KASHGAR: Kashgar, once a far-flung outpost at the heart of the ancient Silk Road and home to the Turkic speaking Muslim Uighurs, is no longer quite so remote.

After 55 years of Chinese communist domination, it can no more claim to be an isolated trading oasis that fortifies travellers before they tackle the snowy Pamirs and Tianshan mountain passes that give onto modern day Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.

The effect of a newly constructed railway and roads as well as increased air travel has quickened the pace of change to such an extent that modern Kashgar bears little resemblance to the city that for the last 2,000 years welcomed Taklamakan desert caravans.

Five years ago China opened a railroad connecting the outpost with the sprawling provincial capital Urumqi, nearly 1,500 kilometres to the east, which has resulted in growing numbers of Chinese migrants threatening to swamp the indigenous Uighur.

Kashgar, which lies inside the presently Chinese-controlled Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, sees its train station disgorge hundreds of passengers from the capital Urumqi twice a day, while 20 daily flights now ply the route.

Although official government statistics say Uighurs, the dominant ethnic minority in the region, make up 90 per cent of Kasghar's nearly 200,000 residents, one look around indicates a much greater proportion are Chinese.

Stanley Toops, an expert on the region at Miami University in Ohio, said there has been a concerted effort by the Chinese to develop Xinjiang and the economic development had not taken ethnic issues into consideration.

The migration has led to soulless blocks of concrete buildings being erected to house Chinese, emblematic of so much of modern China where the Communist Party vanquished traditional concepts of aestheticism when it took power in 1949.

They now ring the old heart of Kashgar, taking up about half of the city whose main avenues are a sprawl of white-tiled low rises, housing karaoke lounges, garishly lit restaurants and small shops full of cheap goods found in any small to medium-sized mainland China city.

Just beyond the towering statue of Mao Zedong that watches over the People's Square, simple, traditional mud-brick houses border the alleys of the old quarter that lead to stacked adobe-like homes, many only accessible by tilt ladders.

At the ancient city's food bazaars, men donning traditional Kufi skull caps chatter away while tucking into bowls of thick greasy yellow noodles, topped with green peppers, tomatoes and hunks of meat.

Women in hijab, head scarves, smile, beckoning passer by's to sit and eat amid the pungency of Central Asian spices and gamy mutton exposed to the hot, dusty sun. Most telling though is that there are few Chinese faces in the old city, a fact that underscores the simmering tensions between the two ethnic groups that has on occasion erupted into violent street battles.

Xinjiang has at one time or another come under the rule of various ethnic tribes including the Uighur, Mongol, Kazhak, Tibetan and the Chinese. Even Britain and czarist Russia penetrated the region's desert at the height of 19th century Western colonialism, playing out a series of political manoeuvres commonly referred to as the "Great Game".

Since Xinjiang last came under Chinese domination in the 1870s, it has twice declared independence as East Turkestan in the 1930s and 1940s. Hopes for self-determination were rekindled with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the push for sovereignty continues to stew as the Chinese continue their push into ancient Silk road trading towns such as Yarkand, Hotan and Niya.

Throughout the 1990s Uighur groups campaigned often violently for a separate state, prompting the Chinese to brutally crack down and a police presence remains heavy throughout the city and the province.

Amnesty International said in July that China was using the global war on terror to justify repression of its Uighur community. -AFP