The Thread that Binds the Unrest in Iran and China

A common thread runs through the current hard-line crackdowns in Iran and western China. It's business -- in the case of Iran, the personal fruits of the country's entire economy; in that of China, just ordinary livelihood.

Starting with Iran, Michael Slackman of The New York Times contributes a strong profile on why the Revolutionary Guards are so intent on their man – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – retaining power after the disputed June 12^th presidential elections. It’s the “military-based conglomerate” that they control, a “multi-billion-dollar empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy,” Slackman writes. That includes oil, car-making, and road-and-bridge building. Since he came to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad has awarded the Guards 750 oil and natural gas development projects, Slackman writes.

Not that Ahmadinejad initiated a new practice by enriching the group that’s primarily keeping him in power. A year before his 2004 murder in Moscow, Forbes correspondent Paul Klebnikov wrote a brilliant investigative piece on how the family of former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had grabbed control over vast swaths of the economy. Today, Rafsanjani fashions himself as a reformer defending voters cheated in the June 12^th election; during the election campaign itself, he threatened to sue Ahmadinejad for accusing him and his family of corruption. Klebnikov doesn’t document corruption; he only lays out the family’s financial rise from poor obscurity.

All this adds up to is what those familiar with the region already know – there are no innocents in the race for power around the Caspian Sea. In the remote chance that Ahmadinejad were swept from power, would a new Iranian regime be clean of such pocket-lining? If the past is any teacher, the answer has to be a firm no. Slackman’s story doesn’t declare otherwise, only that the Guards have much to gain if Ahmadinejad remains in place.

Which brings us to China. Slackman notes that Iran remained conspicuously silent on the Chinese crackdown on Muslim Uighurs this month. One possible reason? One of the Guards’ main trading partners is China, he writes.

In China, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Ian Johnson weighs in with a penetrating piece on the subtext of ordinary business in the violence in Xinjiang. The rioting that killed almost 200 people was triggered in an immediate sense by the murder of two Uighurs, Johnson writes.

But he adds that the undercurrent is seething Uighur anger over the takeover of traditional industries by the majority Han Chinese – the bazaars, even the preparation of halal meats consumed by the Uighurs.

The Grand Bazaar in the regional capital of Urumchi is now run by Han. So is the main marketplace downtown. As for halal meats, Johnson describes a business owned by Huo Lanlan, a Han who runs one of Xinjiang’s largest halal food processors. Of 300 workers, Lanlan employs just a few Uighurs, including a cleaning lady.

So that when the Uighurs rioted, it wasn’t just over a murder. The Uighurs see Chinese prosperity creeping in to Xinjiang, but largely enjoyed by Han from elsewhere.