Why is xinjiang important to china

Beijing has also attempted to build an international coalition in support of its policies: When 22 countries sent a letter to the U. The timing of this escalation is puzzling, given that public security officials had been saying for some time that their strategy was working and that there had been less reported violence involving Uighurs in Xinjiang, or anywhere in China, in the period just before the CCP changed strategies.

Two intersecting trends contributed to that heightened insecurity. First, the CCP noted with concern a handful of contacts between Uighurs and Islamic militant organizations in Southeast Asia and the Middle East in — including arrests in the Philippines , Malaysia and Indonesia , as well as up to 5, Uighurs fighting alongside various militant groups in the Middle East numerical estimates of Uighur participation over the past five years have varied widely.

Objectively, the capabilities of Uighur groups abroad, and their actual connection to incidents of violence in Xinjiang, are questionable. Western experts are skeptical , and even the most generous estimates of Uighur militant capability do not imply that insurgency inside Xinjiang is present, or even imminent.

Moreover, the contacts that occurred in were limited to a dozen or so individual cases. Nevertheless, these contacts shifted the possibility of cooperation between Uighurs and Islamic militant groups in Southeast Asia and the Middle East from wholly theoretical to an emerging operational possibility. In and , leaders of militant groups in the Middle East, including some affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, also made statements indicating a desire to target China.

Daniel L. Ford Friday, January 15, Working under this framework, party officials focused on Xinjiang concluded that a much larger percentage of the population was vulnerable to jihadist infiltration than previously estimated. Second, through the focus on development and benefiting the lives of the people, the people should be able to find work, earn money, and have hope.

In recent years, the Party committee and government of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have always made the safety and security of the people of all ethnic groups their chief desire.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that China is a unified, multi-ethnic country and the history of the Chinese nation is a history of unity, cohesion, and joint progress among all ethnic groups.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has put forward many requirements for consolidating ethnic solidarity. Fourth, we must extensively carry out activities to create and advance ethnic solidarity and insist on a focus on friendship, peace, action, and the grassroots.

Sixth, we must severely crack down on ethnic separatist activities and persist in the anti-separatism struggle with both cultural and military forces. In this way, the XPCC will truly become a border security stabilizer, a melting pot for people of all ethnic groups, and a demonstration area for advanced productivity and advanced culture, making greater contributions to social stability and long-term peace in Xinjiang.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that the key to realizing social stability and long-term peace in Xinjiang lies with the Party. It essentially relies on a strong team of cadres, a strict grassroots organization system, and effective mass work mechanisms. The more severe the situation and the more difficult the task, the more it is necessary for the CCP Central Committee to make overarching plans and lead the way. The key to realizing social stability and long-term peace in Xinjiang lies with the Party.

The series of new ideas, new thoughts, and new strategies it proposes are interrelated and interconnected, involving all aspects of productivity and production as well as economic foundations and superstructures. It forms a complete, logical, and scientific theoretical system that covers various fields of economic, political, cultural, social, ecological civilization, and Party construction.

He has emphasized establishing strategic thinking, telling us to: observe the overall situation, determine the overall situation, pursue major issues, be adept at understanding and judging the situation from a political perspective, look at Xinjiang from the overall perspective, and make the most advantageous strategic choices through weighing advantages and disadvantages.

This report is made possible by general support to CSIS. No direct sponsorship contributed to this report. This report is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS , a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues.

Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author s. Public Security, State Security branches and the PLA's intelligence branches should all cooperate and work together to investigate and analyze the enemies inside and outside the border and strengthen the work of collecting intelligence information.

Crucially, this hardline security policy involves, above all, extending the government's control mechanisms into southern Xinjiang, where most of the Uighur population of the region lives and which hitherto had been the last part of Xinjiang enjoying even minimal "autonomy" from Beijing:. Make Southern Xinjiang the focus of attention; establish a sensitive information network and strive to get information on a deep level which can serve as a covert prior alert of any trouble.

Establish individual files; maintain supervision and vigilance. Legally strike against separatism, sabotaging and criminal activities of the internal and external hostile forces in a timely manner. Strengthen the management of labor camps laogai and prisons in Xinjiang. Continuing the above theme, Point 6 of the document calls for an extensive expansion of the Production and Construction Corps network--the chief organizational nexus for Beijing's "bridgehead" operation in Xinjiang--throughout the region as a whole and especially into the south:.

Government at all levels should Next, in Point 7, the CPC Politburo orders a heavily increased deployment of People's Liberation Army units in the region and a comprehensive increase in their combat preparedness:.

A stronghold against ethnic separatism should be formed by greatly strengthening the construction of the People's Liberation Army in Xinjiang. The military forces in Xinjiang will only be strengthened, not weakened. Education on ethnic and religious policy must be selectively carried out within the Army. Tighten controls and increase the military and political ability of officers and soldiers to prevent enemy forces from causing confusion so that they can infiltrate and carry out sabotage activities.

Here the focus is exclusively upon using China's growing clout in the region as a means of pressuring neighboring states into cracking down on the various exile Uighur groups based on their territory:. Limit the activities of outside ethnic separatist activities from many sides.

Bear in mind the fact that Turkey, Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan are the home-bases for the activities of outside separatists forces. Through diplomacy, urge these countries to limit and weaken the activities of separatist forces inside their border Establish homebases in the regions or cities with high Chinese and overseas Chinese populations. The ominous human rights implications of Document No. The "Strike Hard" Campaign in Xinjiang Not by coincidence, the first major initiative taken by the central government, in April a mere one month after the issuance of Politburo Document No.

In the case of Xinjiang the scope of the Strike Hard campaign was specifically extended by the central government to include not only the "major common criminals" who had always been the main targets, but also both "ethnic splittists" and "illegal religious" forces and individuals throughout the region.

That campaign resulted in hundreds of thousands of arrests of criminal suspects, and several thousand judicial executions, across China--and in Xinjiang, too, the campaign more than lived up to its description by the authorities as a "quasi-military action. In the area of official religious policy, the implications of Strike Hard were spelled out in the Xinjiang Ribao in September as follows:. The CPC committee has taken measures to tighten the regulation of religion.

Rules have been adopted to explicitly prohibit any mosque from allowing traveling religious figures from outside to preach there and [to prevent] any individual from allowing outside religious figures to conduct religious activities at his home. All Islamic religious figures must enroll in the "training course for religious figures" organized by the [government] county department in charge of religion Religious figures are required to undergo a round of studies in the township on a semi-monthly basis and an assessment is conducted every three months, thus instilling among religious figures a sense of complying with the law.

The government's offensive against unauthorized Moslem religious activities had clearly been on the drawing board since the appearance of Document No. Dozens of people were reportedly sentenced to death and executed for their roles in the riots and in a bombing incident that occurred soon afterwards in Urumqi, the provincial capitol, and dozens more were sentenced to prison terms of seven years to life.

In late June , news began to filter out about the wider ramifications of the post-Yining crackdown. A major purge of local officials had reportedly been carried out: according to the Xinjiang Ribao , grassroots cadres had been sacked, including thirty-five Party secretaries of villages and towns in Ili Prefecture and nineteen village mayors or factory managers.

A parallel crackdown on "underground" religious activities had resulted in an official banning of the construction or renovation of mosques. Altogether forty-four "core participants in illegal religious activities" had been arrested in the Yili region. In addition, more than one hundred "illegal classes" teaching the Koran had been broken up by the security authorities, five school principals had been sacked and numerous teachers threatened with dismissal for allegedly stirring up separatist sentiment.

The report even boasted that in Ili, "illegal religious activities were cleaned up According to the United National Revolutionary Front, a Uighur nationalist group based in Kazakhstan, the crackdown was not confined to Yining, but also extended to the town of Turpan, where schools and mosques were searched.

Meanwhile, thousands of common criminals were being rounded up across the region and summarily sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, or even death, after trials that fell far short of international standards of justice.

In many of the reported cases, it was left unspecified as to whether or not those referred to as "national splittists," "terrorists" and the like had in fact been responsible for any kind of violent activities against the state. In Xi Jinping announced Silk Road Economic Belt project aimed at connecting China with Central Asia and Europe through a number of infrastructures and communication network building.

Xinjiang is strategically important for China because it should be the hub of trade with Central Asian and the the success of SREB it is directly linked to its stability. Furthermore Xinjiang is playing an important role in Eurasian Corridor because six out of eight Sino-European railways originate from this region. Therefore, the instability of this region can severely damage Chinese economic interests.

From the year , Beijing encouraged the influx of Han main Chinese ethnicity into the region to fuel its economic development. In fact the Han are concentrated in the north, where the main oil fields are located.

Also, Xinjiang is a sensitive region for China due to its proximity with Afghanistan and Pakistan, which host a large number of terrorist groups, that can give ignition to the demands for a Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that made Xinjiang fertile ground for the formation of terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Eastern Turkestan and the Islamic Turkestan Party, responsible for attacks in China.