As China’s “ultra-tough, unconventional” crackdown on terrorism continues to intensify in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, last weekend eight were executed for their involvement in the deadly October 2013 car crash near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. While “ultra-tough” tactics have been well documented since the crackdown’s launch in May—for example, mass sentencing rallies, the regulation of Uyghur’s religious and cultural practices, or armed police patrolling regions in- and outside of Xinjiang—the New York Times’ Edward Wong reports on a softer method aiming to address the ethnic tensions that underlie violence in Xinjiang:
Now there is 10-year-old Princess Fragrant, with her girlish braids, embroidered red dress and flowing silk head scarf.
She is the Han vision of a Disney princess transplanted to Xinjiang. Animators in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen are creating a 104-episode cartoon series loosely based on a historical Qing Dynasty imperial consort, the Fragrant Concubine, a Uighur woman who is shrouded in myth. Working under contract with the government of the oasis city of Kashgar, the site of occasionalviolent episodes, these animators have said their aim is to paint a portrait of ethnic harmony and paper over bloody conflicts in Xinjiang.
The plot of the series, which is expected to be broadcast in 15-minute-long episodes over two seasons, follows the adventures of Princess Fragrant, her brother and their ethnic Han and Kazakh friends as they travel across Xinjiang to rescue the princess’s father from the clutches of a greedy Western explorer.