China’s ‘War on Terrorism’

Abstract

China’s dilemmas with respect to Uyghur terrorism are increasingly transnational in nature, defined by the interpenetration of ‘internal’ and ‘external’ security issues and threats. The chapter argues that this ‘internal-external’ security nexus has conditioned government responses to the threat of Uyghur terrorism in important ways in the context of its domestic governance of Xinjiang and its foreign policy. Domestically, the growing trans-nationalization of Uyghur militancy since the end of the Cold War has contributed to the effective securitization of Uyghur ethnic identity and been a spur to the development of new legislative and institutional measures to counter Uyghur terrorism. Internationally, Beijing has since the mid-1990s deployed the issue of Uyghur separatism and terrorism to, first, structure its relationship with independent Central Asia, and second, to legitimate the implementation of repression of Uyghur opposition in Xinjiang. The chapter concludes by noting that China’s responses to the threat of terrorism, while bearing individual and context-specific characteristics nonetheless displays some parallels with global trends with respect to counter-terrorism in the post-9/11 era.