This book explores how the Chinese government reasserts its control and management of public spaces as part of its overall counter-terrorism strategy. The work focuses primarily on the banal and alternative forms that China’s ‘war on terror’ takes: the everyday, non-military, socio-economic and spatio-material. It presents three different cases of control associated with the state’s effort to manage material, social and digital public spaces as remedies to terrorism and ethnic unrest in China: the redevelopment project of Kashgar—the ‘home’ of Uyghur culture—from 2001 to 2017; the forging of local partnerships with potential agents (i.e. the local cadres and imams in Xinjiang) as part of the process of implementing counter-terrorism policies; and an online campaign about international terrorism that appeared on Sina Weibo. Using securitization theory as a theoretical framework, the book establishes links between human geography and critical security studies and advances the understanding of non-confrontational forms of resistance in China. It also focuses attention on the binary relationship between the securitizing agency of the state and the counter-securitization agency of ‘terrorists’, while also exploring the manner in which other societal forces interact with these processes. This book will be of interest to students of critical terrorism studies, Chinese studies, human geography, and security studies.

This book explores how the Chinese government reasserts its control and management of public spaces as part of its overall counter-terrorism strategy. The work focuses primarily on the banal and alternative forms that China's 'war on terror' takes: the everyday, non-military, socio-economic and spatio-material. It presents three different cases of control associated with the state's effort to manage material, social and digital public spaces as remedies to terrorism and ethnic unrest in China: the redevelopment project of Kashgar-the 'home' of Uyghur culture-from 2001 to 2017; the forging of local partnerships with potential agents (i.e. the local cadres and imams in Xinjiang) as part of the process of implementing counter-terrorism policies; and an online campaign about international terrorism that appeared on Sina Weibo. Using securitization theory as a theoretical framework, the book establishes links between human geography and critical security studies and advances the understanding of non-confrontational forms of resistance in China. It also focuses attention on the binary relationship between the securitizing agency of the state and the counter-securitization agency of 'terrorists', while also exploring the manner in which other societal forces interact with these processes. This book will be of interest to students of critical terrorism studies, Chinese studies, human geography, and security studies.

China’s war on terror is among its most prominent and least understood of campaigns. With links to the global jihad, an indigenous insurgency threatens the government’s grip on a massive region of north- western China known as Xinjiang. Riots, bombings, ambushes, and assassinations have rocked the region under separatist and Islamist banners. China acted early and forcefully, and although brutal, their efforts represent one of the few successes in the global struggle against Islamist terrorism. The effectiveness of this campaign has raised questions regarding whether China genuinely confronts a terrorist threat. In this book, based on extensive fieldwork, Martin Wayne investigates China’s counterinsurgency effort, highlighting the success of an approach centred on reshaping local society and government institutions. At the same time, he raises the question of what the United States may be able to learn from China’s approach, and argues that as important a case as Xinjiang needs to be fully examined in order for terrorism to be defeated. This book will be of interest to students of China, Asian politics, terrorism and security studies in general.

Every major event in history has unintended consequences. A major unintended (and unsettling, from Beijing's standpoint) consequence of the U.S.-led War on Terrorism has not only been to checkmate and roll-back China's recent moves at strategic expansion in Central, South, and Southeast Asia but also to tilt the regional balance of power decisively in Washington's favor within a short period of time, thereby highlighting how tenuous Chinese power is when compared to that of the United States. In this sense, September 11, 2001, should be seen as a major discontinuity or nonlinearity in post-Cold War international politics. New strategic and political realities emerging in Asia put a question mark over Beijing's earlier certainties, assumptions and beliefs. This monograph offers an overview of China's foreign policy goals and achievements prior to September 11, examines Beijing's response to terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland, provides an assessment of China's tactical gains and strategic losses following the September 11 attacks, and concludes with an evaluation of Beijing's future policy options. It argues that if China was on a roll prior to 9/11, in a complete reversal of roles post-9/1 1, it is now the United States that is on the move. The U.S.-led War against Terrorism has radically altered the strategic landscape, severely constricted the strategic latitude that China has enjoyed post-Cold War, undermined China's carefully projected image as the next superpower, and ushered in new geopolitical alignments whose ramifications will be felt for a long time to come.

Every major event in history has unintended consequences. A major unintended (and unsettling, from Beijing's standpoint) consequence of the U.S.-led War on Terrorism has not only been to checkmate and roll-back China's recent moves at strategic expansion in Central, South, and Southeast Asia but also to tilt the regional balance of power decisively in Washington's favor within a short period of time, thereby highlighting how tenuous Chinese power is when compared to that of the United States. In this sense, September 11, 2001, should be seen as a major discontinuity or nonlinearity in post-Cold War international politics. New strategic and political realities emerging in Asia put a question mark over Beijing's earlier certainties, assumptions and beliefs. This monograph offers an overview of China's foreign policy goals and achievements prior to September 11, examines Beijing's response to terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland, provides an assessment of China's tactical gains and strategic losses following the September 11 attacks, and concludes with an evaluation of Beijing's future policy options. It argues that if China was on a roll prior to 9/11, in a complete reversal of roles post-9/1 1, it is now the United States that is on the move. The U.S.-led War against Terrorism has radically altered the strategic landscape, severely constricted the strategic latitude that China has enjoyed post-Cold War, undermined China's carefully projected image as the next superpower, and ushered in new geopolitical alignments whose ramifications will be felt for a long time to come.

How China is using the US-led war on terror to erase the cultural identity of its Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region Within weeks of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the Chinese government warned that it faced a serious terrorist threat from its Uyghur ethnic minority, who are largely Muslim. In this explosive book, Sean Roberts reveals how China has been using the US-led global war on terror as international cover for its increasingly brutal suppression of the Uyghurs, and how the war's targeting of an undefined enemy has emboldened states around the globe to persecute ethnic minorities and severely repress domestic opposition in the name of combatting terrorism. Of the eleven million Uyghurs living in China today, more than one million are now being held in so-called reeducation camps, victims of what has become the largest program of mass detention and surveillance in the world. Roberts describes how the Chinese government successfully implicated the Uyghurs in the global terror war—despite a complete lack of evidence—and branded them as a dangerous terrorist threat with links to al-Qaeda. He argues that the reframing of Uyghur domestic dissent as international terrorism provided justification and inspiration for a systematic campaign to erase Uyghur identity, and that a nominal Uyghur militant threat only emerged after more than a decade of Chinese suppression in the name of counterterrorism—which has served to justify further state repression. A gripping and moving account of the humanitarian catastrophe that China does not want you to know about, The War on the Uyghurs draws on Roberts's own in-depth interviews with the Uyghurs, enabling their voices to be heard.