“China said Tuesday that it had uncovered an unspecified ‘major terrorist organization,’ a claim that came just ahead of the anniversary of bloody ethnic rioting in the far western region of Xinjiang.

The Public Security Ministry gave little information in its brief announcement, which also coincided with the launch of a government propaganda campaign to promote patriotism in restive Xinjiang, following moves to strengthen security there.

The announcement posted on the Public Security Ministry’s website said only that police had ‘cracked a case involving a major terrorist organization.’ It said details would be given at a news conference Thursday.

“Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by researchers at anti-virus firm McAfee.

‘We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level of sophisticated attack,’ says Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee. ‘It’s totally changing the threat model.’

“Google Inc. defied the Chinese government by saying it will end self-censorship of its search engine and may quit the world’s largest Internet market after attacks on e-mail accounts of human-rights activists.

A series of ‘highly sophisticated’ attacks on Google and at least 20 other companies last month, as well as limits on free speech, led to the decision, Google said in a statement on its Web log. Images of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown were among previously censored results visible on Google.cn today. “

“The government of the vast western region of Xinjiang, which last July was racked by China’s deadliest ethnic violence in decades, is almost doubling its security budget this year compared with 2009, according to a report on Wednesday in China Daily, an official English-language newspaper.

The move is an indication of how deeply worried Chinese officials are that members of the Uighurs and Han ethnic groups could clash again in the cities and desert oasis towns of the oil-rich region, and of the extraordinary measures the officials are taking to clamp down on the area. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking, primarily Muslim people who often say the ethnic Han, who make up the majority of China’s population, discriminate against them. The Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang but are concerned by the displacement of their culture as growing numbers of Han migrants settle in the area. “