Riots in the restive, mainly Muslim region of Xinjiang could hardly have come at a worse time for Beijing as the Government prepares to celebrate its biggest party for a decade.

Nothing must rain on its parade. After all, the planned march past the capital’s famed Gate of Heavenly Peace — Tiananmen — where Chairman Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949, is to be trumpeted as a moment of national unity and patriotic pride. Signs that minority Turkic-speaking Uighurs in the far West are disgruntled contradict all the official messages of harmony and ethnic unity.

Propaganda mandarins will have to move into overdrive to calm fraying tempers in the far West, while security forces will be beefed up in troublespots — such as Xinjiang and Tibet — where local people with grievances might try to spoil the fun. After all, this is a moment when the nation’s 1.3 billion people must be seen, above all, to be happy and living together as one. Unrest threatens to jeopardise the whole fiesta.

Security officials will start to see conspiracies behind the riot. They will attribute the unrest to outside influences, to a small minority with ulterior motives.

The chances are almost zero that the authorities will try to investigate why the Uighurs in this case, or the Tibetans last year, feel aggrieved.

Such analysis is at odds with the knee-jerk response to send in yet more troops and security reinforcements. They can afford to take no chances. With such an important anniversary looming, they will assess that this is no time to try to address possible grievances.

It is easier to attribute the troubles to a plot, implement a crackdown that will cow the populace and assure that no one dares to make trouble. They then have only to wait for the next outburst of ethnic strife, which will surely come.

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