i just saw a documentary abt the muslim Uighurs living in old city of Kashgar and how they are fearful of change in their lives as the Chinese government is bring this major change to them...

- relocating them to housing blocks from their centuries old homes in the old part of the city with the promise that they will reconstruct their old city into safe earthquake proof homes following the old style of building

it reminds me of how Indians, Malays and Chinese alike were moved from our kampungs and slums into HDB flats in the 70's and 80's in order to make way for redevelopment..

should Uighurs fear the chinese government's intention to bring change? Singapore's government were predominantly chinese and did our communities fear the changes they wrought in our homes and societies?

Uighurs are Muslims and they will not fear anything and if the Uighurs get mad at the government they might even let the Taliban or Al Qaeda visit Kashgar and declare Jihad.

The problem of integration in Singapore and Xinjiang are very, very different. There were no serious ideological differences in Singapore during the re-development. The Ideological differences in Xinjiang has to be understood well in order to resolve the problem. I believe that the Xinjiang issue is going to be much more problematic than that in Tibet.

yeah, but then again it's more like if the Singaporean government conquered some neighboring island. put up some infrastructure and started slowly changing the demographics to suit their needs...

They were first under Russian administration before handed down to China isn't it?

No. Russia has never conquered there.

when Singaporeans were resettled in new housing development, there was an active policy to prevent the growth of racial ghettoes, so each housing estates had to meet certain quotas of racial component... in other words, each housing estate must have a certain number of chinese, malays and indians, and you couldn't change that criteria no matter what.

it was a way to ensure that the different racial groups do not form a ghetto-ised community and are 'cajoled' to mingle...

although that said, its sad but housing develoment estates do not really promote any form of mingling.. the old familiar kampung courtyards and pasar malams (night markets) kept people friendly and neighborly, but nowadays, the people in high rise flats do not mix freely

Certainly intermingling of people is preferable to selective ghettos. But that does not guarantee integration and this shows the ignorance of the early planners. Some cultures are simply immiscible. This is a factor missed by most people because of ignorance of the culture.