Xinjiang to relocate officials to villages

As the security situation rings alarm bells in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, expectations have been pinned on the regional government's efforts to fight terrorism by winning local people's hearts through a campaign that will send 200,000 officials to villages and communities in the coming three years.

The campaign became more urgent after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Northwest China region last week, followed by a terrorist attack at the exit of a railway station in regional capital Urumqi that killed one and injured 79.

Though Xinjiang has witnessed a spate of terrorist attacks in recent years, it is the first attack in Urumqi, which is under tight security, since a deadly riot on July 5, 2009.

In December 2013, the central authorities held a landmark meeting to guide the work on Xinjiang, which emphasized maintaining social stability and building an enduring peace.

Against the backdrop, the regional government in mid-February unveiled the campaign of dispatching officials to the grass roots.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, all officials in the region, except those holding principal positions, will join the campaign.

The first batch of more than 70,000 officials have already been working and living in villages and communities since March.

They will spend one year there. They were divided into more than 10,000 work groups, each assigned to a village, community or State-owned farm.

The officials in the program are from government departments, State-owned enterprises and academic institutions.

Liu Zhongkang, 59, a deputy president of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times he leads a work team from the institution to Hotan in southern Xinjiang.

Liu said he will help villagers solve their difficulties and write a report based on his work in the grass roots, so as to provide reference for the regional authority's future decision making.

A regional official, who requested anonymity, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the majority of work groups were dispatched to southern Xinjiang, where religious conservatism is prevalent and terrorist attacks occur more frequently.

He noted that one of their duties is to help build the capacity of local governments there, which usually have weak governance.

The official said while the work conditions in villages are relatively harsh, the growing ethnic tension has also caused safety concerns among officials of Han ethnicity.

"In order to protect the work group's safety, each was assigned a police officer, who is armed, and seven auxiliary police officers. Moreover, local villagers also formed militias to prevent security risks," said the official.

According to him, those officials who are from security and legal affairs departments tend to be dispatched to regions where attacks have happened.

In fact, sending officials to villages has been a tradition in Xinjiang since 1997.

La Disheng, a professor at the Party School of the Communist Party of China's Xinjiang Regional Party Committee, told the Global Times that from 1997 to 2002, some 10,000 officials were dispatched to the grass-roots annually for rectification of illegal religious activities and the fight against the "three evil forces," namely separatism, extremism and terrorism. After 2002, such practice continued on a smaller scale.

However, La noted this year's campaign is not simply a continuation of the old practice, adding it stresses more on winning people's hearts.

"Why do 'three evil forces' still exist despite our constant strikes? It's because we haven't been able to achieve solidarity with all the people. If we can have all the residents on our side and lead them to strive for prosperity, then the terrorists will be left out on a limb," La said.

The scholar also noted that the campaign also aims to help officials, who mostly work in urban areas, get to know more about the grass roots so as to change their mindsets and work style.

"It will let them know forcible management will only push people away and undermine the foundation of government's rule," La said.

Working at the grass roots is never easy. A blog post written by a local official in Bachu county who was dispatched to a village for three years recently described the inconveniences during that period of time, including loneliness and harsh weather.

According to the post, after a deadly attack in another county in late June 2013, officials dispatched to villages under Bachu temporarily withdrew.

When the program restarted in July 2013, the officials were stationed in relatively safe villages, and each of them was covered by insurance.

If they wanted to visit local households, they must be accompanied by a Uyghur colleague, police officers or auxiliary police officers.