To slake its thirst for natural resources, the PRC–like the Qing Empire whose territorial legacy Beijing continues to claim–looks west.
To satisfy the energy demands of its fast-growing coastal cities, China is building a 4,200-kilometer, or 2,600- mile, pipeline from here that will traverse the craggy steppes and sparsely populated villages of the old Silk Road, and run directly to Shanghai and possibly to Beijing. But the manner and terms under which the government is extracting resources from Xinjiang angers many of the region’s 7.5 million ethnic-Uιghur Muslims.
Many Uιghur want independence from China, and they accuse Beijing of using the energy resources to tighten its grip on Xinjiang. They also say the region receives little benefit from its own energy reserves because energy production is controlled by China’s state-owned companies, consumed by China’s coastal cities and taxed in a way that the central government gets most of the revenues.
The IHT article above gives a little background into Beijing’s claims to Xinjiang, mentioning the founding of Eastern Turkestan in the 1930s and the subsequent annexation of the territory by the PRC in 1949. It leaves out that Xinjiang was, of course, a part of the Qing empire though the