Beijing

THE riots in the Xinjiang region, the home of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, will affirm to many analysts outside the country that social unrest is a direct threat to the continued rule of the Communist Party. If officials don’t take a long, hard look at how to avoid such uprisings, this argument will run, the government could eventually fall.

If only Chinese officials saw things that way.

But even after at least 156 people have been reported dead in the city of Urumqi, many officials here see the recent violence  with Uighur rioters torching businesses owned by Han Chinese, China’s ethnic majority  as simple ingratitude.

A front-page editorial in the state-run People’s Daily described the protests as criminal actions by rioters, not as the manifestation of complaints of citizens angered by discriminatory policies. That view is already popular here in the capital. Few are surprised by the violence meted out by the state, and more than a few applaud it. A merchant in east Beijing expressed allegiance with his fellow Han entrepreneurs and, referring to the large outlays of aid to Xinjiang, asked of the Uighurs, “Where is their thanks for all the money we provide them?”

Both nationalistic fervor and the fear that instability might reverse the hard-won individual gains of economic reform combine to create more support for the government’s hard-line approach. Less discussed are the Uighurs’ real grievances: Beijing’s tight control over the practice of Islam; Han Chinese who migrate to Xinjiang and take the better jobs there; and the fact that ethnic minorities lack regular access to the government bureaucracy, where business in China is largely done.