China restored internet services in Xinjiang, its restive north-western region, on Friday, 10 months after cutting them off following bloody ethnic riots last year.
The move, which triggered jubilation among residents, comes on the heels of the replacement of the region’s hardline Communist party chief with a media-savvy new leader.
The appointment of Zhang Chunxian last month, who has a business background and has been relatively open to the media in his previous job as party chief of Hunan province, raised expectations that Beijing could adopt a slightly more flexible stance in running Xinjiang.
The Communist party is expected to hold its first-ever high-level working meeting to discuss policy towards the region later this month. The region is dominated by Uighurs, a Turkic, mostly Muslim people, but their number is now being matched by China’s dominant Han ethnic group following decades of immigration.
The regional government said Friday internet access had been “fully restored”, but warned internet users not to post content considered illegal and encouraged them to report any such content found on the web.
“The internet is an important platform for life, work, exchanges and entertainment for the modern people,” it said in a statement. “Internet users need to build a healthy, civilised, harmonious internet environment and must not do things that violate ethnic solidarity, social stability and the national interest.”
The authorities had cut off all internet connections and suspended some mobile phone services on July 6 last year following a night of rioting in which Uighur protesters attacked Han Chinese after Uighur migrant workers had been killed in a factory brawl in the southern manufacturing hub of Guangdong.
The government has described the riot as a separatist conspiracy and said it was organised with the help of text messaging and internet communication.
The authorities had gradually restored some basic services in recent months, with access to a few state media websites being opened in December and some Chinese web portals, e-mail and text messaging earlier this year.
Xinjiang residents were jubilant on Friday over their regained connection to the world. “I feel reinvigorated. It’s so good to see you all again,” wrote a resident of Kashgar, China’s westernmost city, on QQ, the instant messaging tool.
“The sun has risen again in Xinjiang at 2am!!!” wrote a blogger in Xinjiang.
However, in a sign that the government is keeping tight tabs on social networking tools, on which it has tightened the screws all over the country in the past year, Xinjiang-related chatrooms on several Chinese websites remained closed.
