Inside China's War on Terrorism

Abstract

China's war on terrorism is among its most prominent and least understood of campaigns. An indigenous insurgency with links to the global jihad has threatened the government's grip on a massive region of northwestern China known as Xinjiang. Riots, bombings, ambushes, and assassinations have rocked the region under separatist and Islamist banners. China acted early and forcefully, and, although initially brutal, their efforts represent one of the few successes in the global struggle against Islamist terrorism. China's campaign, which has reshaped local society and government institutions, has been so effective that scholars and statesmen now debate whether China genuinely confronts a terrorist threat from Xinjiang.

Notes

^*Martin I. Wayne is currently working for the US government. He is the author of China's War on Terrorism: Counter-Insurgency, Politics and Internal Security (Routledge, 2008). The ideas and opinions are the author's alone and in no way represent the United States government. The author thanks anonymous referees of the JCC and Phillip Saunders, Joseph McMillan, and Suisheng Zhao for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

^1. E.g. Chinese Communist Party, author unknown, Zhongguo Gongchandang Yu Xinjiang Minzu Wenti [The Chinese Communist Party's Xinjiang Ethnic-Minority Problem] (CCP, 2005); Dru Gladney, ‘Xinjiang: China's West Bank?’, Current History 106(656), (2002).

^2. Joseph Kahn, ‘Torture is “widespread” in China, UN investigator says’, The New York Times, (3 December 2005); Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch World Report 2006, (18 January 2006), available at: www.hrw.org; Human Rights Watch, Essential Background Overview of Human Rights Issues in China, (31 December 2005), available at: www.hrw.org.

^3. For a powerful description of this event see Amnesty International, ‘People's Republic of China Rebiya Kadeer's personal account of Gulja after the massacre on 5 February [1997]’, (2007).

^4. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); Bruce Hoffman, ‘Insurgency and counterinsurgency in Iraq’, RAND National Security Research Division Occasional Paper OP-127-IPC/CMEPP, (June 2004); Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Omar Nasiri, Inside the Jihad (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Rohan Gunaratna, ‘The post-Madrid face of al Qaeda’, The Washington Quarterly 27(3), (Summer 2004); Thomas A. Marks, Maoist People's War in Post-Vietnam Asia (Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press, 2006); Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); J. Boyer Bell, The Dynamics of the Armed Struggle (London: Frank Cass, 1998); John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

^5. For example, Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda.

^6. For example, Martin I. Wayne, ‘Al Qaeda's China problem’, PacNet 8A, CSIS, (23 February 2007); Martin I. Wayne, ‘Five lessons from China's war on terrorism’, Joint Force Quarterly, (October 2007).

^7. Shirley A. Kan, US–China Counterterrorism Cooperation: Issues for US Policy (Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, 27 June 2006).

^8. United States Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 (2004); James Millward, Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment (Washington: East–West Center, 2004); Yitzhak Shichor, ‘The great wall of steel: military and strategy’, in S. Fredric Starr, ed., Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), p. 412; Michael Dillon, Xinjiang—China's Muslim Far Northwest (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004).

^9. Information Office of State Council, East Turkistan Terrorist Forces Cannot Get Away with Impunity (21 January 2002); ‘FM spokesman: ETIM a wholly terrorist organization’, People's Daily, (13 September 2002).

^10. For example, ‘Role of Xinjiang production, Construction Corps important: White Paper’, Xinhua (26 May 2003); People's Republic of China, Information Office of the State Council, ‘China's national defense in 2006’, (31 December 2006) available through Xinhua; People's Republic of China, Information Office of the State Council, China's National Defense in 2004, (27 December 2004), available at: www.fas.org; People's Republic of China, China's National Defense in 2002, (2003), available at: news.xinhuanet.com; Shichor, ‘The great wall of steel’; David Shambaugh, Modernizing China's Military: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002); Harold Brown et al., Chinese Military Power (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2003). See also, International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance (1989–2006). IISS consistently estimates the PAP strength at two to three times the force strength presented by the 2006 Chinese defense white paper.

^11. In an action reminiscent of the French head-scarf controversy or more dated debates in Turkey, since 2000 Uyghur language education has been curtailed at the university level, being currently allowed only for courses in which the language is deemed directly necessary (such as Xinjiang's history). Restrictions on beards and clothing also follow this pattern of forced acculturation as well.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin I. Wayne

12 *Martin I. Wayne is currently working for the US government. He is the author of China's War on Terrorism: Counter-Insurgency, Politics and Internal Security (Routledge, 2008). The ideas and opinions are the author's alone and in no way represent the United States government. The author thanks anonymous referees of the JCC and Phillip Saunders, Joseph McMillan, and Suisheng Zhao for their comments on earlier versions of this article.