Talking Past Each Other: Chinese and Western Discourses on Ethnic Conflict

When violent ethnic conflict erupted in Xinjiang in July 2009, the official Chinese media and most Western news outlets agreed on many basic facts, but contextualized those facts within contrasting discourses. The Chinese media reasserted the established Party line on Xinjiang in discourses that served both domestic and diplomatic purposes. Western accounts, by contrast, were influenced by discourses linked to the West's self-image and world view. This paper will discuss both Chinese and Western public discourses on the riots, and it will make some suggestions about their relationship to opinion beyond the political and media elites.