China Ousts Top Official After Protests

HONG KONG — The top Communist official in Urumqi in western China was dismissed on Saturday as a large deployment of the military police appeared to have brought a measure of peace to the city after two days of large street protests.

Li Zhi, the party secretary of Urumqi, lost his post, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday evening. He became the most senior person to be removed since ethnic tensions erupted there in rioting in July.

Beijing officials also sent to Urumqi a special medical inspection unit from the People’s Liberation Army to investigate reports that people had been stabbed with needles.

It is somewhat unusual for China’s leaders to replace a senior local official so quickly after protests — in this case, while large deployments of armed police officers are still blocking intersections in Urumqi and most shops are still closed. The Beijing leadership has often sought to avoid giving the impression of giving in to public pressure.

The removal of Mr. Li “shows that Xinjiang is viewed as a strategic region where there cannot be the kind of social protests we have seen in recent days,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The latest protests were notable for including large crowds of people who specifically called on Friday for the removal of Mr. Li’s boss, Wang Lequan, the powerful party secretary of restive Xinjiang region, of which Urumqi is the capital. Mr. Wang, a member of the Politburo believed to be a close ally of President Hu Jintao, has run the nominally autonomous region for 15 years and is famous within China for taking a hard line toward minorities.

“They want to protect Wang Lequan, because firing a Politburo member would send a message they do not want to send,” namely that hard-line policies toward ethnic minorities can be questioned, said Li Cheng, the research director of the Brookings Institution’s China Center.

The Urumqi party chief seems to have been sacrificed partly to protect Mr. Wang, but also because he proved incapable of keeping order.

“Usually if a local leader could not deal with two crises that occur in a short period of time, that leader will be fired,” Li Cheng said.

Also forced out on Saturday was the director of Xinjiang’s public security department, Liu Yaohua. The party chief of the region’s Aksu Prefecture, Zhu Changjie, replaced him.

The crowds in Urumqi last week have been accusing Mr. Wang and his aides of not being tough enough. The violence last week involves renewed tensions between Uighurs, the dominant ethnic group in Xinjiang, and Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group for China over all.

Han have been moving in large numbers to Xinjiang since the 1960s, occupying many of the best jobs; according to the authorities, most of the victims in the rioting in July, in which at least 197 people died, were Han.

Tens of thousands of Han protesters took to the streets on Thursday as word spread that young Uighurs had reportedly been stabbing people with needles. Zhang Hong, the deputy mayor of Urumqi, announced Friday that the unrest on Thursday had resulted in five deaths with 14 people injured, Xinhua said.

Friday’s protests were much smaller and more peaceful than Thursday’s.

Through Thursday, 531 people had gone to hospitals claiming to have been stabbed, and 106 of them had physical wounds consistent with having suffered such a stabbing, Xinhua said. Some Han have voiced worry that the needles could carry H.I.V.

Before his fall from power, Mr. Li had been the most visible Chinese official seeking to respond to the unrest in his city last week. He had raced to a succession of gathering places and tried to persuade residents to return home.

Zhu Hailun, the secretary of the Communist Party’s Xinjiang legislative and political affairs committee, will replace Mr. Li.

A troubled quiet returned on Saturday to Urumqi, residents said in telephone interviews. “The military police are everywhere, and they have a very firm hold on the city,” said a taxi driver who gave his family name, Li.

Most of the downtown area, the scene of some of the largest protests, was blocked off to traffic.

“There’s no one out there, every store is still closed,” said a downtown resident who gave only her family name, Liu.