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BEIJING — The Chinese government acknowledged for the first time that police killed 12 people during July 5 unrest in western China, but put the blame squarely on rioters, saying they stockpiled weapons and planned synchronized attacks on targets across the city of Urumqi. But an expert on the situation in western China’s Xinjiang province said such accusations should be treated with skepticism. Gardner Bovingdon, a Uighur expert at Indiana University, said the government has followed the same formula with many large-scale protests in recent Chinese history: saying the unrest was premeditated to suggest it has less legitimacy than if it were spontaneous.
