Book review: dry prose mars valuable summary of Xinjiang's plight

Far to the west in China is a place that is as different to the rest of China as one could imagine. Its people have fair hair and green eyes, the land is sandy and mountainous, and the languages spoken have no relation to those heard in the east.

But Beijing insists it has always been a part of the motherland, and it is unrelenting in imposing that view on those who live there. It uses its economic might and intolerance of dissent to overwhelm the people in this land, causing outbursts of violence and anger.

This place, of course, is Xinjiang, and the people are Uygurs, and both have more in common with their Muslim and Turkic neighbours to the west than with their Han rulers to the east.

"The cultural distinctiveness of Xinjiang is also reinforced by its physical location," writes Nick Holdstock in . "The region is so far to the west that it's in a different time zone from the rest of the country. 'Xinjiang time' is two hours behind the time used elsewhere in China (known as 'Beijing time')."

The writer looks at two recent incidents: the jeep that exploded in Tiananmen Square on October 28, 2013, and the attack by knife-wielding Uygurs in a Kunming train station on March 1, 2014, which killed 29 people and wounded more than 140. These attacks led to a sharp crackdown on Xinjiang and the Uygurs. What led to these outbursts, Holdstock asks, and what does Beijing need to do to prevent such things happening again?