Terrorism in the People's Republic of China encompasses the employment of violence or threats thereof to instigate political or ideological shifts within the country. The Chinese government identifies terrorism as one of the "Three Evils," alongside separatism and religious extremism, viewing these as interconnected threats to national security and social stability. These forces are seen by Beijing as interconnected threats to social stability and national security. In particular, terrorism is viewed as a violent manifestation of ethnic separatism, and separatism is understood as a corollary of religious zealotry.Chung Chien-peng. "Confronting Terrorism and Other Evils in China: All Quiet on the Western Front?. In China and Eurasia Forum Quarterly, Volume 4 Issue 2, pp 75–87. Retrieved 2 January 2010. The government has embarked on strike-hard campaigns to suppress these tendencies, particularly in the Muslim majority Xinjiang and the Buddhist Tibetan provinces.
Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the PRC strengthened its involvement in multilateral and bilateral counterterrorism efforts. As a result, several Uyghur separatist movements have been labelled as terrorist groups by the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State. There have been allegations that the Chinese government has been applying charges of terrorism in an inconsistent and politically motivated manner. These represent one of the contributing factors that play into the existing tensions between the Chinese Communist Party and the Uyghur minority.
On 23 January 2024, the Information Office of the State Council released a white paper on "China's Counter-Terrorism Legal System and Practice," which emphasized that China is a victim of terrorism and continues to face it as a threat. Subsequently, on the 24th of January, the People's Daily published an opinion piece demanding that anti-terrorism work must be carried out under the established legal systems.
Chinese cultural context While there is no international or legally binding definition of terrorism, internationally recognized organizations such as the UN and the EU have defined terrorism in various resolutions.Angus Martyn, The Right of Self-Defence under International Law-the Response to the Terrorist Attacks of 11 September , Australian Law and Bills Digest Group, Parliament of Australia Web Site, 12 February 2002.Thalif Deen. POLITICS: U.N. Member States Struggle to Define Terrorism , Inter Press Service, 25 July 2005. In the cultural setting of China, the term is relatively new and ambiguous.Kam V. Wong, "Police Practices in Global Perspective," John Eterno ed., (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).
The concept of terrorism, as it evolved and is understood in the West, did not exist in Imperial China. There, political crime took the form of violence against the emperor, and was viewed as harmful as it induced fear and led to "chaos". With the exception of "good" political violence against rulers whose lack of propriety and virtue resulted in loss of the Mandate of heaven, violence was seen as contrary to human nature and the Tao. Kam Wong argues that the dynamics of imperial China form the basis for contemporary Chinese understandings of terrorism.
Fear of chaos and social disorder is a powerful factor in mobilizing political will to combat potential threats.Ogden, Suzanne. "Inoculation against Terrorism in China" in William J. Crotty ed. Democratic development and political terrorism: the global perspective. Northeaster, 2005. In the modern context, any group or force with the potential to challenge the existing social order or the political security of the rulers may be considered a form of terrorism. It is "to be condemned unrelentingly and suppressed at all costs," according to Wong.
There is currently no clearly established definition for terrorism either nationally or internationally, though the National People's Congress is in the process of drafting legislation that would clarify the use of the term in Chinese law. The draft legislation, as reported by Xinhua News Agency, classified as terrorist acts that "cause or aim to cause severe harm to society by causing casualties, bringing about major economic losses, damaging public facilities or disturbing social order." Human rights groups charge that the term is sometimes applied to non-violent dissidents in China.Amnesty International, "People's Republic Of China: Uighurs Fleeing Persecution As China Wages Its 'War On Terror'" , 7 July 2004.Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 2005 Annual Report, Freedom of Religion , 2005. Quote: "Sichuan authorities sometimes impute terrorist motives to Tibetan monks who travel to India without permission." [...] "Religious repression in Xinjiang is severe, driven by Party policies that equate peaceful Uighur religious practices with terrorism and religious extremism."
Regionally focused terrorism and political violence
Xinjiang
Media reports and scholarly studies of terrorism in contemporary China frequently focus on members of the largely Muslim Uyghur ethnic group, who are concentrated in the northwestern province of Xinjiang.
Throughout its history, the region now known as Xinjiang was ruled intermittently by China.University of Maryland Minorities at Risk Project, Assessment for Turkmen in China . The Turkic Uyghurs generally identify more closely with the cultures of Central Asia and have historically resisted attempts at assimilation into Han Chinese culture.
From 1933 to 1934, Uyghurs founded a short-lived Islamic republic, and the Soviets supported Communist Uyghur rebels in the Ili Rebellion from 1944 to 1949 against the Republic of China and the Second East Turkestan Republic, before the Incorporation of Xinjiang into the People's Republic of China in 1949. After the Sino-Soviet split, the Soviet Union amassed troops on the Russian border with Xinjiang. They also bolstered "East Turkestan" separatist movements, which received moral and material support from other regional militant groups. China accused the Soviets of engineering riots, and improved the military infrastructure there to combat it.
In the 1980s, Chinese authorities relaxed some of their restrictive policies against ethnic minorities, and loosened border controls which allowed Uyghurs to travel to the Mecca Pilgrimage. During this period, some Uyghurs came into contact with radical Islamist groups operating in Central Asia and Afghanistan, while others studied in Quranic schools associated with Islamist movements. The increase in fundamentalism has been linked to the Islamic revival of the 1980s, following Deng Xiaoping's political reforms which sought to reduce the suppression of religion by promoting atheism, which was widespread during Mao's rule. Rémi Castets has commented that this led to a "more militant logic using Islam as an instrument for distinguishing Uyghur values from the non-clerical and atheistic values promoted by the Chinese authorities.""The Chinese regime and the Uyghur dilemma" Summary of Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, the Chinese government feared a resurgence of separatist movements, as well as the spread of radical Islam in the region, which could destabilize its infrastructure in Xinjiang. During this time, countries such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan offered asylum to Uyghur refugees, and recognition to groups pursuing independence. To combat this, the Beijing government settled border disputes and offered economic co-operation with the Central Asian republics through the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, and successfully persuaded these countries to ban Uyghur separatist groups residing there, as well as to extradite suspected Uyghur separatist refugees.
A chain of aggressive and belligerent press releases in the 1990s making false claims about violent insurrections in Xinjiang and exaggerating both the number of Chinese migrants and the total number of Uyghurs in Xinjiang was made by the Soviet-supported URFET leader Yusupbek Mukhlisi.Wayne 2007, p. 46.Millward 2007, p. 341.
There is no single "Uyghur agenda," and grievances of Uyghurs against the Chinese government are generally political in nature. While some Uyghurs desire an independent state in line with Turkic ethnic groups of Central Asia, others desire an autonomous relation with China while retaining their distinct culture, whereas others desire extensive integration with the Chinese political system.
The desire for independence or greater political and cultural autonomy largely stems from resentment over perceived restrictions to religious and cultural expression, ethnic conflict with the local Han Chinese population, income inequality, and the perception that Beijing's government is misallocating Xinjiang's natural resource wealth. Some groups have adopted violent tactics in pursuit of these goals, mostly the establishment of a separate Uyghur state called East Turkistan or Uyghuristan, which lays claim to a large part of China. Entities identified in Chinese government documents as having involvement in violent attacks include the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), East Turkistan Liberation Organization (ETLO), United Revolutionary Front of East Turkestan (URFET), and the Uyghur Liberation Organization (ULO). Members of these groups are believed to have received training in Central or South Asian nations such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.Gus Martin, "Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues," (Sage Publications: 2003), . Such violent groups have been noted as frequently splintering, merging, and collapsing, which makes claims difficult to substantiate. China's Muslim Hui people, who are comparatively well integrated into Chinese society, regard some Uyghurs as "unpatriotic separatists who give other Chinese Muslims a bad name," according to The New York Times.Jim Yardley, A Spectator's Role for China's Muslims , The New York Times, 19 February 2006.
Scholars have indicated that violence in Xinjiang is based on an assortment of ideologies, and there is no single dominant ideology among the Uyghurs. As James A. Millward wrote, incidents have "been discontinuous and characterized by a variety of ideologies, Islam being only one of them." Islam, Pan-Turkic nationalism, and Uyghur nationalism are all factors in unrest in the Xinjiang region. There are six incidents in China from 1990 to 2005, according to Ogden, that meet the strictest definition of terrorism, meaning the use of "random" violence against innocent civilians to cause terror, and excluding calculated violence against the state to advance a secessionist movement. Among the events identified by Ogden was an incident on 5 February 1992 when Uyghur separatists (possibly belonging to the East Turkestan Islamic Party) detonated bombs on two public buses and in two buildings in Urumqi and a bomb attack on a hotel in Kashgar on 17 June 1992.University of Maryland Minorities at Risk Project, "Chronology for Turkmen in China" . Instances of violence by ethnic Uyghurs against security forces, organs, or infrastructure of the state are far more common, but are distinguished by scholars from terrorism aimed against the civilian population. According to Martin, Chinese authorities frequently classify any act of violence or separatist activity in Xinjiang as a manifestation of terrorism, while comparable acts by ethnic Han Chinese are not be classified in this manner.Martin I. Wayne, "China's war on terrorism: counter-insurgency, politics, and internal security," (New York, NY: Routeledge, 2008).
On 28 October 2013, five Uyghurs drove a jeep into Beijing's Tiananmen Square, set the gas tank on fire, killing two civilians and injuring more than forty bystanders. These Uyghurs had jihadist flags and there was evidence of their ties to ETIM.