Since violent ethnic protests and riots erupted in the western borderlands of China in 2008 and 2009, many scholars have been trying to pinpoint the sources of the unrest. They include Ben Hillman, a senior lecturer in comparative politics at Australian National University, and Gray Tuttle, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures at Columbia University. They have edited a volume of papers and essays looking at the roots of these tensions, “Ethnic Conflict and Protest in Xinjiang and Tibet: Unrest in China’s West,” recently published by Columbia University Press. The issues explored range widely, be it environmental degradation in Tibetor economic disparities between ethnic Uighurs in their homeland of Xinjiang and Han migrants from other parts of China. In an interview, Mr. Hillman and Mr. Tuttle discussed the grievances behind recent protests and the likelihood of their resolution.[Source]
