Xi Jinping’s campaign of repression in Xinjiang is tinged with an urgency that only historical parallel can provide. The Soviet Union’s collapse haunts his brutal crackdown there. Xi and his advisors have long identified ethnic unrest and separatist forces at the fringes of Soviet empire as one impetus for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Xi’s eyes, before his extreme intervention, similarities between Chinese and Soviet ethnic policy risked a disastrous splintering of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authority in the region.
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