9/10/2014
BEIJING – In a bid to promote racial harmony in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are seeking to promote marriages between members of the locally dominant Uighurs and of the Han, who make up more than 91 percent of China’s 1.35 billion people.
Authorities in Qiemo district have made the award of 10,000 yuan ($1,600) per year conditional on the continuing “harmony” of the partners in a Uighur-Han marriage after five years of conjugal cohabitation.
Any children they have will receive free education until secondary school, at which point they are to get an annual subsidy of 3,000 ($488), increasing to 5,000 yuan a year for those who go on to attend university in the region.
The Qiemo government Web site says that should one of the partners becomes unemployed, authorities will find a suitable job, and that after three years of marriage the couple can apply for “compensation” for housing and health care expenses.
Qiemo lies along the ancient Silk Road in southern Xinjiang, where the average annual income in rural areas is 7,400 yuan (a little over $1,200). Over 72 percent of those registered in the census belong to the mostly Muslim Uighur community, while the remainder are Han.
For both groups, courtship is usually limited to their own communities, although a Qiemo official recently wrote that “different ethnic groups share the same sky, same land, same love and heart.”
“Our major aim is to stabilize Xinjiang and promote ethnic integration,” the author of the article added, but that may prove difficult after a year in which over 100 people were killed in clashes between alleged Uighur “terrorists” and the police.
Uighur groups maintain that political and cultural oppression from Beijing is responsible for the violence. Dilxat Raxit, a member of the World Uighur Congress in exile, last week told Radio Free Asia that “the government of Qiemo is using the reward to try and accelerate the assimilation of the Uighurs.”
“Our culture is different from that of the Han in all aspects,” he said.
source
BEIJING – In a bid to promote racial harmony in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, Chinese authorities are seeking to promote marriages between members of the locally dominant Uighurs and of the Han, who make up more than 91 percent of China’s 1.35 billion people.Authorities in Qiemo district have made the award of 10,000 yuan ($1,600) per year conditional on the continuing “harmony” of the partners in a Uighur-Han marriage after five years of conjugal cohabitation.
Any children they have will receive free education until secondary school, at which point they are to get an annual subsidy of 3,000 ($488), increasing to 5,000 yuan a year for those who go on to attend university in the region.
The Qiemo government Web site says that should one of the partners becomes unemployed, authorities will find a suitable job, and that after three years of marriage the couple can apply for “compensation” for housing and health care expenses.
Qiemo lies along the ancient Silk Road in southern Xinjiang, where the average annual income in rural areas is 7,400 yuan (a little over $1,200). Over 72 percent of those registered in the census belong to the mostly Muslim Uighur community, while the remainder are Han.
For both groups, courtship is usually limited to their own communities, although a Qiemo official recently wrote that “different ethnic groups share the same sky, same land, same love and heart.”
“Our major aim is to stabilize Xinjiang and promote ethnic integration,” the author of the article added, but that may prove difficult after a year in which over 100 people were killed in clashes between alleged Uighur “terrorists” and the police.
Uighur groups maintain that political and cultural oppression from Beijing is responsible for the violence. Dilxat Raxit, a member of the World Uighur Congress in exile, last week told Radio Free Asia that “the government of Qiemo is using the reward to try and accelerate the assimilation of the Uighurs.”
“Our culture is different from that of the Han in all aspects,” he said.
source
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