Why Uyghur and Tibet are important to China

The Uyghur region is like the heart of China's energy security. This is because 40% of China's total oil production comes from this very place.
If the Uyghur Autonomous Region were to become independent, China would overnight fall into a position of having to rely heavily on energy imports. This would shake China's industrial foundation to its core and drastically weaken its influence on the global stage.
Furthermore, the Uyghur region is an area where terrorist activities are most frequent, and the subsequent security chaos would be a burden too heavy for China to bear.
In the case of Tibet, it is the source of major rivers, including the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, which are China's lifelines. If Tibet were to become independent and China were to lose control over water resources, it would be equivalent to handing over China's faucet directly to Tibet.
A situation where the drinking water, agricultural water, and industrial water for a massive population are subject to Tibet's decisions would be an unimaginable worst-case scenario for China.
Water scarcity is already a serious national challenge for China, and Tibetan independence would clearly turn this problem into an eternally unsolvable catastrophe.
The independence of Tibet and Uyghur is a matter of China's survival. It is not merely a territorial dispute involving ethnic minorities, but could trigger a chain reaction: the loss of energy and water resources—the nation's lifelines—the collapse of the ideology of a unified state, and the eventual dismantling of the great civilization known as China itself.