Stability Overcomes Everything?

The People’s Daily has disturbingly reported that officials will be dismissed on the spot if their areas of responsibility became unstable. This creates a system whereby the livelihood of officials and their families depend on their readiness to respond to any public dissent with violence or to engage in covering it all up. As if this wasn’t potentially destabilising enough, announcements were also made that the Bingtuan Armed Police has been elevated to a status equal to the Xinjiang Armed Police! The Bingtuan armed police will now report directly to the Central Military Commission in Beijing and is consolidating its status as a state within a state. This means that in instances of unrest, Xinjiang will have two armed paramilitary organisations which are not accountable to one another and could potentially find themselves in competition over state resources and areas of responsibility. Given that this was coupled with announcements that officials will be fired on the spot in any instances of “instability”, this could lead to rather unstable and unpredictable consequences. Furthermore, officials will have personal vested interests in ensuring that no one ever finds about such problems. So we can expect more secrecy, more rumours, and more instability in a region where the party tells us that “stability overcomes everything”!