The heinous and surprise attack on Israel by Hamas and the former’s retaliation has consequently engulfed the entire region & led to a spillover effect in countries like Lebanon, Syria and more notably, now the Red Sea. More recently, Iran & Pakistan also witnessed a downturn in their relations as a result of tit-for-tat strikes before de-escalation took place.
As fears of a larger regional conflict in the Middle East continue to mount, it has left the world powers and people divided. But more importantly, the threat of terrorism has once again started to resurface in national security conversations. And while China continues its revisionism in order to posit itself as the foremost superpower in the world, the US & its liberal allies continue to set the global counterterrorism agenda. In the wake of these realities, it becomes increasingly important to assess Beijing’s outlook towards terrorism.
China's approach to terrorism has been characterized by opacity, making it challenging to assess the nature and magnitude of its terrorism problem, as noted by scholars Murray Scot Tanner and James Bellacqua. That being said, Beijing’s current counterterrorism policies are more domestically driven.
The “perceived threat” of Uyghurs based in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region (XUAR), and mainly, Western Xinjiang, dictates a major part of China’s counterterrorism efforts. Uyghurs, an ethnically Turkic group, have faced restrictions on their cultural expression and forced assimilation, leading to occasional ethnic violence and extremism.
However, the roots of China's outlook on terrorism can be traced back to Tibet. After suppressing the Tibetan National Uprising in 1959, China labeled its actions as a "peaceful liberation" of Tibet. This was Beijing’s first tryst with the power of wordplay and narrative warfare. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has continued to portray the 14th Dalai Lama as a "terrorist" and implemented "Sinicization" tactics in Tibet to erase cultural and religious identities. In both cases (Uyghurs & Tibetans), the Chinese have been accused of carrying out a systemic “cultural genocide” in Xinjiang and Tibet.
This is where China gets terrorism wrong.
Firstly, Beijing’s “perceived threat” of terrorism by Uyghurs and Tibetans is based on exaggeration & paranoia - following their traditions, religion, language, or culture is now being equated to “terrorism” by the Chinese. Equating the preservation of cultural elements with terrorism lacks a legal basis and fails to meet the standards of the rule of law.
Secondly, even if one would accept that label, the Chinese counterterrorism policy is one based on “excessive reaction”. China, under Xi Jinping, launched the “Strike Hard” campaign in 2014 - it has escalated the crackdown in Xinjiang which has led to over 1 million Uyghurs being detained in what Beijing has termed as “re-education camps”. Under the garb of this subtle wordplay, China has undertaken a policy of forced indoctrination, arbitrary detention, forced disappearances, torture, forced labor, and even rape. Uyghurs in Xinjiang, apart from being subjected to human rights violations, are also facing mass surveillance with facial recognition, and collection of biometric data. At the same time, Beijing’s policy of “Securitization” of Tibet - arbitrary arrests & detentions, extrajudicial killings, torture, curbing various freedoms, transnational repression, forced sterilization - concurs with this policy of “excessive reaction”, exaggeration, and paranoia.
However, the buck does not stop here. The strategic significance of Xinjiang and Tibet adds another layer to China's counterterrorism approach.
Three of 6 megaprojects under Xi Jinping’s flagship geoeconomic project, the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) & the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), run through Xinjiang, making the region extremely significant for Beijing’s geoeconomic ambitions. Xinjiang also holds importance in terms of China’s nuclear ambitions - it has served as a site for nuclear tests in the past. And a recent report by former National Geospatial Intelligence Agency analyst, Renny Babiarz, reveals that Beijing is supposedly rebuilding a secret base at Lop Nur to test a new generation of nuclear arms.
Similarly, China’s Tibet policy is also essentially driven by strategic considerations & periphery security. Often referred to as the Water Tower of Asia, the ecology of Tibet is extremely important in the context of global climate change. But Beijing’s actions have led to militarization, damming, and mining of the region, thereby destroying the environmental balance. On the periphery security front, China has been aggressively constructing highways in the Tibet region, and also enacted the new Border Security Law in 2021. The new law aims to justify a more assertive Chinese posture in border areas and also gives wide ranging powers to the People’s Armed Police (PAP) to protect the borders. Due to this, concerns have risen around the misuse of the law to enhance Tibet’s securitization, and at the same time, “signaling determination to resolve border disputes on its preferred terms”.
These strategic considerations, coupled with Xi Jinping’s signature ethnic minority policy line, “forging a consciousness of the common identity of the Chinese nation” (铸牢中华民族共同体意识), have led Beijing to implement a counterterrorism policy that is based on manufactured narratives on Uyghur and Tibetan terrorism/extremism.
And this flawed outlook on terrorism has also permeated China’s foreign policy.
China has been officially advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza and establishment of an independent Palestine since the Israel-Hamas War broke out. However, the Chinese social media & vloggers, censored heavily by the state, have been glorifying Hamas. Beijing has also shown zero inclination in condemning the attack by Hamas which led to the outbreak of the war, while also ignoring Hamas’ terrorist activities in the past. Beijing also continues to back Islamabad and its terrorist proxies that have not only been the major driving force behind terror activities in India since decades, but have also targeted CPEC projects in Pakistan. That a recent article in the Chinese state’s mouthpiece, Global Times, has accused India of backing attacks on CPEC projects in Balochistan, is indeed paradoxical. It exposes Beijing’s fragile defense of Islamabad’s human rights violations in Balochistan, and at the same time, evasion of its own selfish motives via CPEC projects in the region that continue to entrap Pakistan in debt.
As Xi Jinping had called for a more “loveable” image of China in 2021, its terrorism outlook and counterterrorism strategies have continued to center on utilizing narrative and information warfare to manufacture terrorist threats. The stark contrast has never been more evident than now.