'Closer to Baghdad than Beijing'

The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China, as it is formally known, has many defining characteristics not least the fact that the majority of its people are not Han Chinese, but rather of Turkic Uyghur race and of the Muslim faith. As a consequence, a protracted history of conflict between the Uyghur and the Han people has characterised their relations. However, the Chinese have long since gained the upper hand and Xinjiang remains a region of China. More recently, there had been a rise of furtive tension in Xinjiang as the clamouring for independence from Beijing became greater. Not only has Xinjiang’s existence as part of the People’s Republic of China been maintained through force and oppression, simply put, the majority of the people there do not identify with China and rather see themselves as a Central Asian grouping, both in terms of their culture and traditions, and their faith. Sky News claimed recently that the city of Kashgar, Xinjiang, on the PRC’s western border is closer to Baghdad than Beijing. Whatever the geographical truth behind this assertion, there is certainly a greater cultural connection with the road leading west to the Middle East through Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, then there is with the road leading east to Beijing. Indeed, China’s difficulties with the Muslim people of Central Asia has hardly been a secret before now and is certainly one of the underlying factors that pushed China and Russia closer together over the last decade.

Xinjiang certainly looked more like Baghdad than Beijing today as unspeakable tragedy befell the city. Two Uighur separatists assailed a convoy of unarmed policemen who were jogging near their base. The details are somewhat sketchy though it would appear the attackers drove their truck into the group, stabbing and hacking away at some before launching grenades into the nearby base. So far, the massacre has caused 16 deaths and many more injuries. That the authorities will execute the two men, who were subsequently apprehended, is a near certainty; what it means in the longer term is less clear.

Naturally, with them beginning on Friday, the major elephant in the room is the Olympics. The symbolism of an attack so close to this event was hardly lost on the terrorists in Xinjiang. Nor will it be lost on the Communist Party. Having recently stepped up its anti-terror activities, and deploying the most outrageously over-the-top counter terrorist defence, which includes 100,000 men and surface to air missiles, to Beijing, the Chinese government has been accused recently of inflating the terror threat it claims exists. Their activities also included the execution of a line of dissidents lately, which has lead groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to cry foul. Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at the latter organisation, said that ‘China is not acting as a responsible Olympics host when it blurs so much of the actual terrorism risk.’

First off, the mere suggestion that China was ever likely to be a ‘responsible Olympic host’ is laughably baseless. Beijing has an air quality so poor it is a genuine danger to the competing athletes. The Chinese government has literally built walls around impoverished and degraded areas in Beijing lest China’s reputation be besmirched by Olympic tourists happening on them. The CCP has rolled back on almost every commitment it made to the International Olympic Committee most notably that foreign journalists would not suffer from internet censorship. In order to ensure that foreign troublemakers could not gain access to the country for the Olympics the borders were tightened to the extent that China is allegedly a harder country to do business in now, than it was before. The reality is not only that awarding Beijing the Olympics was a mistake, not least because of its appalling human rights record, but because every claim as to the benefits of ‘constructive engagement’ and ‘silent diplomacy’ have been utterly discredited, if not absolutely gutted.

However, in spite of this were the Chinese right about the terror threat, and were all those who dismissed it as some phantom designed to allow the CCP exert greater control wrong? On first glance yes, nevertheless, most terrorism experts have never denied that attacks in Xinjiang are a reality not a possibility, but that an attack on Beijing is probably beyond the capacity of the Uyghur separatists. Needless to say, one hopes that to be the case. But on the flip side, the Chinese government now has greater reason to seek to tie separatist movements on its Western border in with international jihadism. To do so would be largely inaccurate and undoubtedly political, though they have already set such a precedent, and have largely been doing just this all along. Though the reach of groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir into Xinjiang has increased, and though some Muslim separatists have received training in Pakistan the links are rather tenuous. Firstly, the cause of those in Xinjiang has not been popularised to the same extent as say Chechnya, Mindanao, and especially not Palestine. Moreover, Islam in Central Asia has undergone an awakening, though it is not the political force it is in the Middle East or South Asia. Ultimately, the issue in Xinjiang is one of self-determination rather than international jihadism. The Chinese government has every right to defend its people, and should do its utmost to ensure no serious links develop between Muslim separatists and the malign world of transnational terrorism. The fear is, however, that painting a picture of such links will only serve as a justification for the CCP to exercise an even heavier hand in Xinjiang. This will only exacerbate the problem.

Even if a terrorist attack took place outside of Xinjiang, and even if it bore the Jihadist hallmarks, any subsequent likening of it to 9/11 or 7/7 would be anachronistic. Essentially, China’s issue with the Uyghur people is about autonomy and oppression, it is not rooted in Al Qaeda philosophy, and it is centuries old. As the Chinese government seeks to defend the tourists who are now thronging into the country and its security personnel from further attacks, it would do well to ponder the causes of the conflict. By using international terrorism as a pretext for a greater crack down in Xinjiang, they would, as already argued, only increase the centrifugal elements within China. As 2008 has shown, those elements are considerable. From political dissidents calling for democracy to Tibet to Xinjiang, countless people are lining up against the Chinese state. The CCP’s response has been a violent one: military deployments and political executions.

Some have been surprised that they have acted in such a manner, especially in a year where the world’s eye is fixed upon them. However, those people have misread the nature of the CCP’s hold on power. The Chinese government is a well oiled behemoth, fundamentally aware of its priorities. It desperately wanted to impress the world with this Olympics, but as its authority was challenged, that priority fell into second place as the reassertion of state authority surpassed it. In the end the classic CCP strategy fell into place as it always does: even with the eyes of the world watching and its people stirring, the CCP knows where its bread and butter is; it will maintain a tight-lipped populace at the expense of international ignominy, the way it always has before.

Consequently, the Olympics have gone from an episode which would herald the arrival of China onto the world stage, a landmark spectacle like no other, to an exercise in damage control. In many senses it’s been a bad year for the Chinese government politically, as conflict in Tibet has given way to strife in Xinjiang, which has had this fallout on the Olympics. Such is life for a state that bullies the crestfallen people who suffer under its remit, and denies them any freedom of expression whatsoever. And such is life for a state with a brutal history of repression and no democratic legitimacy.

The CCP’s response has been disappointingly familiar. In time, China will have to address the wishes of Tibetans, the Uyghur people, all those who want greater expression- those who are uncomfortable in today’s China. Maybe then will it host a worldwide sporting event free from embarrassment, calls for boycotts, and Orwellian censorship (though not, unfortunately, free from terrorism). Meanwhile, casting such dreams aside, China continues to act as an international defender of terrorist states like Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe, under the pretext of national sovereignty; a concept so utterly foreign to millions of its citizens who are denied any shred of autonomy. It continues to bankroll terrorism in Sudan, yet uses terrorism as a pretext to further crack down on legitimate aspirations of national self-determination within its own inflated borders.