I keep wondering whether reports of unrest are just part of the normal fabric of Chinese society or whether it hints at instability that can bring the country down. Honestly, at this point I hold little hope that any of these incidents have any broader effect.
This authors thinks the riots are just another indication of the fragility of communist party rule in China:
There are tens of thousands of protests in China each year, and most of them have nothing to do with clashes between ethnicities. Mishandled like the one in Urumqi, however, almost any one of them can spread fast, from city to city and across vast regions. That's the most important lesson to be learned from the events in Xinjiang this week.
This doesn't mean that the Chinese regime will fall tomorrow--or even in ten years or a centrur--just that it is fragile. How long did the Ottoman Empire teeter on as the sick man of Europe? Centuries, eh?
If communist party rule does crumble, does China itself crumble and become just a geographic term for varied states that arise from the ruins?
