturbances from July 5 to 8,2009, in which over 190 persons, the majority of them Hans, were killed, continue to be in over-all charge of security and law and order. In recent days, President Hu Jintao has been travelling in the Yunnan province which has sizable Tibetan and Uighur populations and a number of other non-Han minority tribal communities. The Chinese media has projected the purpose of his visit to Yunnan as to study the economic situation there and the action taken by the local authorities to deal with the difficulties of the people.
While this may be so, there is a strong possibility that another purpose could have been to re-assure the non-Han minorities that Beijing was sympathetic to their problems. Last year, before the Olympics, there was an explosion in a bus in Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province. Even though the Chinese authorities did not give any details of the subsequent investigation, the suspicion was focused on the local Tibetan and Uighur population. There are no indications that Hu went to Xinjiang from Yunnan.