Kashgar families sundered by a wave of detentions. Mosques barred from broadcasting the call to prayer. Restrictions on the movements of labourers that have wreaked havoc on local agriculture. And a battery of ever-more-intrusive ways to monitor the communications of citizens for possible threats to public security.

A recent 10-day journey across the Xinjiang region in the far west of China revealed a society seething with anger and trepidation as the government, alarmed by a slow-boil insurgency that has claimed hundreds of lives, has introduced unprecedented measures aimed at shaping the behaviour and beliefs of China's 10 million Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that considers this region its homeland.

Driving these policies is the government's view that tougher security and tighter restraints on the practice of Islam are the best way to stem a wave of violence that included a knife attack at a coal mine that killed dozens of people in September.

An elderly Uighur man in front of Kashgar's Id Kah mosque: Schools have largely switched to using Mandarin as the main language of instruction instead of Uighur, and the government has begun offering cash and housing subsidies to encourage intermarriage between Uighurs and Han, the country's ethnic majority.

The tough security measures are on full view for travellers as they stop at the ubiquitous highway checkpoints that slow movement across this rugged expanse of deserts and snowy peaks.

As heavily armed soldiers rummage through car trunks and examine ID cards, ethnic Uighur motorists and their passengers are sometimes asked to hand over their cellphones so that the police can search them for content or software deemed a threat to public security.