Separatism, Splittism, Terrorism, Activism: What’s in a name in China’s ‘War on

Terror’?
[China] also opposes unrestrained expansion of anti-terror war, believing that terrorism will not
be eliminated by military means alone, but by consorted political, economic, cultural and
diplomatic efforts. (Guang 2004: 527)

Intro
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks upon the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the world
has witnessed and cast measure upon the American response to terrorism and its efficacy. The
same can be said of many large democratic states, whose actions remain heavily scrutinized.
Less frequently mentioned or considered is China’s involvement in the International War on
terror. Such an endeavour is no easy task considering China’s opaque political system,
authoritarian control of the media, and often obscure leadership intentions. ‘That China is so
large and complex that one can look there for proof of any thesis, and find it, complicates the
situation’ (Johnson-Freese 2003: 52). To some, China’s support of the U.S.-led war on terror
seemed to contradict its declared avoidance of state alliances, and jeopardise its obstinate
position on protecting state sovereignty at all costs. Conversely, other analysts (Lai 2003)
suggest that by aligning with the US after September 11, China has instead sought to strengthen
its sovereignty and national unity by justifying its suppression of separatist movements in the
North Western Xinjiang region (131). While China has a long history of often violent state
control and equating independent religious activities and political dissent with the statutory crime
of “separatism” (or more accurately translated, “splittism”), it wasn’t until it joined the war on
terror that it unequivocally linked all dissenting voices in Xinjiang with terrorism. China now
describes this once understated and secretive issue as an integral facet of the international war on
terror. Despite a lack of media exposure in the West the “Xinjiang Problem” takes high
precedence in China, and a recent internal security report concluded that ‘the independence
movement in Xinjiang is the main threat to China’s stability, ranking concern over this above
Tibet and unemployed workers’(Hyer 2006: 81). With an estimated one million troops stationed
in Xinjiang (ibid), and no immediate external threat, their presence indicates the significance of
ethnic unrest to China, and warns of the magnitude of violence that threatens the region.
The following paper addresses China’s approach to terrorism, specifically outlining how China’s
position has changed after it’s involvement in the global war on terror. Beginning with a brief
examination of the history and strategic importance of the Xinjiang region, this paper proceeds to
describe China’s initial treatment of unrest as isolated crimes of separatism and splittism. This
approach is contrasted starkly with China’s behaviour following the watershed event of 9-11,
when it seized the opportunity to rally international support for its suppression of unrest in
Xinjiang, deflect human rights criticisms, and counter U.S. influence in the region. China’s
subsequent approach has been to broaden the definition of terrorism, exaggerate the threat that it
poses, and violently confront opposition. Martin Wayne (2007) has recently suggested that
China’s efforts have successfully kept the global jihad from spreading into its territory. As this
paper counters, the lack of popular support for anti-government violence in Xinjiang is
predicated not on China’s violent suppression, but rather on the moderate economic, social and
political gains made in Xinjiang in the last 30 years. Consequently, unless China renews its
efforts to address the valid social and political concerns in the region, viewing dissent as activism
rather than
1
terrorism, violence will invariably erupt in Xinjiang again.
History
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, as it is officially2
known to the Chinese, or as Uyghur
nationalists call it “Uyghuristan”
3
or “East Turkistan” , is a vast region that occupies a sixth of
China in the North West . Despite its immense size, Xinjiang contains great expanses of
inhospitable dessert and mountains and as a result holds little more than 1 percent of China’s 4
population, of which over sixty percent of Xinjiang’s eighteen million citizens are Muslims .
Under the5
Chinese Communists, Muslims were divided among ten official nationalities, with the
Uyghur comprising an ethnic majority in Xinjiang (Gladney 2005a). Despite the Uyghur
majority, migration of Han Chinese started in the 1950s when the army sent troops to occupy
Xinjiang, and has increased at a rapid pace as China has sought to develop the region. The Han
population of Xinjiang has risen from nearly zero in 1950 to more than 40% of the current
population (Forney 2002). Despite coexisting, the Han and the Uyghurs share very few
demographic similarities, as the Han speak Putonghua (Mandarin) rather than 6
Uyghur, and enjoy
higher levels of economic development, employment and literacy rates. Certainly, the rapid
growth of the Han has contributed to ethnic tensions in the region, especially amid Uyghur
nationalist accusations that this growth has come at their expense.
From China’s perspective, 7the stability of Xinjiang is a high priority based on the strategic and
economic value of the area . Xinjiang is viewed as an important area to absorb high population
growth from the Central and Coastal regions, and it is additionally home to several major nuclear
testing facilities,8 due to rich reserves of uranium and copper. Also invaluable, is Xinjiang’s links
to Central Asia, as it has the only major road to these countries. China ‘desperately want[s] to
maintain hold of Xinjiang, fearing its loss would incite the [Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)]
collapse and possibly the secession of Taiwan and Tibet’ (Dwyer 2005: 89). Despite China’s
ambition of unity, Xinjiang has a history of independence movements and since the mid- 9
nineteenth century, there have been three rebellions that resulted in independent Uyghur states .
Following the turmoil and austerity of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s 10
was a period of
liberalized cultural and political freedoms for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang (Dwyer 2005: 4).
However, by the mid-1990s, China began to credit several isolated incidents of unrest in
Xinjiang, as well as rising overt displays of Islam to the lax cultural and political freedoms of the
1980s. This initiated a wave of political and cultural crackdowns accompanied by ‘largely covert
shifts in language and cultural policy aimed at further sinicizing the region’ (Dwyer 2005: 5).
Pre-9/11: Separatism/Splittism
China has been wary of ‘splittism’ since the 1950s, continually suggesting that it poses the
greatest threat to national security (Dwyer 2005: 54). While the precise extent of the unrest in
Xinjiang is obscured by unreliable and manipulated CCP data, internal official Chinese sources
suggest that violent acts related to Xinjiang separatist movements numbered in the thousands in
the 1990s and that ‘[i]n 1998 alone, more than seventy serious incidents occurred, causing more
than 380 deaths’ (Lai 2003: 126). In response to this unrest the Chinese government
implemented the ‘Strike Hard! Maximum Pressure!’ Campaign, aimed at eradicating the ‘three
evils’ of separatism, terrorism, and religious extremism, although as Dwyer (2005) has noted, the
campaign was primarily concerned with “splittists” rather than religious terrorists (54). As the
name indicates, the campaign did indeed ‘Strike Hard,’ subjecting Uyghurs who expressed any
government dissent to rapid, secretive, and summary trials, where the imposition of the death
penalty was common. Vicziany (2003) has reported that Uyghurs executed for separatism was up
to six times greater than their proportion of China’s population in the late 1990s (246). In
addition to the covert policies which stifled cultural, religious and political freedoms for the
Uyghurs, and the overt strong-handed policies of the ‘Strike Hard Campaign,’ the state also
initiated the ‘Great Western Development Program.’ Recognizing the economic, social and
political causes of unrest in Xinjiang, ‘Beijing hoped to lift the living standard of ethnic
minorities, rid separatism of its economic catalysts, and minimize ethnic clashes and
opportunities for the West to interfere’ (Lai 2003: 11
131), although the stated objectives of the
program were limited to economic development . In obvious contrast to China’s treatment of
political unrest in Xinjiang after 9-11, both the threat and the state’s response to it were
previously seen as a private domestic issue, rather than an international one. (Dwyer 2005: 54)
Appreciating that political unrest was not conducive to foreign investment in the region and
fearful of Western intervention similar to NATO’s involvement in Kosovo, China principally
downplayed and even denied the existence of ethnic conflict in Xinjiang. ‘Separatists were
labelled as mentally ill and the whole problem was simply covered up’ (Luard 2003).
Particularly when trying to raise foreign investment, Beijing portrayed any ethnic strife in the
region as rare, implausible and criminal, rather than religious, or terrorist acts. Just four months
before 9-11 CCP officials were declaring that the ‘[f]acts prove that Xinjiang is stable, security
problems do not exist at all, and personal safety is completely guaranteed’ (Shicor 2006: 106).
Beijing’s approach to the conflict in Xinjiang of aggressive suppression and forced assimilation
inevitably resulted in violent tension in the years prior to 9-11. Many Uyghurs, particularly
young males from Xinjiang’s major cities, reacted to Beijing’s restrictive and oppressive policies
with demonstrations of resistance. Although, as Gladney (2005a) has observed, this resistance
showed little uniformity and while some groups supported violent separatist tactics, others
promoted peaceful ecological causes, or greater religious freedoms, native language training,
programs to prevent and treat AIDS, or even anti-alcohol campaigns. During this period the
Western Development Project made marked industrial, and employment gains in the region, and
as Sautman (1998) has noted, the ethnic minority affirmative action policies of the Chinese
government, succeed to a degree in reducing tensions in the region (96). Despite limited
resistance in the early 1990s, by all accounts, previous to 9-11 ‘terrorism’ in Xinjiang had been
subsiding significantly (Shicor 2006: 106). Yet in the wake of 9-11, after years of denying the
existence of ethnic tension in Xinjiang, the CCP abruptly changed tactics and ‘initiated an active
diplomatic and propaganda campaign against “East Turkestan terrorist forces;”’ (Becquelin
2004: 39) a label that has since come to describe any Uyghur suspected of separatist or splittist
activities.
Post-9/11: Terrorism
China’s ‘Strike Hard!’ campaign drew heavy criticism from human rights organisations as well
as the International Community in the years preceding 9-11. Moreover, the Chinese leadership
was acutely aware that increased unrest in the region could possibly provoke Western
Intervention. China was particularly concerned with the implications of NATOs involvement in
Kosovo in 1999 with the proclaimed goal of protecting an ethnic minority people from
aggression and ethnic cleansing by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Thus, beyond its own
concern with rebellion in the region, China also needed to address international accusations that
its suppression of the Uyghurs was anti-Muslim. China, increasingly dependent on
predominately Muslim nations for energy and export markets, could not risk alienating these
nations with its violent campaign against ‘splittists’ who shared a language, culture and religion,
with many of these nations. As early as 1997, an ethnic riot in the Xinjiang city of Yining that
left no less than nine Uyghur Muslims dead and several hundreds arrested, brought
condemnations from Turkey and warnings from Saudi Arabia about the ‘suffering of [its]
Muslims whose human rights are violated’ (Gladney 2003: 459). Consequently 9-11, provided
China with the opportunity to include Xinjiang in the international war on terror, elevating the
conflict from minority suppression to an international counter-terrorism campaign.
A fundamental ambition of this international campaign has been to broaden the definition and
criteria of terrorism to meet the current needs of China’s leadership. Dwyer (2005) has
demonstrated a ‘clearly demarcated shift’ in Chinese rhetoric describing the Uyghur nationalists
since 9-11 from ‘separatists’ to ‘Islamic terrorists’ (x). This research also indicates a distinct
paucity of Chinese-language mention of the phrase ‘Uyghur Terrorism,’ suggesting ‘that this
discourse on terrorism is actually intended for an international audience, not a domestic one’
(57). By all accounts, China’s relabelling of ‘separatists’ as ‘terrorists’ has had it’s intended
effect in the West as ‘[m]ost Western media, which previously had paid little attention to
[Xinjiang,] have followed suit, equating these fringe separatist groups with terrorists’ (ibid: x).
For the first time ever, Chinese authorities provided specific details about the violence in
Xinjiang in a January 2002 White Paper. The paper, describing the activities of alleged ‘East
Turkestan’ Uyghur terrorist organizations, highlighted accused bombing and assassination
campaigns ‘consisting of more than 200 incidents resulting in 162 deaths and 440 people injured,
the most recent incident taking place in 1998’ (Becquelin 2004: 39). Any study of the conflict in
Xinjiang finds these exact same statistics cited repeatedly throughout both Chinese and Western
academic and official literature. However, Shicor’s (2006) research indicates that the credibility
of these numbers is highly speculative. The White Paper also ‘asserted that Uyghur organizations
had received training and funding from Pakistan and Afghanistan, including direct financing
from Osama Bin Laden’12(Becquelin 2004: 39). The White Paper went as far as to include legally
registered organizations in its list of terrorist organizations, asking for cooperation from the
international community in their prosecution. Subsequently, in the US’s efforts to enlist
international support for its own war on terror, it ‘agreed to cosponsor the inclusion of a little-
known Uyghur organization, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), on the UN list of
terrorist organizations linked to Al-Qaeda and subject to asset freezing’ (Becquelin 2004: 40).
The U.S. and UN came under criticism for siding with China without any outside validation of
the government’s claims, in addition to a ‘lack of evidence that these groups even continued to
exist given that the last recorded incident was in 1998, and the glaringly opportunistic timing of
the disclosure’ (ibid); the effect was to justify China’s actions, and bolster its counter-terrorism
efforts.
As the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Zhu Bangzao has explained: ‘We think terrorism should be
opposed no matter where it manifests itself, where it comes from - and no matter who the
perpetrators and their targets are’ (Lam 2001). Clearly, such an approach allows the Chinese
leadership a carte blanche in their domestic campaign against terrorism. Following the UN’s
support of China’s anti-terror efforts, the government proceeded to categorise all pro-
independence groups, and in fact all dissent in Xinjiang, under the label of “East Turkestan,”
equating non-violent activists with Islamic terrorist organizations. However, China faced a
distinct problem in its war on terror: despite its increased attention to terrorism in Xinjiang,
actual violent terrorist acts had nearly ceased after the late 1990s. To account for this lack of
activity, ‘the Chinese authorities simply argue that “separatist thought” is the new approach
followed by the same terrorist organizations that previously used violent tactics. This allows a
dissenting writer or a non-violent group advocating minority rights to be tarred with the terrorist
brush’ (Becquelin 2004: 43). Progressively, China has begun to prosecute what it refers to as
‘spiritual terrorism’ (Marquand 2003) which largely consists of public dissent, expressions of
dissatisfaction, or even chanted verse that is critical of the government, as was the case of a
young Uyghur poet arrested at a concert hall during a performance in 2002. The Chinese
Government asserts that the terrorists have changed strategy since 9-11 and are now
‘ideologically attacking’ China, instead of their ‘former frequent practice of engaging in violent
terrorist operations’ (Becquelin 2004: 43). Having sufficiently broadened the scope and reach of
its anti-terrorist campaign, China has also renewed its efforts to forcefully assimilate the
Uyghurs.
This new and harsher regime forces Islamic clerics to undergo ‘patriotic education’ sessions, and
Uyghur officials are barred from religious activities, as are all children. Attributed to China’s
efforts to modernise and develop the West, the use of the Uyghur language has now been
outlawed in schools and universities. The perception among some analysts is that ‘Sept. 11 gives
hard-liners the excuse for the crackdown they want’ (Forney 2002). Since 9-11 the state has ‘has
rounded up thousands of terrorist suspects, large weapons caches, and printed documents
allegedly outlining future public acts of violence’ (Gladney 2005b). Xinjiang now has the highest
number of executions per week in China (ibid).
The future in Xinjiang: Activism?
As China is remiss to admit, terrorist violence in Xinjiang has been subsiding significantly since
the late 1990s. Of the supposed hundreds of Uyghur terrorists, who China suggested had
collaborated with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, only twenty-two were ever detained by the U.S. at
Guantanamo Bay. Most of them were later released after a U.S. military tribunal 13
declared that
‘they had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time’ (Shicor 2006: 107) . Ultimately, only
seven Uyghurs were ever identified by the U.S. as terrorists (ibid). Despite China’s claims that it
is fighting a war in Xinjiang on Islamic terrorism there is little credible evidence to substantiate
this. Though Uyghurs are indeed Muslims, it is more likely that they see their cause as anti-
colonial, not Islamic. As Hyer (2006) has noted, extreme Uyghur nationalists can often be heard
to chant ‘sha han mie hui (kill the Chinese and destroy the Hui [a Chinese Muslim minority]’;
80). Incidentally the Hui Muslims, who are China’s largest Muslim minority, have never
seriously faced charges of terrorism or separatism (Gladney 2005b), possibly due to easier
assimilation based on their Chinese ethnicity. Murat Auezov, the former Kazakh ambassador to
Beijing, has proposed that the ‘Uyghurs are struggling to preserve their cultural identity against
an officially sanctioned mass influx of Han Chinese into their region’ (Hyer 2006: 80). This
indicates that the ‘Xinjiang Problem’ has less to do with Islamic terrorism than it does with
China’s integration and development policies in the region. Consequently, China's rhetorical
effort to combine all Uyghurs under the title of ‘Eastern Turkestan’ terrorists is misleading. ‘To
be sure, a small minority of these organizations do endorse terrorism but they are small, marginal
and—to judge by the outcome—not terribly effective’ (Shicor 2006: 103). Not only are these
efforts misleading, but China’s related efforts to suppress Uyghur language, culture, and religion
have the distinct possibility of reigniting violence in the region. Thus it is counterproductive to
attribute the recent lack of violent terrorist activity in Xinjiang to China’s anti-terrorism
campaign. What is more likely is that the stimulation of the local economy over the past thirty
years is contributing to stability. Since the launch of the Western Development Program
residents in Xinjiang, ‘especially those in northern parts, have witnessed a noticeable lift in their
material lives, and consequently economic incentives for supporting separatists have been
reduced’ (Lai 2003: 134); although, it is increasingly becoming clear to the Uyghurs that this
limited development is coming at a tremendous cost. Xinjiang has begun to serve as a ‘dumping
ground for the rest of the country,’ (Chen 1994) as well as hosting more than 40, 000 convicts
from all over China in Xinjiang’s many Labour-reform camps, the region is also used to conduct
nuclear-weapons testing. ‘Uyghurs morbidly joke that they have grown “blacker, shorter and
stupider” since the tests began some 30 years ago’ (ibid).
Most noticeable to the Uyghurs has been the enormous influx of Han Chinese, mostly sponsored
by the Chinese government, in an effort to Sinicize the region. This immigration has strained
Xinjiang’s land and ecological resources, exerted a strong pressure on the Uyghur language and
culture, as well as created competition for employment. Since the late 1980s Chinese oil
companies have flocked to Xinjiang and currently employ more than 20,000 workers, virtually
none of whom are Uyghur (Chen 1994). Islam has not made terrorists out of the Uyghurs, instead
‘Chinese encroachment on the region’s natural and cultural resources has made activists and
nationalists out of formerly apolitical minority people’ (Dwyer 2005: 4). The ‘Xinjiang problem’
is not religious terrorism, rather it is ascertaining how to genuinely incorporate the Uyghurs into
the region’s economic and political processes, as well as assure their right to cultural and
religious freedom. Chinese immigration into the region cannot remain unchecked if the cultural
and religious autonomy of the Uyghurs is to be guaranteed. Addressing the valid social and
political concerns of the Uyghurs is not accommodating terrorists, but it may very well pre-empt
the transformation of activists into terrorists. Erkin Alptekin, the 65-year-old leader of the World
Uyghur Congress contends that the sporadic violence of the 1990s was the result of formerly
peaceful activists who ‘lost patience’ with China. While condemning their response, he suggests
that those ‘Uyghurs involved likely concluded that violence was the only way to “draw the
attention of the international community” because “the international community only reacts
when conflict breaks out” (Lawrence 2004).
Conclusions
Although the benefits of including Xinjiang in the larger war on terror may have been obvious to
China’s leadership directly after 9-11, gradually the costs of this endeavour are weighing heavily
on the security of the region. China’s mistaken perception that cultural accommodation was the
cause of unrest in the 1990s, rather than the solution to it, will only heighten the possibility of a
violent resurgence. ‘The lesson that history teaches us about using massive military force against
terrorism is that it tends to create more terrorists’ (Light 2002). China’s war on terror, though
different in many ways from the war on terror being fought in the West, is similarly torn between
the compromise of human rights or national security, and likewise is failing to recognize that
‘human rights is the best guarantor of national security’ (Ignatieff 2002). Ultimately, China’s
preoccupation with terrorism has obstructed any efforts to improve the livelihoods of the
disenfranchised and impoverished in Xinjiang (Petersen 2006: 63). Even the U.S. has remained
unwilling to allow China to obscure the reality that ‘[t]he legitimate economic and social issues
that confront the people in Western China are not necessarily terrorist issues and should be
resolved politically rather than using counterterrorism methods’ (Taylor 2001). Erkin Alptekin
highlights the limited opportunities for engagement that face young dissatisfied Uyghurs in
Xinjiang’s ‘Han World.’ He pragmatically explains that ‘if they rise up against their Chinese
rulers, they will be “slaughtered and the world would just watch…Is it worth it just for publicity
that we send our people to death?”’ (Lawrence 2004). China’s opportunity to engage the
Uyghurs may nearly have passed, after which the possibility exists that Xinjiang’s assortment of
activists, separatists, and splittists may be provoked and consolidated as genuine terrorists.
 14
Appendix A
 Bibliography

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_____. 2004. ‘Criminalizing ethnicity: political repression in Xinjiang,’ China Rights

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Chen, Kathy. 1994. ‘Muslims in China hate Beijing a bit less,’ Wall Street Journal -
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Dwyer, Arienne M. 2005. The Xinjiang Conflict: Uyghur Identity, Language Policy, and
Political Discourse, Policy Studies 15, East-West Center Washington. Accessed Online
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Forney, Matthew. 2002. ‘One Nation Divided,’ Time Online, Mar. 18. Accessed Online
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Gladney, Dru. 2003. ‘Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism?’ The China

Quarterly, 174: 451-467.

_____. 2005a. ‘Xinjiang: China’s Pre- and Post-Modern Crossroad,’ The silkroad
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_____. 2005b. ‘Prisoner's Release Does Not Herald a Xinjiang Spring: Chinese focus on
Uyghur ethnic aspirations, rather than Islam, could stabilize the troubled region’
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display.article?id=5497.

Guang, Pan. 2004. ‘China’s anti-terror strategy and China’s role in global anti-terror
cooperation,’ Asia Europe Journal, 2: 523–532.

_____. 2006. ‘East Turkestan Terrorism and the Terrorist Arc: China’s Post-9/11 Anti-
Terror Strategy,’ China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 4(2): 19-24.

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2005/china0405/china0405_files/image002.jpg

Hyer, Eric. 2006. ‘China’s Policy towards Uighur Nationalism,’ Journal of Muslim
Minority Affairs, 26(1), April.
Ignatieff, Michael. 2002. ‘Is the Human Rights Era Ending?’, The New York Times,
February 5.

Johnson-Freese, Joan. 2003. ‘China’s Manned Space Program: Sun Tzu or Apollo
Redux?’ Naval War College Review LVI(3): Summer.

Lai, Hongyi. 2002. ‘China’s Western Development Program: Its Rationale,

Implementation, and Prospects,’ Modern China, 28: 432.

_____. 2003. ‘National security and unity, and China’s western development program’
Provincial China, 8(2), October: 118-143.

Lam, Willy Wo-lap. 2001. ‘Terrorism fight used to target China secessionists,’ CNN.com,
October 23.

Lawrence, Susan V. 2004. ‘Why China Fears This Uyghur Exile,’ Far Eastern Economic
Review, 167(28), Jul 15: 30.

Light, M. 2002. ‘The Response to 11.9 and the Lessons of History,’ International
Relations, 16(2).

Luard, Tim. 2003. ‘China's changing views of terrorism,’ BBC News Online, 15
December.

Mackerras, Colin. 2001 ‘Xinjiang at the turn of the century: the causes of separatism,’
Central Asian Survey, 20(3): 289–303.

_____. 2004. ‘Why terrorism bypasses China's far west,’ Asian Times Online: Apr 23,
2004. Accessed Online 22 March, 2007: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/
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Marquand, Robert. 2003. ‘Pressure to Conform in West China,’ The Christian Science
Monitor, September 29. Accessed Online 22 March, 2007: http://www.csmonitor.com/
2003/0929/p06s01-woap.html.

Petersen, Kristen. 2006. ‘Usurping the Nation: Cyber-Leadership in the Uighur

Nationalist Movement,’ Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 26(1), April.

Sautman, Barry. 1998. ‘Preferential policies for ethnic minorities in China: the case of
Xinjiang’, in William Safran, ed., Nationalism and Ethnoregional Identities in China,
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Shikor, Yitzhak. 2006. ‘Fact and Fiction: A Chinese Documentary on Eastern Turkestan
Terrorism,’ China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, 4(2): 89-108.
 Taylor, Francis X. 2001. ‘Ambassador Remarks to the Press’ U.S.-China Inter-Agency
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Vicziany, Marika. 2003. ‘State responses to Islamic terrorism in western China and their
impact on South Asia,’ Contemporary South Asia, 12(2), June: 243–262.

Wayne, Martin I. 2007. ‘Al-Qaida's China problem’ ISN Security Watch, 7 March.
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1 Although a complete history of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and it’s ethnic
majority, the Uighurs, is beyond the scope of this paper, Gladney 2003, Gladney 2005a and Lai
2003 offer insightful accounts. When possible footnotes are used to include further historical
details.
2 A term that is outlawed under Chinese separatism laws.
3 See map, Appendix A.
4 ‘Recent demographic shifts suggest that there are more Muslims living in China today than
there are in Malaysia, and more than in every Middle Eastern Muslim nation except Iran, Turkey,
and Egypt (and about the same number as in Iraq)’ (Gladney 2005b)
5 The Uighur are often mistakenly referred to as ‘Chinese Muslims,’ when they are in fact
ethnically Turkic. Ethnically Chinese or Han Muslims do, of course exist, and are predominantly
referred to as Hui. Although they make up an ethnic minority in Xinjiang, the Hui are greater in
numbers throughout China than the Uighur.
6 It is difficult to overstate the differences between the Han and the Uighurs and as Matthew
Forney (2002) has noted they are so different that they “can't agree on what time the sun rises.
Uighurs set their watches to Central Asian time; Chinese to Beijing's two hours earlier” (Forney
2002).
7 It is estimated that nearly 80% of the coal, gold, jade, and precious metal reserves in China are
in Xinjiang, which accounts for one third of China’s production of petroleum and natural gas.
(Wang 2003: 574).
8 Xinjiang borders eight countries: Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.
9 The Kashgar Emirate in 1864-1877; the Turkish Islamic Republic of East Turkestan (TIRET)
from 1933-1937; and the Eastern Turkestan Republic from 1944-1949, supported by the Soviet
Union. Each independent state was eventually reclaimed by Chinese forces (Gates & Oresman
2003:17).
10 Officially, Chinese minority policies allowed for exemptions from the one-child birth
program, special scholarships to secondary and higher educational institutions, tax relief, and bi-
lingual education schools that teach in the local minority languages up through university. ‘In
addition, minority government officials are actively recruited in order to promote a sense of
participation in governance. Nevertheless, the Chinese Communist Party, which has many fewer
minorities and is generally the final authority in areas of governance, continues to exercise the
greatest power in the region.’ (Gladney 2005a)
11 The Western Development Program had the stated economic aims of correcting regional
inequality by generating domestic demand in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis,
expanding domestic markets and pushing forward structural reforms in the interior regions. See
Lai 2002 for a general description of the program and Lai 2003 for broader explanations of the
program as it relates to the Xinjiang separatist movement.
12Included in the list was the East Turkestan Information Centre (ETIC), based in Munich, and
the World Uighur Youth Congress (WUYC), an umbrella organization that unites various exiled
Uighur organizations from around the world. ‘Both groups advocate non-violent and democratic
change and have been documenting human rights abuses in Xinjiang’ (Becquelin 2004: 41-42).
13 The release of the Uighurs held in Guantanamo resulted in diplomatic tensions, as the U.S.
ignored Chinese demands for extradition of the prisoners, releasing them to Albania instead,
amid fears that they would face persecution if returned to China.
14 Map courtesy of Human Rights Watch.