The \u201cwar on terror\u201d that took shape after 9\/11 may have originated in the United States, but the security response to \u201cIslamic terrorism\u201d was swiftly adapted by countries outside the West \u2013 namely China and Russia. Today, Islamophobia is also on the rise in China.<\/p>\n
Putin\u2019s Russia used the catastrophic terrorist attack as an opening to consolidate control in Muslim-majority regions like Chechnya and Dagestan, while China, which has a Muslim population of around 21.7 million<\/a> (as of 2009), pursued similar policies in places like northwest China, where separatist voices have sought to challenge the Communist Party of China\u2019s territorial hegemony.<\/p>\n China\u2019s version of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d has produced the same sort of derivative problems that currently plague much of the West as it deals with national security concerns: radicalization, violent extremism and Islamophobia, for instance. The mirroring of these trends in China is evident, as the national conversation around the place of Muslims within the Chinese polity has shifted in recent years to reflect the issue\u2019s increasingly ethnonationalist nature.<\/p>\n China\u2019s Muslim population is dominated by two ethnic minority groups: the more-or-less culturally assimilated Hui, who are distributed throughout several provinces in the country, and the Uighurs, an ethnolinguistically Turkic group found mainly in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. It\u2019s with this latter group that the Chinese state has had the most political problems, particularly in the post-9\/11 era.<\/p>\n This internal Chinese political dispute has combined with the post-9\/11 security culture \u2014 which often produces a framework that centres on Muslims as a public safety concern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A segment of the Uighur population has long been resentful of Chinese governance in the nominally autonomous region, while Beijing has cited terrorism and other national security concerns as the primary reason for its interference in Xinjiang. This internal Chinese political dispute has combined with the post-9\/11 security culture \u2014 which often produces a framework that centres on Muslims as a public safety concern \u2014 to blur the ethnic lines that separate different Chinese Muslim minority groups.<\/p>\n In the past three years \u2014 due in part to the rise of ISIL and the widespread coverage of terrorist incidents around the world \u2014 this political conflict has taken an uglier turn as national rhetoric on post-9\/11 issues has become increasingly Islamophobic. It didn\u2019t help matters when, in March 2014, Uighur terrorists killed dozens<\/a> of people in a large train station in the southwestern city of Kunming. Two months later, a truck driver used his vehicle to plough through a high-traffic market in Xinjiang\u2019s capital city of Urumqi, killing over 30 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Communist regime predictably used the incidents as an excuse to double down on its concerns about \u201cIslamic terrorism\u201d and to implement further security measures throughout the country, but particularly<\/a> in Xinjiang. The rhetoric on issues relating to Islam and Muslims in China has since become toxic enough to prompt some professors to ban<\/a> their students from using online sources for assignments that deal with relevant subject matter.<\/p>\n A good example of this tense climate is last year\u2019s controversy surrounding the Hui community\u2019s campaign to lobby for stricter national standards for halal (Islamically permissible) meat, which started a nationwide debate that can best be described as the Chinese version of \u201ccreeping Sharia\u201d paranoia. The prominent Marxist scholar Xi Wuyi, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, characterized the campaign<\/a> as an attempt by radical Muslims to challenge China\u2019s ethnocultural status quo, and thus China\u2019s national security. The end result, he argued, would be the creation of a state that\u2019s compliant with \u201cSharia law.\u201d<\/p>\n This kind of rhetoric directly mirrors the tone that has characterized similar issues in the US, Europe and Australia in recent years. And just as domestic post-9\/11 security problems produce narratives that affect foreign policy, China\u2019s strained relationship with its Muslim minority groups is also having external effects on the region\u2019s geopolitics.<\/p>\n For one thing, China is encouraging its allies and neighbours not to accommodate Uighurs. Pakistan, perhaps China\u2019s top global ally, has already forced out<\/a> a large number of Uighur exiles; last year many moved into Afghanistan, where they\u2019ve contributed to the Taliban insurgency against the US-backed central government. This is just one example of how Uighur militants who are feeling the heat in China are beginning to proliferate globally.<\/p>\n As the veteran Pakistani journalist and analyst Ahmed Rashid writes<\/a>, \u201cThe oldest group of Uighur militants that emerged in the 1990s, calling themselves the East Turkestan Islamic Movement [ETIM] and loyal to Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar of the Taliban \u2014 both of whom are now dead \u2014 have now renamed themselves in the Arab world as the Turkistan Islamic Party [TIP].\u201d In 2002, the George W. Bush administration added the ETIM, which Beijing claimed<\/a> is friendly with al-Qaeda, to its list of international terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n The Communist government has expressed concerns that extremist Uighur groups will capitalize on instability in global war zones in places like Syria (where Uighur extremists have formed<\/a> their own units within the anti-government and al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra) in order to further proliferate and eventually return to wreak havoc on Chinese soil. Just last August, a 21-year-old Uighur suicide bomber attacked<\/a> the Chinese embassy in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek with the assistance of an Uzbeki militant who received training in Syria. Furthermore, Uighur militants have also made their way<\/a> to Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.<\/p>\n Evidence<\/a> of the TIP\u2019s involvement in key Syrian battleground cities like Idlib has prompted the Chinese government to corroborate President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s assertion that Syria\u2019s opposition is full of terrorists, which has serious international implications for any hope of reaching a political solution for Syria\u2019s prolonged crisis. China\u2019s relatively hands-off approach in Syria may change substantially if there is any significant level of Uighur militancy and involvement in the conflict.<\/p>\n As the noted scholar of Uighur militancy Michael Clarke reports<\/a>, Chinese Rear Admiral Guan Youfei visited Damascus last August and met with senior Syrian and Russian military officials, including the Syrian minister of defence, to discuss increased military cooperation, including intelligence sharing. This development reinforced China\u2019s position of backing Assad as the most rational way to protect Chinese interests in the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n This reactionary position, combined with Turkey\u2019s long-standing sympathy for Uighur separatism, has created tension between Beijing and Ankara. Reports have surfaced<\/a> of Turkish intelligence recruiting exiled Uighur militants into jihadist groups within the Syrian opposition to fight against the Assad regime, drawing Chinese interests deeper into the prolonged crisis.<\/p>\n China\u2019s current government, led by President Xi Jinping, is flexing its regional muscles. But a globalized Chinese presence also means the spread of an indigenous extremism. The full impact of this proliferating Uighur militancy on China\u2019s global role remains to be seen.<\/p>\n Photo:\u00a0Uighurs living in Turkey prepare to set on fire a representation of a Chinese flag outside the Chinese consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, Aug. 2, 2014, as they stage a protest to condemn the killings of Uighurs allegedly killed by Chinese security in China’s far-western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The blue flag with a white star and a crescent represents Eastern Turkistan. Emrah Gurel\/AP Photo<\/span><\/p>\n Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em>link<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on how to do it. <\/em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ? <\/em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em>directives<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The \u201cwar on terror\u201d that took shape after 9\/11 may have originated in the United States, but the security response to \u201cIslamic terrorism\u201d was swiftly adapted by countries outside the West \u2013 namely China and Russia. Today, Islamophobia is also on the rise in China. Putin\u2019s Russia used the catastrophic terrorist attack as an opening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":253003,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T01:33:37Z","apple_news_api_id":"37446315-4293-43d5-91b5-3689ea88b8b6","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T01:33:37Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AN0RjFUKTQ9WRtTaJ6oi4tg","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9360,9358],"tags":[8393],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4217,4295,4385],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[7181],"class_list":["post-264999","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-politique","tag-terrorism-fr","irpp-category-affaires-internationales","irpp-category-politique","irpp-category-securite-nationale","irpp-tag-terrorisme"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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