Passengers ride a subway in Beijing, 2008, amid purported threats that Turkistan Islamic Party might target buses, trains and planes during the Olympics. Greg Baker / Press Association. All rights reserved.China’s long-simmering problem with Uyghur separatism and terrorism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has been increasingly connected to the broader regional and global dynamics of contemporary jihadism. While this has been driven by developing connections between small numbers of Uyghur militants with global and regional jihadist movements, it has also been precipitated by Beijing’s instrumentalization of terrorism in both the realms of domestic and foreign policy.
Domestically, the intense securitization of Xinjiang and the Uyghur issue over the past two years has provided significant ballast for Beijing’s focus on ensuring state or regime security. In the foreign policy context, the rise of ISIS to prominence, combined with increasing incidences of terrorism within or directly linked to Xinjiang, has permitted Beijing both to justify its hard-line repression of dissent in Xinjiang and assert its commitment to global efforts to combat terrorism.
China and ISIS
In 2013, China’s then Middle East envoy Wu Sike claimed that hundreds of Uyghurs were travelling to Syria, usually via Turkey to fight with various anti-Assad groups, including ISIS. Li Shaoxian, vice-president of the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) in Beijing, amplified these claims earlier this year, claiming that “many hundreds or thousands” of Uyghurs may be fighting with ISIS. The Chinese media has also been replete with reported ‘confessions’ of alleged Uyghur returnee militants detailing their recruitment and training by ISIS.
