Connect to share and comment The roots of this week's violence
go back. Way back. Trouble erupts in Xinjiang periodically, as
it does in Tibet, because two unreconcilable forces are at work
against each other. One is the desire of ethnic, linguistic and
racial minorities for real autonomy, if not independence, to
keep their culture and traditions alive. The other is China’s
age-old obsession with keeping the empire together. For
thousands of years China has fallen apart into warring states,
only to unite again under a strong emperor. “States cleave
asunder and then coalesce,” is the way China’s classic 14th-
century epic “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” puts it. By
1940 China was split into three kingdoms by Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao
and the Japanese who overran the coast and set up their own
puppet government in Manchuria. The Japanese were driven out,
Mao prevailed over Chiang, and neither Tibet nor Xinjiang have
never really enjoyed a moment’s autonomy ever since. But a
strong emperor had once again reunited