Xinjiang - where China’s worry intersects the world

To control this potentially chaotic situation and to manage Sino-Russian competition for influence, China launched the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes Russia, China, the Central Asian republics, and a growing number of observers from around the region. China has pushed hard to keep the focus of the SCO on co-operative activities against the “three evils” of “separatism, fundamentalism, and terrorism,” a fear all the member states have in common.

Along some of Xinjiang’s most remote and sensitive borders are Tibet, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the disputed state of Kashmir - any one of which could quickly embroil China in an international crisis. China also tested its “all-weather” friendship with Pakistan pressuring Islamabad to crackdown on Uighur militants seeking refuge in Pakistan. Pakistan reportedly has responded by sending a number of Uighur militants to China for prosecution. Its recent stepped up attacks on terrorist groups - and especially the killing of Abdul Haq and more than a dozen other Uighur militants - has among other things assuaged relations with China.

The US intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001 introduced another variable of vulnerability for China with regard to Xinjiang. In the conflict that followed, global support for al-Qaeda drew in more militants to the region, including some Uighurs (as Abdul Haq’s death proved) but it also changed the strategic landscape for China. The introduction of massive US forces into the region, and especially the use of bases such as Manas in Kyrgyzstan, raised visceral and long-standing fears of encirclement by a hostile US intent on “dividing and Westernising” China. Beijing has put pressure on Central Asian neighbours to expel or severely limit any US military presence and has refused to allow US forces to use Chinese territory for staging or overflights in the war in Afghanistan.

China is also working hard to enhance co-operation with its neighbours on energy exploration, exploitation, and transportation as a way of keeping the US and Russia from monopolising Central Asia’s voluminous oil and natural gas resources.

These competing interests, and the residual worry that the US and Russia seek to supplant or minimise Chinese influence in Central Asia will continue to contribute to Beijing’s neuralgia about assuring stability in its far Western extremity, even if the real terrorist threat to China has diminished.