Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism

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China's Uyghur problem after the 2009 Urumqi

riot: repression, recompense, readiness, resistance

Chien-peng Chung

To cite this article: Chien-peng Chung (2018) China's Uyghur problem after the 2009 Urumqi
riot: repression, recompense, readiness, resistance, Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter
Terrorism, 13:2, 185-201, DOI: 10.1080/18335330.2018.1475746

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/18335330.2018.1475746

Published online: 05 Jun 2018.

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JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM
2018, VOL. 13, NO. 2, 185–201
https://doi.org/10.1080/18335330.2018.1475746

China’s Uyghur problem after the 2009 Urumqi riot:

repression, recompense, readiness, resistance
Chien-peng Chung
Department of Political Science, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

China’s largely Turkic Muslim Xinjiang (Uyghur) Autonomous Region Received 6 May 2018
has been considered by the national leadership as the country’s Accepted 9 May 2018
frontline in the fight against separatist terrorism since the 1990s.
KEYWORDS
To forestall and punish acts of organised and premeditated China; Xinjiang; Uyghur;
violence, different administrations in Xinjiang have variably terrorism; strategies
employed a ‘hard’ repressive strategy, a ‘soft’ reward-based
strategy, or a ‘middling’ surveillance/monitoring strategy, and
sometimes a combination of all three. Many discontented
Uyghurs see the government’s approaches to dealing with ethnic
unrests as means to achieve its integrationist/assimilationist ends,
and this perception does not bode well for the state’s endeavour
to ensure a more peaceful, and stable society in Xinjiang.

China’s persistent Uyghur problem

Xinjiang (Uyghur) Autonomous Region is the largest provincial-level unit in the People’s
Republic of China (PRC). Xinjiang covers an area of 1.66 million square kilometres, and con-
tained 22.98 million people by the end of 2014, about 60% of whom are from ethnic
groups other than the Han-Chinese, or Han (An, 2017), the dominant ethnic group of
China. Parts of Xinjiang are home to Uyghurs, a Turkic-speaking people who mostly prac-
tice Sunni Islam and are the largest ethnic group in the autonomous region. About 45% of
Xinjiang’s population is constituted by Uyghurs, 10% by Turkic Muslim Kazaks, and 40% by
Han. Language and religion are salient markers of Uyghur identity.
For top officials in Xinjiang, the biggest challenge has been to prevent terrorist activi-
ties, especially by alleged Uyghur separatists, as the region has been considered by the
national leadership as China’s frontline in the fight against terrorism since the 1990s. As
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Secretary of Xinjiang, the region’s most powerful position,
from 1994 to 2010, Wang Lequan adopted a hard-handed approach that led to several
days of rioting in July 2009 in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, which involved at least
1000 Uyghurs and resulted in 197 deaths, most of them Han (Battaglia, 2017). Wang
was then replaced by Zhang Chunxian in 2010, when the region was still recovering
from the riots, who on assuming his position, developed a softer people-oriented
approach based not only on security alertness but also on economic development.

CONTACT Chien-peng Chung cp2chung@ln.edu.hk

© 2018 Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism
186 C.-P. CHUNG

In response to the deadly rioting in Urumqi, a Xinjiang Work Forum (Xinjiang gongzuo
zuotanhui) was conducted in May 2010, for the first time in the history of Xinjiang under
the PRC. As poverty and material inequality have always been seen by the CCP leadership
as the roots of ethnic minorities’ discontent in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, the First
Xinjiang Work Forum (IXWF), in setting the promotion of ‘leapfrog development to
ensure lasting political stability’ (kuayueshi fazhan he changzhijiu’an) as its prime objective,
basically reemphasised economic development as a panacea to resolve violent ethnic
separatism in Xinjiang (Chaudhuri, 2014, p. 2). Unfortunately for the authorities, from
the steady escalation of tensions and increasing frequency of incidents of violence in
the region, and elsewhere in China, perpetrated by Uyghurs, a greater dose of economic
development was subsequently perceived as an inadequate solution to the problem.
The Second Xinjiang Work Forum (2XWF), attended by the entire CCP Politburo and
over three hundred top Party officials in Beijing from 28 to 29 May 2014, and occurring
only a mere four years after the first such gathering, indicates how much of a pressing
concern Xinjiang is to the leadership (Leibold, 2014). On revisiting its approach in
dealing with ethnic dissatisfaction in Xinjiang, the Chinese leadership undertook a
major shift in both focus and strategy at the 2XWF, moving from minimising the
mention of the growth-oriented ‘leapfrog development’ to a renewed stress on ensuring
security and stability, and promoting a new policy of ‘ethnic intermingling’. The 2XWF thus
unambiguously asserted that ‘Xinjiang’s most sustained problem is the problem of ethnic
unity’, which requires ‘strengthening interethnic contact, exchange and mingling’ ( jia-
qiang minzu jiaowang jiaoliu jiaorong), with CCP Secretary-General cum PRC State Chair-
man Xi Jinping urging ‘all ethnic groups to show mutual understanding, respect,
tolerance and appreciation, and to learn from and help each other, so as to bind them
tightly together like the seeds of a pomegranate’ (Leibold, 2014). The leadership seems
to have implicitly recognised that the lack of ethnic minority identification with the predo-
minantly Han-Chinese state could be the root of violence and disaffection in Xinjiang.
Zhang Chunxian was subsequently replaced as Xinjiang’s Party secretary, rumoured to
be due to his ineffectiveness in kerbing the rise of ethnic unrest and separatist violence in
the region. Zhang’s removal could be read as a signal that the central government con-
sidered his approach as being too lenient and wanted to show an iron fist in the
region. As Xinjiang is a hub in China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ development initiative that
seeks to revive the ancient Silk Road by linking Central Asian and Eurasian economies
into a China-centered trading network, the region is integral to the geopolitical ambitions
and legacy of Xi Jinping. This makes stability in Xinjiang a strategic imperative and hence
unrest in the region is not to be tolerated. Chen Quanguo, Zhang’s successor who
assumed his position in August 2016, went back to Wang Lequan’s hard-knuckled secur-
ity-first approach, and has tried to project an even more uncompromising image. It has
been said that Chen not only wants to look tough on terror in the eyes of the Han and
Uyghur populations of Xinjiang, but was also using his hardline stance on terrorism to
angle for a Politburo seat at the 19th CCP Congress, scheduled for the fall of 2017
(Wong, 2017).
Although different administrations in Xinjiang might have emphasised different strat-
egies – ‘hard’ coercive, ‘soft’ reward-based, or ‘middling’ surveillance/monitoring – and
their degrees of effectiveness may be debateable, the objectives of the CCP-PRC party-
state have always been clear: To forestall and punish acts of organised and premeditated
 JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM 187

violence in the region, while integrating it politically, militarily, economically, demographi-

cally, and socio-culturally into China.

The ‘hard’ strategy of repression

PRC’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, passed the country’s first comprehensive
‘Counter-terrorism Law’ at the end of 2015, which took effect on 1 January 2016 (Zhon-
ghua, 2015). Salient aspects of the law merits pointing out (Zhou, 2016). (1) The definition
of terrorism reads:
Any advocacy or activity that, by means of violence, sabotage, or threat, aims to create social
panic, undermine public safety, infringe on personal and property rights, or coerce a state
organ or an international organization, in order to achieve political, ideological, or other
objectives.

The term ‘advocacy’ (zhuzhang), punishable by fine, incarceration or execution, is vague

enough to be interpreted as ‘speech’, ‘writing’, or ‘drawing’. (2) The law requires telecom-
munications operators and Internet service providers to furnish the government with tech-
nical support, including backdoor access and decryption, for the prevention and
investigation of terrorist activities. (3) To prevent copycat acts, the law allows no one to
disseminate details of terrorist incidents, publish identifying information on response per-
sonnel or hostages, nor on anti-terror responses, without the permission of the relevant
authorities. (4) Implementing a ‘people’s war’ strategy that highlights the participation
of civilians is a top principle of the counter-terrorism law (Article 5), which specifically
says that the authorities should establish joint coordination mechanisms to mobilise grass-
roots organisations (Article 8), set up formal forces or volunteer groups in communities
(Article 74), and encourage civilians to work as informants to promote intelligence gather-
ing (Article 44). (5) The law may apply restrictions on individuals suspected of being
involved in terrorist activities, which includes bans on travelling outside the suspect’s
area of residence or the country, taking public transportation, or entering specified
venues without police approval, as well as confiscation of identity card and passport
(Human Rights Watch [HRW], 2017a). (6) The law allows the People’s Armed Police (PAP)
or People’s Liberation Army to seek approval from the CCP’s Central Military Commission
for engaging in counter-terrorism abroad.
Under this tough strategy, quick and determined responses to terrorist attacks by the
authorities are deemed necessary to demonstrate a forceful will to pre-empt or deter
future acts of violence. Around every anniversary of the July 2009 Urumqi riot, security
presence in the cities and major towns of Xinjiang are visibly heightened. Twenty-four-
hour patrols are conducted by the PAP, a paramilitary riot police force responsible for
domestic security. At major gathering points in Urumqi such as People’s Square (Renmin
guangchang) and Nanhu Square (Nanhu guangchang), rifle-ready PAP officers stand
guard and armoured cars make orderly rounds.
On 31 December 2016, authorities in Xinjiang staged a massive show of military force
with an anti-terror exercise attended by the region’s Communist Party chief, Chen
Quanguo, senior party and government officials, and security forces. The drill involved
parading armoured vehicles, rescuing hostages, and demonstrating how police booths
which dot the streets of Xinjiang can defend themselves if they come under attack (Li,
188 C.-P. CHUNG

2017). This exercise was apparently carried out in response to an attack on Hotan Prefec-
ture’s Karakax County a few days before, in which a car carrying several terrorists with
knives and home-made bombs crashed into the yard of an office building of the local
Communist Party committee, causing deaths and injuries.
After three knife-wielding assailants killed five people in a residential compound on 14
February 2017 in Xinjiang’s Pishan County, Hotan Prefecture, before they were shot dead,
tensions were very much heightened in the county where most Uyghur villages cannot
understand Putonghua, and detachments of the PAP in bulletproof vests could be seen
patrolling every 10–20 m on Pishan’s streets (Chen, 2017). In the aftermath of the
killing, thousands of armed soldiers held mass rallies and columns of armoured vehicles
were deployed on the streets of Urumqi and other major cities in Xinjiang, with Chen
Quanguo urging these forces to ‘bury the corpses of terrorists in the vast sea of a
people’s war’ (Gracie, 2017).
On Saturday 18 February 2017, about 10,000 police officers and members of the PAP
attended a rally in a central square in Urumqi, after similar rallies have taken place in
Hotan on Thursday and in Kashgar on Friday, both oasis towns in southern Xinjiang
with predominantly Uighur populations (Wong, 2017). The rallies, wrapping around the
slogan of ‘Showing power to intimidate, (by) lining up the forces’, were the biggest in
recent years (Wong, 2017), and apparently conducted in response to the Pishan killings
a few days before. A similar counter-terrorism exercise involving more than 10,000 PAP
personnel was conducted over three-and-a-half days in September 2017 simultaneously
in all the major cities of Xinjiang (China’s Armed Police, 2017).
Convinced that fervent religiosity is a major motivation for engaging in terrorism, Xin-
jiang has since September 2016 established religious and residential committees to which
local residents have to report their religious activities, including circumcisions, weddings
and funerals (Zhao, 2016). People organising unauthorised religious travels abroad
could face fines of up to 200,000 Yuan (US$30,000), and Muslims making unauthorised
Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca may be jailed (Rife, 2017). In line with cracking down on under-
ground Muslim religious schools, or madrassas, in Xinjiang in recent years, new education
rules promulgated by the authorities for Xinjiang on 1 November 2016 banned all forms of
religious activities in schools, for while China officially guarantees freedom of religion,
minors (below age 18) are forbidden to engage in religious activity, including fasting.
The rules also decreed that parents or guardians cannot ‘organize, lure or force minors
into attending religious activities’, on pain of arrest by the police (Reuters, 2017).
In March 2017, lawmakers in the Xinjiang People’s Congress’ standing committee
passed the first region-wide legislation to combat ‘religious extremism’. The laws, which
took effect from 1 April 2017, ban behaviour such as spotting an ‘abnormally long’
beard (no standard measurement given), wearing face-covering veils in public places,
refusing to watch state television, and marrying using religious rather than civil procedures
(Shepherd & Blanchard, 2017). Leaders in localities within Xinjiang, such as Turpan Prefec-
ture, Shayar County, and the cities of Ghulja, Karamay, and Urumqi, have as early as 2014
enacted bans on these religious behaviours, but adherence and enforcement had been
patchy (Famularo, 2015a), even with rewards of a few thousand yuan for reporting on vio-
lators. To enforce the regulation, special task forces would be set up by regional, prefec-
tural and county governments, civil servants would be required to report violators to
 JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM 189

the police, and local leaders would be evaluated annually for their localities’ adherence to
the legislation (Gan, 2017).
Relatedly, under the CCP’s ‘Naming Rules for Ethnic Minorities’, which went into effect
in April 2017, dozens of baby names used by Muslims throughout the world were banned
in Xinjiang. These names are considered ‘overly religious’, and ‘any babies registered with
such names would be barred from the hukou, or household registration system, that gives
access to health care and education’, according to an Urumqi police station employee (Lin,
2017). Names such as ‘Jihad’, ‘Islam’, ‘Imam’, ‘Hajj’, ‘Wahhab’, ‘Saddam’, ‘Arafat’, ‘Quran’,
‘Mecca’, ‘Medina’, and ‘Cairo’ are on the proscribed list (China Bans, 2017; Lin, 2017).
Since then, the government has set up ‘political education centers’ throughout Xinjiang,
in which targets for thought reform, especially those deemed by the authorities to have
demonstrated ultra-religious behaviour, and which has already affected over 2000
people in Hotan Prefecture alone, may be detained indefinitely and required by party
cadres to learn Chinese, recite relevant laws and policies, watch pro-government videos,
shout pro-government slogans, and clarify or rectify their political stance (HRW, 2017b).
Recruiting local residents to act as security volunteers became a major facet of Beijing’s
anti-terror ‘people’s war’, after the strategy of involving civilians in the fight against terror-
ism was initiated in the aftermath of the 2XWF. For example, on 1 August 2014, more than
30,000 local residents in Hotan Prefecture were mobilised to join hands with the police in a
successful manhunt for 10 suspected terrorists (Zhou, 2016). In that year alone, Chinese
courts convicted 712 people on terrorism-related charges, an increase of more than
13% compared to the year before, according to PRC’s Chief Justice Zhou Qiang
(Newton, 2015).
In 2017, mandatory anti-terror drills for civilians were conducted under police supervi-
sion in Kashgar, in which shopkeepers would rush out of their stores swinging govern-
ment-issued wooden clubs to fight off imaginary knife-wielding assailants (Wen, 2017).
Indeed, knives, perhaps because they are cheap and easy to acquire, seem to have
become the favourite weapon of mob assault in Xinjiang in recent years. Aside from
taking part in drills, shopkeepers must, at their own expense, install password-activated
security doors, ‘panic buttons’ and cameras that film not just the street outside but also
inside their stores (Wen, 2017).

The ‘soft’ strategy of recompense

This strategy relies on the authorities taking measures to change behaviour by aiming at
the pockets and minds of targets. These measures include:

Rewards for terror tip-offs

The practice of offering monetary rewards in Xinjiang for the apprehension of suspected
terrorists or violent criminals, or information leading to their capture, dated from 2013,
when sums of between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan were first put up by the region’s
police for these purposes (Cui & Cao, 2013). The public security authority of Altay prefec-
ture, which borders Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia, has announced in 2017 that it is
offering up to five million yuan (US$725,000) for information on terrorist attack plans
that target government buildings, public venues, or important events; up to four million
190 C.-P. CHUNG

yuan to whistle-blowers who report explosives- or gun- making activities; and three million
yuan for tip-offs on terrorists entering or leaving China (Huang, 2017).

Payments for intermarriages

The promotion of Han–Uighur marriages is one of the policies to emerge from the 2XWF.
Since then, officials in Cherchen County, known as Qiemo in Putonghua, which has a
population of 10,000, of whom 73% are Uighur and 27% are Han, has begun offering pay-
ments of 10,000 yuan (almost $1600) a year for five years to newly married couples in
which one member is Han and the other is from one of China’s officially recognised 55
ethnic minorities (Wong, 2014). This is more than the annual average income for Xinjiang
residents. The couples will also get priority consideration for housing and government
jobs, and 90% of their medical bills will be covered by government insurance, while
their children will receive free education from kindergarten through high school, with
those attending vocational schools obtaining almost 3000 yuan ($500) a year in tuition
subsidies, and those attending university getting an annual tuition subsidy of 5600
yuan ($800) (Meyer, 2014). Perhaps because this policy has only been recently
implemented, its effect is yet to be seen.

Compensation for birth control

Authorities in southern Xinjiang’s rural Hotan prefecture, which is poor and heavily domi-
nated by Uyghurs, has been encouraging residents to ‘have fewer children and get rich
quick’, with a 3000 yuan payout for those who forgo having the third child allowed to
rural ethnic minority couples under China’s family planning rules (Agence France-Presse
[AFP], 2015).

Winning hearts and minds

To diffuse possible troubles on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the July 2009 Urumqi
riot, the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang Party Committee in July 2013 assigned 50
mid-level cadres to ‘conduct important political missions’ in 50 ‘most complicated
towns and villages according to intelligence on the enemy’, with these officials setting
off for their destinations within 24 hours (Hang, 2013).
For over three year since 2014, some 200,000 officials in Xinjiang have been sent to live
in rural areas, particularly southern Xinjiang, which is strongly rooted in Islamic tradition-
alism, under a program aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the local people, par-
ticularly Uyghurs, by helping villagers with farm work, clearing land, and planting trees
(Silk & Chen, 2014). Han cadres were also required to visit ethnic minority families regularly
and interact closely with them to gain a better understanding of non-Han local culture in
Xinjiang (Gan, 2016). Even so, security was not taken for granted. These officials have been
instructed not to go out in the evening, to move in groups of three or more even in the
daytime, and to be accompanied by armed police when visiting villagers. Aside from
assisting locals, these cadres were also tasked with gathering intelligence, so as to nip
any potential social management problem in the bud (Leibold, 2014).
 JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM 191

Ethnic mingling
At a CCP Politburo meeting on Xinjiang on 23–24 September 2013, Yu Zhengsheng, Chair-
man of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference,
called for more inland elites to work in the region, for the purposes of ‘fostering local talent
with professional quality and managerial capabilities’, and providing ‘talent support’, for
the sake of the region’s stability and development (Uyghur American Association, 2013).
It is in this spirit that Beijing hopes to trigger a new influx of immigrants into the region
with the most liberal residency rules in China. In southern Xinjiang, the latest regulations
from 2015 mean that, unlike in cities across China, a hukou (household registration) there is
available with no educational or skill requirements at all (AFP, 2015). However, according
to James Leibold, who studies ethnic relations in China at Australia’s La Trobe University,
‘Even if these policies do manage to attract Han to places like Hotan it doesn’t mean they
will intermingle with the Uyghurs … they will just live in segregated communities and be
guarded by the People’s Armed Police’ (AFP, 2015).

Job creation and work placements

Competition for jobs with local and migrant Han-Chinese for jobs has been mitigated in
the public sector through affirmative action policies in the form of hiring quotas for
Uyghurs. However, this has been undermined by the shrinking size of the state sector,
and as shown in a 2012 study, Uyghur workers in non-state occupations earn on
average 52% less than Han workers (Grieger, 2014). Nonetheless, under a ‘national assist-
ance pairing program’, with central ministries and economically developed provinces and
municipalities supporting Xinjiang in building new infrastructure and boosting local devel-
opment, 5161 assistance projects were launched in the region with a combined invest-
ment of over 58 billion yuan ($8.63 billion) between 2011 and 2015, of which 74% went
to livelihood improvement programs such as housing upgrade, school construction, and
job creation (Yuan, 2017). In 2016, the disposable income of Xinjiang residents increased
by at least 8% (Xinhua, 2017).
At the 2XWF, Xi expressed his wish that more Uyghurs should be moved to Han-domi-
nated parts of China for education and employment (Wong, 2014), and the Forum’s con-
cluding statement called for ‘orderly expanding the number of Xinjiang minorities who
receive education, find employment and live in the interior’ (Leibold, 2014). Provincial gov-
ernments were ‘encouraged’ to offer young Uyghurs work and educational opportunities
‘to enhance mutual understanding’, and as one of China’s wealthiest provinces, Guang-
dong committed itself to take 5000 of these individuals up to the end of 2016 (Meyer,
2014). One official from Xinjiang would accompany 50 of the migrants, who would be
granted renewable permits to stay as long as they wish (Meyer, 2014).

Between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ – a ‘middling’ strategy of (combat)-readiness

This security strategy to guard against the threat of terrorism by monitoring and regulating
the lives of Xinjiang residents, through the use of both the latest technology as well as old-
fashioned neighbourhood-watch schemes, has gained currency with the authorities in
recent years. Unlike both the intimidating (‘hard’) and incentivising (‘soft’) strategies
192 C.-P. CHUNG

discussed, which are obviously aimed at recalcitrant non-Han ethnic minorities, this strat-
egy is supposedly targeted at no particular ethnic group, yet should be the concern of
every citizen. However, it is clear to many Uyghurs in Xinjiang as to who is the target of
this ‘neutral’ strategy that is becoming increasingly commonplace (‘middling’) and intru-
sive upon people’s normal lives.
In 2005, the administration of former CCP Secretary-General cum PRC State Chairman
Hu Jintao began constructing ‘Skynet’, (‘Tianwang’,) China’s nationwide surveillance
system to ‘improve social management’, a euphemism for tightening security monitoring,
the pace of which quickened with the riots in Tibetan-populated areas and Urumqi in 2008
and 2009, respectively (Langfitt, 2013). By July 2010, Xinjiang authorities had installed
high-definition video surveillance cameras on public buses and at bus stops; on roads
and in alleys; in markets and shopping centres; and in schools and mosques (Famularo,
2015b). Operating in tandem are metal detectors put in place in major public areas, includ-
ing mosques, bazaars, malls, hotels, railway stations and airports, and police spot docu-
ment checks carried out on pedestrians, with mobile phones inspected for extremist
videos.
In 2015, the PRC Ministry of State Security initiated the development of a comprehen-
sive face recognition system that, when fully implemented, should be able to identify
every single one of the 1.3 billion citizens of the country within three seconds (Gesellschaft
fur bedrohte volke, 2017), by matching his or her facial features against a national data-
base. Border surveillance has correspondingly been stepped-up. One of the Ministry of
Public Security’s most ambitious big-data projects is the nationwide Police Cloud (jing-
wuyun) System, known as the ‘Integrated Joint Operations Platform’ in Xinjiang (China
using, 2018), which aggregates and analyses information from people’s medical history,
to their supermarket membership, to home delivery records, much of which is linked to
people’s unique national identification numbers (HRW, 2017c). This System allows the
police to track where the individuals have been, who they are with, and what they have
been doing, as well as make predictions about their future activities. Furthermore, since
July 2017, authorities in Urumqi have ordered local residents to install an app on their
smartphones that would ‘automatically pinpoint the location of video or audio containing
terrorist content or illegal religious content, images, e-books or documents, and delete
them automatically’ (Qiao & Wang, 2017).
In October 2016, residents in many parts of Xinjiang, both Muslim Uyghurs and Han,
were told to hand over their passports to the local police for review and safekeeping,
and those wishing to travel abroad had to first seek permission from the authorities
before reclaiming their passports (Gan, 2016). The reason for these orders became clear
the following month, when the Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang required all passport
applicants in the region henceforth to supply DNA samples as part of their application
(HRW, 2017d). Police in Xinjiang’s north-western Yili (Ili) prefecture have since June 2017
been asking residents to supply not only a blood sample for DNA identification, but
also fingerprints and a voice recording when applying for travel documents (British Broad-
casting Corporation [BBC], 2017a).
To strengthen everyday policing, a sprawling net of several thousand ‘convenience
police stations’ located just hundreds of metres apart and at street intersections are
being built across cities, towns, and rural areas of Xinjiang. These compact one- or two-
storied concrete structures, typically measuring about 40–120 m2, are stocked with
 JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM 193

wheelchairs, first-aid kits, repair tools, umbrellas, and even phone chargers for public use,
but they also come equipped with surveillance cameras and guards on 24-hour patrols
(Gan, 2016). Some 30,000 new officers are being hired to man these police booths
(Wen, 2017), and to attract Han-Chinese security personnel from the rest of the country
with family backgrounds that are free from ‘political problems’, these recruits are paid
up to three times the salary of ethnic Uyghur police officers with the same rank (Sulaiman,
2014).
A neighbourhood-watch scheme, the ‘double-linked household management system’,
went into operation throughout Xinjiang in late 2016 (Gan, 2016), with households divided
into groups of 10 to watch over each other for ‘double-linked’ potential security concern
and poverty alleviation assessment. Families will be appraised annually, and those ident-
ified as having performed a good job as monitors will be rewarded. In Tibet, where the
system was first tried out, children from ‘progressive’ double-linked families receive 10
extra points on their university entrance exams.
These policies on safe-keeping passports, DNA identification, police stations, and
household management resemble those enacted in neighbouring Tibet Autonomous
Region, where they were referred to as ‘grid-style social management’ and pioneered
by Chen Quanguo where he was the party chief for five years before being appointed
to the same position in Xinjiang in August 2016. They did have the effect of dampening
incidents of self-immolation by Tibetans in Tibet.
Beginning in 2017, authorities in western Xinjiang’s Bayingolin prefecture have ordered
all vehicles registered there to be installed with satellite tracking devices, using the home-
grown Chinese Beidou GPS system, which would enable the authorities to pinpoint the
position of vehicles at all times (Wong & Sing, 2017). Vehicles that do not comply with
the requirement, for which an annual charge of 90 yuan is levied, will be turned away
from petrol stations throughout the prefecture (Wong & Sing, 2017). According to the
Bayingolin police, ‘the car is the main means of transport of terrorists, and is often also
used by them as a weapon’ (Wong & Sing, 2017), and the devices ‘would also help car
owners find their vehicles quickly if they are stolen by terrorists’ (BBC, 2017b). Authorities
in Urumqi have since August 2017 required all ethnic Uyghur and Kazak individuals to
undergo stringent background checks before registering a vehicle in the city (Niyaz, 2017).

Resistance
In March 2012, 9 axe-wielding men attacked and killed 13 shoppers and police personnel
in a town market of Kargilik (Yecheng) county in Xinjiang’s Kashgar prefecture, before
police were able to shoot dead 7 of the attackers and arrest the 2 surviving ones
(Meng, 2014).
On 23 April 2013, a clash apparently erupted after local police and community workers
chanced upon a group of Uyghurs, who then hacked and burnt to death 15 members of
the security services, while 6 members of the gang were shot dead at the scene (Associ-
ated Press [AP], 2013). For the attack, two men were sentenced to death and three others
to prison terms ranging from nine years to life imprisonment (AP, 2013).
On 26 June 2013, 27 people died when knife-wielding protestors attacked police
stations, the local government building and a construction site at Lukqun, a township
that is 90% Uyghur in Shanshan County, Turpan Prefecture, stabbing people, and
194 C.-P. CHUNG

setting fire to police cars. This assault resulted in 17 people killed, including 9 police offi-
cers and a security guard, plus 10 rioters who were shot dead by the police (Buckley, 2013).
On 28 October 2013, a four-wheel drive vehicle ploughed through a group of ped-
estrians near Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, crashed into a stone bridge and
caught fire, killing the three Uyghur vehicle occupants and two pedestrians, and injuring
dozens. While the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has claimed responsibility for the Tianan-
men Square attack, Chinese authorities blamed it on the shadowy Xinjiang-based East Tur-
kestan Islamic Movement (ETIM),1 with PRC Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang saying
that ETIM was the same as the TIP (Kaiman, 2013). According to Michael Clarke of the
National Security College, Australian National University, ETIM has been reformed as the
TIP led by Abdul al Haq, (currently based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan,) two years after
ETIM’s leader Hasan Mahsum was killed in 2003 by a Pakistani military strike in South
Waziristan (Clarke, 2017).
On 1 March 2014, a group of Uyghur men armed with long knives and machetes killed
31 people and injured 141 at the main railway station in Kunming, Yunnan province
(Newton, 2015). Four of the assailants were shot dead at the scene and the fifth, a pregnant
woman, was captured alive and later sentenced to life in prison on the charges of joining a
terror group and committing murder (AP, 2015). Three Uyghur men were later put to death
after China’s Supreme Court upheld their convictions for the crimes of murder and organ-
ising and leading a terrorist organisation, although they were not at the crime scene when
arrested (AP, 2015).
For the following three months, perhaps on account of copycat attacks mimicking that
which occurred in Kunming, Xinjiang experience a period of extreme disquiet. On 30 April
2014, a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi South Railway Station killed 3 people, including 2
perpetrators, and injured 79 (Meng, 2014). On 22 May 2014, assailants crashed two
vehicles into a morning market in Urumqi and started tossing explosives at shoppers,
killing 39 people, plus 4 of the attackers, and injuring almost 100 others (Denyer, 2014).
On 20 June 2014, security forces shot dead 13 people after a car was driven into the
public security building of Kargilik (Yecheng) county in Xinjiang’s Kashgar prefecture,
setting off an explosion followed by an armed assault (Al Jazeera, 2014), altogether injur-
ing 3 policemen.
On 18 September 2015, on the eve of celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the
establishment of the Xinjiang (Uyghur) Autonomous Region, knife-wielding separatists
killed some 50 miners and security guards at a coal mine in Baicheng county of Aksu pre-
fecture before fleeing into the mountains (Radio Free Asia, 2015).
On 28 December 2016, a car crashed into Hotan prefecture’s Karakax county CCP com-
mittee building and explosives were set off, killing one person before the four assailants
were shot dead (Ng, 2017).
On 14 February 2017, three knife-wielding men stabbed multiple people in a residential
compound in Pishan county, Hotan prefecture, killing an official and a security guard
before the attackers were shot dead by police (Ng, 2017).
Overseas, increasing numbers of Uyghur fleeing or migrating from Xinjiang through
Southeast Asia have led to led to a number of detentions in 2013 and 2014 by the auth-
orities in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, who claimed that the detainees had been tra-
velling on forged Turkish passports or citizenship papers (Clarke, 2017). This issue achieved
prominence in the aftermath of the bombing of the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok on 18
 JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM 195

August 2015, which some speculated was perpetrated by Uyghurs in retaliation for the
deportation to China of 109 Uyghurs discovered by Thai authorities in a people-smuggler
run camp in Muslim southern Thailand (Clarke, 2017). At the request of Chinese authorities,
Egypt has deported dozens of Uyghur students back home to China and detained hun-
dreds of others for repatriation in 2017 (Kashgary, 2017).
Domestically, the popularity of face-covering veils for women and even girls, and long
beards for men, which has sprouted in recent years, may be considered a silent expression
of resistance to Chinese controls over the lives of Muslims and Uyghurs in Xinjiang. It also
points to a growing level of foreign Islamist influence on them. However, with the enact-
ment of Xinjiang’s law against ‘religious extremism’, even this form of sullen but peaceful
protest is no longer allowed.

Scant evidence of foreign involvement

Comparing the speeches given by Hu at the 1XWF and Xi at the 2XWF, the focus of Hu was
on promoting Uyghur employment through economic growth, while that of Xi was on
actively suppressing terrorism. However, notwithstanding the difference in emphasis,
the logic driving Xinjiang policy throughout both the Hu and Xi administrations are basi-
cally the same, namely: (a) the CCP’s policies toward Xinjiang are correct and (b) the causes
of the occurrences of crises are inherently external and brought in from outside Xinjiang’s
international borders (Suzuki, 2014). As such, dealing with the infiltration of foreign reli-
gious extremists and Uyghurs under their influence [argument b] would justify the use
of hard, soft, middling, or any strategy [argument a] by the authorities.
Beijing has long claimed a connection between Xinjiang violence and global Islamic ter-
rorism, accusing what it says are separatist groups based abroad such as the ETIM/Turke-
stan Islamic Party (TIP) of being behind attacks in Xinjiang, and maintaining that the so-
called Islamic State (IS) has been recruiting Uyghurs from China. Beijing has contended
that ETIM was responsible for a suicidal car bomb attack through the east gate of the
Chinese embassy at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (Putz, 2017). In a study of leaked registration
documents for IS fighters, the Washington-based New America Foundation claimed in
January 2017 that tough religious restrictions on Muslim minorities in China has driven
114 recruits from Xinjiang to join IS (AFP, 2017). It seems that, despite Beijing’s best
efforts to cut off transit routes via Central and Southeast Asia, more than 100 Uyghurs
have made their way to join the IS in Iraq and Syria (Gracie, 2017). More recently, on 1
March 2017, IS released a video, which appeared to menace China by showing Uyghur
fighters training, and threatening to ‘shed rivers of blood and avenge the oppressed’ in
China (Battaglia, 2017). In addition, IS claimed to have kidnapped and killed two
Chinese in the Pakistani city of Quetta in May 2017 (Discontent, 2018).
Notwithstanding the video threat, there has been no significant terrorist attack outside
Xinjiang in the rest of China since 2014, and reported attacks within the region have been
sporadic and small-scale, with no claims that they have been designed or executed by
foreign agents or masterminds. Even the New America Foundation study found that the
recruits had no prior experience with any other jihadist or separatist group, which raises
questions about China’s official narrative of the foreign sources of radicalisation in Xinjiang
(Discontent, 2018). Rather than Uyghurs being driven by the IS agenda, it is very possible
that IS had made use of them to boast of its own reach and militancy.
196 C.-P. CHUNG

Foreign instigators or agents may well be present, but they do not appear to be the
direct causes or major perpetrators of violence in Xinjiang. More likely, both external
and internal dimensions of the security threat have been talked up by powerful vested
interests in China whose objectives are advanced by securitisation, such as politicians
angling for promotion and thus wanting to appear tough before the CCP Congress in
the autumn of 2017, security services wanting to expand their bureaucratic empires,
and businesses that produce surveillance equipment and software wanting to make
more money. What need to be addressed are questions such as: By highlighting violent
activities, and devising ever new strategies to deal with them, would the authorities inad-
vertently play up and fuel the resentment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang? Does the
Chinese party-state need more violence and problems to deal with, which the country
already has aplenty? Would ‘securitizing’ terrorist violence in Xinjiang into an existential
threat that justifies the taking of extreme and unusual measures against it (Buzan,
Wæver, & de Wilde, 1998, pp. 23–26), not discourage hydrocarbon pipeline and infrastruc-
ture investments in the region, or sabotage commerce via the Eurasian ‘One-Belt-One-
Road?’ Surely, Xinjiang’s security problem already has enough local roots and instigators,
decades of gestation and occasional outbreaks, and potential to disrupt the peace, to
require any efforts at ‘securitization’.

The continuance of resistance: a vicious cycle of Uyghur resistance and

official reaction
The ultimate aim of all power strategies employed by the central and local authorities of
the PRC is to exercise effective rule over the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xin-
jiang and eradicate the threat of terrorism from the region. As Chinese citizens typically
have high expectations that the government should keep them safe, and political
careers oftentimes depend on keeping the peace in one’s precinct, China’s leaders are
generally intolerant of failure to prevent or contain outbreaks of organised violence, no
matter how minimal or localised, hence their militaristic actions and tough talks. For its
anti-terrorism efforts, Xinjiang alone spent more than 30 billion yuan (US$4.35 billion)
on public security in 2016 (Huang, 2017), an increase of 20% from 2015 (CHINA:
Muslims, 2017, p. 1).
However, Xinjiang has concentrations of urbanised high-density populations whose
local ethnic minority population is only grudgingly loyal to the authorities. Not a few
Uyghurs see the large and continuous influx of Han-Chinese into Xinjiang, keen compe-
tition with these immigrants for jobs, restrictions by the authorities on indigenous
customs and religious practices, and pressure to learn the Chinese language even to
get by in Xinjiang as official attempts to marginalise or suppress Uyghur ethnic and cul-
tural identities (Clarke, 2015).2 The perception that the government’s strategies to deal
with ethnic unrests – whether ‘hard’, ‘soft’, or somewhere in between – as just means
to achieve its integrationist ends does not bode well for the party-state’s endeavour to
ensure a more socially cohesive, inter-mingled, peaceful, and stable society in Xinjiang,
or the rest of China.
The absence of any dialogue with the Uyghur population underscores the top-down
approach in addressing the region’s most pressing problems. The ethnic Uyghur popu-
lation of Xinjiang has no discernible political voice, let alone have it reflected in the
 JOURNAL OF POLICING, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM 197

formulation of official policies, and in the midst of a ‘people’s war on terror’, called for by
the 2XWF, it is dangerous for them to speak up, unless to echo the government’s message
(Gracie, 2017). In 2014, making the case for an honest appraisal of the dangers of repres-
sion earned China’s most illustrious Uyghur academic, Ilham Tohti, a life sentence in prison.
The risk of demonising such mild dissent may only be to leave China’s Uyghurs with the
voice of the separatist, religious fundamentalist, or ‘terrorist’ (Gracie, 2017).
Aside from their very different languages, religions and cultural traditions, ‘Uighurs, in
the eyes of most Han, are dangerous criminals and thieves to be avoided; the Han, for most
Uighurs, are dirty and infidel invaders who cannot be trusted’ (Leibold, 2014). Still, there is
the ‘all-seeing eye’ and unhesitating heavy hand of the state’s security apparatus, the more
than 40% of Xinjiang’s population already comprising of Hans, the improvements in the
livelihood of many locals in Xinjiang because of China’s economic and investment policies,
and the still heavy preserve of the Uyghur population in the prefectures of southern Xin-
jiang. As such, it is unlikely that inter-ethnic conflicts can or need be pursued by any group
for them to become part of daily life for most people in the region (Chaudhuri, 2014, p. 2).
However, separatist sentiments, resentment towards government policies and ill-feeling
against the Han immigrants in Xinjiang will remain, and to vent these emotions, a
section of the Uyghur population will occasionally seek to use violence indiscriminately.
This would only lead to more repressive actions on the part of the authorities, thus result-
ing in a continuous cycle of resistance and suppression.

Notes
1. Uyghur separatists generally refer to Xinjiang as East Turkistan.
2. It is very difficult to elicit opinions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang or within China on their attitudes
towards government policies and actions affecting them, given the political sensitivities sur-
rounding such issues. For the attitudes of the Uyghur diaspora that are mostly negative, see
the websites of the Uyghur American Association <http://uyghuramerican.org/> and World
Uyghur Congress <http://www.uyghurcongress.org/en/>.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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