ABSTRACT
The campaigns of Uyghur violence and state repression continued throughout Xinjiang with monotonous regularity in 2013 and 2014, many incidents following the pattern set in Khotan and Kashgar. The series of violent incidents that began with the Urumqi riots of July 5, 2009, and included violent attacks by militants in Xinjiang, Beijing and Kunming destroyed that hope. As had been agreed long in advance, Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012 and President of the People's Republic of China in March 2013: concurrently he was appointed as chairman of the two Central Military Commissions. Tian'anmen Square is a highly sensitive location. It is surrounded by key symbols of the Chinese state and was the site of Mao Zedong's proclamation of the PRC in 1949: a huge portrait of Mao still hangs over the entrance.
