The Chinese are losing in Xinjiang. They're not losing the armed war, because they have a massive advantage in numbers and equipment, but they're rapidly losing any hope of winning the hearts and minds of the Uighur people. The Chinese have generally been pretty smart with this kind of thing, with their "go west" economic development campaign etc ... realizing that their best way to consolidate their hold on these far-flung and only semi-Chinese provinces is to provide a better life for the people. As events recently in Tibet and now Xinjiang have shown, they haven't succeeded. Local Communist Party chief Li Zhi demonstrates exactly why they've been losing. Despite lots of rhetoric about how Chinese is a multi-ethnic country with 56 nationalities (see here for a list), the latest events show that there's a stark contrast between Han Chinese and other ethnic minorities such as the Uighurs. I've mentioned Li in a previous post, showing another example of how he's taking a bad situation and making it worse. He continues in a similar vein. He told:

a televised news conference that many people had been arrested, including students. "To those who committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them," he said, adding government forces would crack down on any security risk.
As I predicted, the Chinese could be relied upon to respond with a heavy hand, which is only going to make things worse in Xinjiang.