UK chancellor has faced criticism for failing to speak out about increasing levels of government repression many blame for the bloodshed in Xinjiang

George Osborne became the first British minister to visit the volatile Chinese region of Xinjiang on Wednesday amid reports that 40 people had been injured or killed in the latest episode of deadly violence to hit the country’s far west.

Osborne was in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, on day four of a five-day trip designed to boost economic ties between Britain and China.

He visited a football school in the city in north-western China, as well as the headquarters of Hualing Industry and Trade, a Chinese firm that is investing in property developments worth £1.2bn in Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield.

“China’s emerging regions, like Xinjiang, hold enormous potential in the years ahead,” the chancellor said. “That’s why I wanted to come here today to see this place for myself, and highlight Britain’s absolute commitment to support the growth of Urumqi together with the whole of the Xinjiang region.”

Osborne has faced criticism for failing to speak out about the increasing levels of government repression many blame for the bloodshed in Xinjiang which is home to the Muslim Uighur minority and a growing number of Han Chinese migrants.

The Turkic-speaking Uighurs have long chafed under Chinese rule, complaining of Beijing’s heavy-handed policies and the controls placed on their lives and freedom of religion.

Friction between authorities, migrants and Uighurs regularly erupts into deadly clashes, including inter-ethnic rioting that killed about 200 people in Urumqi in 2009.

Details of the latest example of that violence emerged as Osborne landed in Xinjiang on Tuesday night.

A group of “knife-wielding suspects” attacked a colliery in Asku prefecture, about 650km south-west of Urumqi, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA), a US-funded news group.

Jamal Eysa, a police chief in the region, told RFA that “at least 40 people were killed or injured including police officers, security guards, mine owners and managers and attackers”. Eysa said one of his friends was among those killed in the attack which took place on 18 September and said police were still hunting the perpetrators. “I believe that at least some of the attackers are alive and on the run,” he said.

RFA is one of the only reliable sources of information about the conflict in Xinjiang. China’s state-run media rarely reports on such incidents and independent reporting from the region is made virtually impossible by Beijing’s extensive security apparatus.

Asked about the latest eruption of violence by the Guardian on Wednesday, Osborne said: “We are only just getting reports about this this morning so I don’t want to rush to comment on something until we have all the details. But obviously if people have been injured or indeed killed that is a tragedy and our sympathies are with the victims and their families.”

He added: “We never condone violence – whatever the cause. We always seek a peaceful resolution of disputes in our world and we hope a peaceful resolution can be arrived at.”

Before Osborne’s arrival, human rights activists warned he risked becoming a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist party if he failed to raise concerns over the human rights crisis unfolding in Xinjiang.

Questions have also been raised about why Osborne chose to visit Urumqi exactly a year after the moderate Uighur academic Ilham Tohti was jailed for life in the same city in a case that drew international condemnation.

Speaking on the BBC’s Today programme on Tuesday, Osborne defended his decision to travel to Xinjiang and ruled out engaging in what he called “megaphone diplomacy”.

“One of the things we can bring to a province like Xinjiang ... is economic development and rising prosperity and higher living standards because we’ll be investing through British companies in infrastructure there, and in education there ... and that has got to be a good thing.”

Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s east Asia director and a Xinjiang expert, said resource-rich Xinjiang had long had one of China’s fastest-growing economies. “The question is: who benefits from this?”



Having dodged questions over Tohti’s imprisonment since his arrival in China on Sunday, Osborne on Wednesday said he had raised British concerns over the academic’s case.

“Our concerns about Tohti’s case are well known and we’ve made them very public and I have raised the human rights concerns that we have with the Chinese authorities on this visit,” he told a small group of foreign journalists during a visit to an industrial estate in Urumqi.

“I think it would be very strange if Britain’s only relationship with one fifth of the world’s population and the government that represents them was solely about human rights,” he added. “It doesn’t mean we don’t stand up for our values.”