BEIJING (AP) - In the airwaves above Tibet and China's western deserts, a battle is under way for the hearts and minds of restive ethnic minorities.
The communist government is pitted against an array of foreign broadcasters ranging from exiled Muslim separatists and Saudi religious radio to Western news services such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
In a region fought over by outside powers for centuries, the broadcasters are trying to cement ethnic unity - or kindle rebellion. It's a high-tech update of the ``Great Game,'' the 19th-century rivalry between Britain and Russia to control Central Asia.
The official Xinhua news agency has warned of the dangers of foreign broadcasting, noting, ``Infiltration by hostile radio stations from abroad into our region has lately become more serious.''
Beijing is fighting back by expanding programming in local languages - new transmitters are extending Chinese radio into remote corners of Tibet and the Muslim region of Xinjiang - and stepping up efforts to jam foreign shortwave broadcasts.
Western broadcasters say jamming, usually the airing of noise at the same frequency, has increased since last fall, and Chinese officials have confirmed they are building jamming facilities.
VOA has heard Chinese opera and banging sounds drowning out its programs in Tibetan since September, said John Buescher, head of the U.S. government agency's Tibetan service.
``The jamming is being called China's new 'Great Wall,''' said Dru Gladney, a Xinjiang expert at the University of Hawaii. ``It's all part of a general package to rein in Xinjiang'' and Tibet.
The stepped-up interference coincides with China's ``develop the West'' program. The effort begun last year is aimed at binding the economy of China's western regions, Tibet and Xinjiang farther north, more closely to Beijing and raising living standards.
The two regions have been the scene of a separatist struggle since communist troops arrived in 1950. Over the past decade, Tibetan and Xinjiang cities have seen a wave of protests and bombings. China claims foreigners incite the unrest and train militants.
Two of the biggest foreign broadcasters are financed by the U.S. government.
VOA transmits four hours of news a day in two Tibetan dialects. Radio Free Asia, set up after the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists, has eight hours daily of Tibetan programming.
Xinjiang's biggest Muslim ethnic group is the Uighurs. Though Radio Free Asia has broadcast one hour a day in the Uighur language since 1998, most programming in the language comes from Muslim countries.
A state-run Saudi station beams out two hours a day of Islamic religious programs in Uighur, but experts say it attracts few listeners. An Uzbek government station broadcasts secular news in Uighur.
More worrisome to China is programming by Uighur exiles broadcast from Almaty, capital of the neighboring Central Asian republic of Kazakstan. Uighurs are ethnically related to Kazaks and other Central Asians.
Radio Almaty broadcasts one to two hours a day into Xinjiang's Yili valley, the site of anti-Chinese rioting in 1997.
It carries news of Uighurs living abroad and a ``mildly anti-Chinese message,'' said Nicolas Becquelin, a Xinjiang specialist at the School for Advanced Social Sciences in Paris. Becquelin said the broadcasters are forced to temper that anti-Chinese message to avoid upsetting Kazak authorities.
China has pressured Kazakstan and other neighbors to clamp down on anti-Chinese agitation, holding out access to import markets as an incentive.
Chinese anxieties about foreign broadcasting got a rare public airing at the annual session of the national legislature in Beijing in early March.
The head of the Xinjiang delegation called for more money for radio and television and to combat ``subversive broadcasts,'' especially in the Yili valley.
``These broadcasts are fanning separatism ... and carrying out propaganda by religious extremists,'' said Abulahat Abdurixit. ``Their ultimate objective is to destroy and break up China.''
Xinhua said the delegation wanted much more than the $400,000 spent last year on those activities.
In Tibet, China has quadrupled its Tibetan-language radio staff to 80 in the last year, according to Western observers.
Voice of Tibet, a private broadcaster based in Oslo, Norway, says it tries to evade jamming by switching frequencies twice a day. Chinese jammers then rush to find and block the new signal.
``They move when we move,'' said Oystein Alme, manager of the service. ``We can see they are getting faster.''
AP-NY-03-27-01 0242EST
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.