China’s ethnic affairs chief hails Xinjiang policies in Xi’s ‘new era’

China’s top official overseeing ethnic and religious affairs has saluted Beijing’s approach to Xinjiang over the past decade, bookending a landmark trip by President Xi Jinping to the region to mark its founding.

Addressing a major event in Urumqi on Thursday for the 70th anniversary of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Wang Huning said that over the decades, especially since “the new era” – the period after Xi took power in 2012 – people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang had “continuously won great victories” in socialist revolution, construction, reform and opening up.

He said the course taken had been “completely correct” and Xinjiang’s “brilliant achievements” over the past seven decades fully demonstrated the “remarkable advantages” of the Communist Party’s leadership and China’s socialist system.

“[It also] fully demonstrated the great robustness of the correct path of solving ethnic issues with Chinese characteristics, and fully proved that the party’s Xinjiang governance strategy in the new era is completely correct,” state news agency Xinhua quoted Wang as saying.

Wang is the country’s fourth-ranking official and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which oversees ethnic and religious affairs as well as united front work.

Xi also attended the event as part of a trip in which he became the first president to visit the region for its anniversary – signalling the importance Beijing attaches to Xinjiang.

  

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