I  Articles

The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on

China’s Foreign Policy: The Case of
Xinjiang and the Uyghur

Michael Clarke
Associate Professor, National Security College,
Australian National University
michael.clarke@anu.edu.au

This article argues, through a case study of the evolving impact of the Xinjiang and Uyghur issue, that
the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) ethnic minorities have been a significant factor in Beijing’s foreign
relations throughout its history. Since the end of the Cold War in particular, China’s approach to the
Xinjiang and Uyghur issue has played an important role in undergirding domestic stability and shaping
its relations with Central Asia. More broadly, the case of Xinjiang and the Uyghur suggests that the nature
and scale of the challenge posed by any one ethnic minority in the context of the PRC’s foreign policy has
largely been a function of the interplay of five major factors: the historical relationship between the ethnic
group and the Chinese state; the geographic concentration of an ethnic minority; the degree of acculturation
to the dominant Han society; external great power support; and mobilised diasporas.

Keywords: China, ethnic minorities, foreign policy, Uyghurs, separatism, terrorism

INTRODUCTION

China’s ethnic diversity is often ignored in contemporary commentary and analysis of

the country’s ‘rise’ in international affairs. In the discipline of International Relations
(IR), this is perhaps to be expected given the dominance of the neo-realist paradigm (and
its numerous variants) and its focus on the effects of structural factors (e.g., systemic
anarchy) on relations between a rising China and other great powers, such as the United

CHINA REPORT 53 : 1 (2017): 1–25

Sage Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC/
Melbourne
DOI: 10.1177/0009445516677361
2 Michael Clarke

States (Art 2010; Friedberg 2012; Glaser 2015; Liff and Ikenberry 2014). Even those
not necessarily constrained by such paradigmatic concerns have also tended to bypass
consideration of the impact of China’s ethnic minorities on its foreign policy. Indeed,
David Shambaugh’s recent work, China Goes Global: The Partial Power, contains but a few
passing references to Beijing’s challenges in Xinjiang and Tibet (Shambaugh 2013).
Such neglect is arguably due to the fact that the Han Chinese, according to the 2010
census, constitute some 91.51 per cent of the country’s total population of 1.339 billion
(National Bureau of Statistics of China 2011). Although China’s 55 officially recognised
non-Han ethnic minority groups account for a seemingly insignificant 8.49 per cent of
China’s population, they nonetheless amount to some 113.79 million people—more than
the populations of many other nation-states. The importance of China’s ethnic minority
populations can also be gauged by noting that they are concentrated in 64.3 per cent
of the country’s total land area and 90 per cent of China’s border regions (Zhu and
Blanchford 2006: 330). They thus have an importance far beyond what demographic data
alone may suggest. The issue of Han–ethnic minority relations thus holds the potential
to generate domestic instability, complicate Beijing’s relations with its neighbours and
even in extreme circumstances threaten the territorial integrity of the People’s Republic
of China (PRC) given the concentrations of non-ethnic groups along its frontiers.
These factors, combined with some of China’s ethnic minorities’ recent history of
opposition to the state, are often seen as driving Beijing’s hard-line repressive policies
towards ethnic minorities. Gray Tuttle, for example, has provocatively argued that
such factors (i.e., the demographic and geographic characteristics of China’s non-Han
populations) are increasingly compounded by an emerging narrative of Han Chinese
superiority. He asserts that ‘Beijing’s hard-line policies are not merely a reflection of
the central state’s desire to cement its authority over distant territories but also an
expression of deep-seated ethnic prejudices and racism at the core of contemporary
Chinese society’ (Tuttle 2015: 39). Furthermore, although such a dynamic may seem
unimportant when placed alongside such prominent foreign policy issues as increasing
tensions in the South China Sea, ‘Beijing’s inability (or unwillingness) to confront this
problem poses a long-term threat to the central state’ as the ‘long term exclusion of the
country’s ethnic minorities will undermine Beijing’s efforts to foster a “harmonious
society” and present China as a model for the rest of the world’ (ibid.).
Yet even views such as this that give greater weight to Han–minority relations
nonetheless tend to perceive their potential impact to be almost exclusively domestic
in nature, and as such, to be resolved through the implementation of better governance
or liberalisation of the Chinese political system with marginal impact on its foreign
relations. This article however argues, through a case study of the evolving impact of
the Xinjiang and Uyghur issue, that the PRC’s ethnic minorities have been a significant
factor in Beijing’s foreign relations throughout its history. Since the end of the Cold
War in particular, China’s approach to the Xinjiang and Uyghur issue has played an
important role in undergirding domestic stability and shaping its relations with Central
Asia. More broadly, the case of Xinjiang and the Uyghur suggests that the nature and

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 3

scale of the challenge posed by any one ethnic minority in the context of the PRC’s
foreign policy has largely been a function of the interplay of five major factors: the
historical relationship between the ethnic group and the Chinese state; the geographic
concentration of an ethnic minority; the degree of acculturation to the dominant Han
society; external great power support; and mobilised diasporas.
The article proceeds in three major parts. First, it will provide a brief survey of the
treatment of the relationship between ethnic groups/minorities and foreign policy in
the IR and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature, and identify the core insights/
arguments of this literature. Here it will suggest that, in fact, the majority of this
literature does not map particularly well to the Chinese context and that the relation-
ship between ethnicity and foreign policy under the PRC has been conditioned by
the five factors noted above. On the basis of these factors, two ethnic minority regions
(and the dominant non-Han ethnic groups that populate them) have consistently
complicated China’s foreign policy since the formation of the PRC—the Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).
The XUAR and TAR are populated by ethnic groups (the Uyghurs and the Tibetans)
that have a history of separation from the Chinese state, are culturally and linguisti-
cally distinct from the Han Chinese, are primarily concentrated in those autonomous
regions, have strong and dynamic religious traditions (Islam and Tibetan Buddhism),
have a recent history of great power support for separatist or autonomist aspirations
and have politically mobilised diasporas.
The third part of the article will then map, via a case study of the impact of the
Xinjiang and Uyghur issues on China’s foreign policy, the transition of the ethnic
minority challenge from a ‘modern’ to a ‘post-modern’ one. I argue here that the
challenge has shifted from that of the ‘bounded’ problem of ‘separatism’ (a territory-
and sovereignty-focused political phenomenon) towards a spatially and temporally
‘de-bounded’ one in which Beijing simultaneously confronts multiple manifestations
of Uyghur nationalist/separatist aspirations locally (i.e., within the XUAR itself and
the PRC more broadly), regionally (i.e., in Central and South Asia) and globally (i.e.,
through activism of the Uyghur diaspora). This shift, brought about by the conver-
gence of a number of endogenous and exogenous factors (e.g., collapse of the Soviet
Union, China’s greater integration with regional and global economic flows and the
geopolitics of the post-9/11 period) has ultimately assisted the internationalisation of
the Xinjiang and Uyghur issues and complicated China’s foreign relations.

ETHNIC MINORITIES AND FOREIGN POLICY: THE THEORITICAL LANDSCAPE

The treatment of the relationship between ethnic groups/minorities on foreign policy

in the IR and FPA literature has developed along a number of major lines of inquiry.
First, one strain of the literature perceives ethnic groups/minorities as yet another

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4 Michael Clarke

‘interest group’ seeking to influence the foreign policy of the state(s) they reside in.
Here, ethnic groups/minorities are conceived of as a potential constituency for either
incumbent political leaders/parties or prospective challengers. In this conception,
ethnic groups/minorities are subject to mobilisation and manipulation that can lead,
particularly, in democratic states to ‘policy capture’ by ethnic lobbies. The most
widespread empirical examples of this in the literature focus on the specific context
of the United States, drawing on the history of the foreign policy influence of promi-
nent organised ethnic diaspora lobbies such as those representing Cuban, Armenian
and Jewish Americans (Haney and Vanderbush 1999; Mearshiemer and Vanderbush
2008; Smith 2000; Vanderbush 2009; Zarifian 2014). A key insight of this strain of
the literature is that such lobbying is particularly effective, at least in the American
context, in ‘capturing’ relevant aspects of US foreign policy (e.g., maintaining the
embargo against Cuba) as such issues are very rarely critical election issues (Moore
2002: 84). From this perspective, ethnic groups will have an impact when they
are able to positively predispose the majority in their host country towards their policy
preferences on specific or ‘niche’ issues.
An obvious question that arises when surveying the relative insights of this per-
spective is how can one conceive of this dynamic (i.e., ‘policy capture’) occurring in
the context of an authoritarian state? Will H. Moore argues in this context that while
‘Authoritarian rulers are far from absolute sovereigns’ and are ‘beholden to constitu-
encies’, such as ‘the Politburo, the top level of party functionaries, generals, the officer
corps and landed elites’, the central question is ‘whether the constituency to which a
given authoritarian leader is beholden is likely to be an ethnic minority or, perhaps,
an ethnic majority’. Moreover, whether an authoritarian leader or regime is susceptible
to ‘policy capture’ by a minority ‘depends on whether that group is an important con-
stituency’ (Moore 2002: 86). This particular strain of the literature would thus seem
to have limited utility in the Chinese context given that at the national level, ethnic
minorities are dwarfed in demographic terms by the Han Chinese majority and the
Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) core constituency (however one defines it) is also
Han Chinese. Even at the autonomous region level (e.g., in the XUAR), it is clear
that while the CCP has since 1949 created constituencies amongst the Uyghur (e.g.,
party functionaries, XUAR government officials, etc.), they remain limited (Bovingdon
2011: 62–4). Moreover, given the demographic trends in the XUAR over the past
three decades—in which the Han Chinese proportion of the population has reached
parity (or even exceeded it by some estimations)—the prospect of ethnic minority
‘policy capture’ would appear to be negligible (Toops 2004).
A second major perspective within the IR/FPA literature explores the dynamics of
ethnic groups and minorities as an explanatory variable for inter-state conflict. In this
perspective, ethnic groups/minorities that may reside in multiple states, particularly
two or more neighbouring states, are seen as being the principle mechanism by which
‘ethnic politics’ can affect international politics. This subset of the literature finds
that ‘transnational ethnic alliances’ (i.e., ethnic ties across state boundaries) ‘influence

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 5

dyadic foreign policy behaviour’ (Davis and Moore 1997; Petersen 2004; Saideman
2002). In particular, these studies suggest inter-state conflict is more likely where
the dyadic relationship is defined by an ethnic group being dominant or ‘privileged’
in one state (State A) and ‘disadvantaged or persecuted’ in the other (State B). The
expectation of inter-state conflict through this relationship is increased according
to these studies if the following conditions are met: the ethnic group in State B
experiences persecution or challenges State B’s authority/legitimacy; co-ethnics are
influential or dominant in State A; and State B is strategically important for State
A (Davis and Moore 1997: 173).
A variation of this subset of literature focuses on the ‘flip side’ of the ‘ethnic ties’
equation—under what conditions does the existence of transnational ethnic ties lead
to inter-state cooperation? A recent study suggests here that the likelihood of inter-
state cooperation is largely dependent on each state’s threat perceptions with respect
to the transnational group in question (Winslett 2016). Winslett defines ‘transnational
group’ to include ‘a group that is self-conscious and identifiable by its ethnicity, reli-
gion, tribe or language and has sufficient presence in multiple states to be politically
salient in them’. Winslett then presents a ‘threat perception differential’ model of the
impact of ethnic groups on inter-state cooperation or conflict in which each state’s
perception of the relative threat posed to their interests by an ethnic group residing
in both is the explanatory variable:

If State A perceives Group X to be a threat, then it will attempt to suppress the

group and will want State B’s cooperation. But if State B does not perceive Group
X to be a threat, then it will not want to crack down on the group out of risk
aversion; that is, it does not want to antagonize a group that currently poses no
threat. The relationship between the two states becomes more conflict-based as
State A asks for State B’s help and State B refuses, thereby passively undermining
State A’s security. This conflict between the two states is more than just policy disa-
greement. It can spawn a deeper breakdown in relations between the two states in
two ways. First, when State B refuses to help State A, State A may retaliate against
State B, creating animosity toward State A in State B, which may lead to its own
retaliation and a tit-for-tat cycle that drives the relationship into a downward
spiral. It also encourages mutual suspicions and hard feelings that only exacerbate
tensions. (Winslett 2014: 2)

This particular scenario in which there is a clear differential in threat perceptions

between State A and State B vis-à-vis the ethnic group in question opens the potential
for proxy conflict to occur. If, however, both states perceive the group to be more than
simply a nuisance, then ‘their relationship becomes more cooperation-based’ and ‘It is
at this point…where nuisance becomes a threat, that concerns over the transnational
group become more likely to trump other considerations’ (ibid.). Winslett also notes
that in the opposite scenario—that is, where the transnational group is perceived by

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6 Michael Clarke

both states to be a ‘nuisance’—‘other security-pertinent variables such as relative power,

alliance structures’ may intervene to dictate conflict or cooperation between the two
(ibid.: 2–3). The subsequent section suggests that it is this ‘differential threat percep-
tion’ model that has in fact been of most relevance to the Chinese context.

ETHNIC MINORITIES AND CHINA’S FOREIGN POLICY

Prior to the establishment of the PRC in 1949, Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia
experienced varying degrees of autonomy from the post-imperial Chinese state. Since
1949, the CCP has attempted through a variety of means to overcome this historical
legacy and bind these regions, and the non-Han Chinese people who inhabit them,
firmly into the ‘multi-ethnic and unitary’ Chinese state. Significantly, the means uti-
lised by the CCP towards this end have often played a significant role in generating
ethnic minority discontent and separatist tendencies that have impacted negatively
on China’s foreign relations. There have arguably been five major issues that have
been constant sources of ethnic minority grievance in these regions since 1949: the
practice of ‘regional autonomy’; economic disparities between minority and Han;
state control of religious or cultural practices; Han settlement or colonisation; and
ethnic discrimination (Clarke 2007a; Dreyer 2005).
Dynamics in China’s foreign relations/policy have also tended to fuel ethnic
minority discontent at certain points in time. Most notable in impact in this regard
have been Sino-US and Sino-Soviet enmity during the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s
disintegration in 1991 and the events of 11 September 2001. China’s enmity with
the superpowers during the Cold War proved conducive to the development of proxy
conflicts (as Winslett’s ‘differential threat perception’ model would suggest) whereby
the US and Soviet Union provided support to and sympathy for Tibetan, Uyghur and
Mongol discontent and separatism in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia (Bovingdon
2011: 133–5; Goldstein 2006; Green 1986;Han 2011). This dynamic was, however,
fundamentally weakened by the Sino-US rapprochement by the mid-1970s and the
thawing of Sino-Soviet relations towards the close of the 1980s where other security-
pertinent issues altered the perception in Washington and Moscow as to the utility
of their support for Tibetan, Uyghur and Mongol proxies (Bovingdon 2011: 133–5;
Conboy and Morrison 2002; Knaus 2008).
The collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of a variety of new independent
states, in contrast, suggested a global recrudescence of nationalism that could threaten
other multi-ethnic states, including China. The decade after the Soviet collapse was also
defined by two further global dynamics that heightened expectations in this context:
the emergence of the precedent and norm of ‘humanitarian intervention’ (e.g., North
Atlantic Treaty Organization’s [NATO] intervention in Kosovo) and globalisation. The
former suggested that the international community (or at least the most powerful states

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 7

therein) was prepared to modify the principle of state sovereignty in order to protect
individual and collective human rights of entire ethnic groups in certain circumstances.
The latter, with its defining characteristics of increased (and freer) flows of people,
capital and information, also promised to further weaken state sovereignty and make
events in distant reaches of the globe known and of impact. Not surprisingly, these
were global currents Beijing bridled against, with ‘humanitarian intervention’ in par-
ticular perceived as a potential means for the US to ‘dismember’ China in support of
the ‘oppressed’ minorities, such as the Uyghurs or Tibetans. Throughout the 1990s,
a key point of focus for Beijing in its relations with neighbouring states actually or
potentially linked to the separatist or nationalist aspirations of the Uyghurs and
Tibetans (e.g., Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, and India and Nepal in
South Asia) was to reinforce the principles of state sovereignty and ‘non-interference’
in ‘internal affairs’ (Gill 2010).
The events of 9/11 were, according to some observers at least, the apotheosis of
globalisation, whereby a stateless and transnational actor had harnessed core aspects
of this emerging ‘borderless’ world to attack the world’s remaining superpower. For
example, Joseph Nye argued that

September 11th was a terrible symptom of the deeper changes that were already
occurring in the world. Technology has been diffusing power away from govern-
ments, and empowering individuals and groups to play roles in world politics—
including wreaking massive destruction—which were once reserved to governments.
Privatization has been increasing, and terrorism is the privatization of war.
Globalization is shrinking distance, and events in faraway places, like Afghanistan,
can have a great impact on American lives. (Nye 2002)

In retrospect, this was perhaps an exaggerated assessment and 9/11, in fact, enabled
many states to reassert or strengthen the pillars of sovereignty (e.g., strengthened border
controls, etc.). China was no less affected in this regard as 9/11 permitted Beijing
to frame its struggle with Uyghur (and to a lesser degree Tibetan) separatism and
nationalism within the rubric of the ‘global war on terrorism’ declared by the US
administration of President George W. Bush. This dynamic was felt not only within
Sino-US relations, where China’s support for the ‘war on terror’ smoothed over the
deep tensions apparent in the relationship during President Bush’s first year in office,
but also in China’s bilateral ties in Central and South Asia. In this latter regard, Beijing
was able to cement ‘anti-terrorism’ cooperation with a variety of states which assisted
it in controlling Uyghur separatism (Clarke 2010). Since the late 2000s, however, it
has become apparent that this post-9/11 ‘honeymoon’ period for Beijing, vis-à-vis
the international community’s (and the US) scrutiny of Chinese claims, has waned.
Ironically, this has also coincided with an increase in violent incidents in Xinjiang
attributed by the Chinese government to the ‘three evil forces’ of ‘separatism, terror-
ism and extremism’.

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8 Michael Clarke

THE CHANGING IMPACT OF ETHNIC MINORITIES ON CHINA’S FOREIGN

POLICY: THE CASE OF XINJIANG AND THE UYGHUR

The efforts of the Uyghur diaspora community to advocate their nationalist claims
vis-à-vis Beijing were hamstrung between 1949 and 1991 by, in Yitzhak Shicor’s
(2007: 118) words, ‘subjective Uyghur shortcomings’ and ‘objective international
constraints’. With respect to the latter, the Uyghurs confronted an international
situation that was not conducive to the successful prosecution of nationalist claims.
As noted previously, the Uyghurs received no support from the US during the Cold
War. Additionally, China’s relative international isolation from the late 1950s through
to the late 1970s and its activist diplomatic championing of ‘national liberation’
movements in the Third World also made it very difficult for Uyghur exiles to gain
international support for their cause.
The major exception to this during the Cold War era was Turkey. Turkey had been
both a source of external support for Uyghur aspirations in Xinjiang and a major
destination for Uyghurs fleeing Chinese rule since the 19th century. For example, dur-
ing the great Turkic-Muslim rebellion (1864–76) in Xinjiang against the Manchus led
by the Koqandi adventurer Yaqub Beg, the Ottoman Sultan not only provided Yaqub’s
prospective state in Kashgar with weaponry and military advisers but also bestowed
the title of emir on him (Kim 2004). After the collapse of Yaqub Beg’s emirate and the
Qing reconquest of Xinjiang in 1876, influences from Central Asia and the Ottoman
Empire only grew, particularly currents associated with the jadid modernist movement
and pan-Turkism (Bennigsen 1984; Schluessel 2009). The collapse of the Qing Empire
in 1911 permitted the largely Han Chinese members of the former Qing officialdom
in Xinjiang to have almost total autonomy from the new Republic of China albeit
counterbalanced by increasing influence from Russia and then the Soviet Union. This
dynamic culminated in the Soviet Union aiding a Uyghur nationalist rebellion from
1944 to 1949 (Forbes 1986; Wang 1999). After the victory of the CCP in 1949,
Turkey became a natural haven for Uyghur nationalists fleeing Xinjiang. Prominent
among these were Mehmet Emin Bughra and Isa Yusuf Alptekin who came to lead
the Uyghur diaspora throughout the Cold War. Alptekin in particular focused on
a two-track approach to raise the profile of the Uyghur cause. First, he actively
sought to cultivate links with Turkish political and military leaders with pan-Turkist
leanings, most notably Suleyman Demirel and Turgut Ozal. Internationally, Alptekin
attempted to enlist support for Uyghur nationalist claims through a broad appeal
to anti-communist sentiment in the Muslim world, the non-aligned developing world
and Taiwan. These efforts bore little fruit due to Beijing’s limited ties with Turkey, its
ideological offensives in the Third World and its ability to paint Uyghur nationalists
as aided and abetted by both ‘Soviet revisionism’ and ‘reactionary’ NATO member,
Turkey (Shicor 2009: 17–19).
The end of the Cold War and the creation of five independent Central Asian
republics raised hopes that this situation could be reversed. This was also assisted by a

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 9

revival of a dormant pan-Turkist theme in political debates in Turkey that, in contrast

to its late Ottoman antecedent, was primarily constructed as a ‘civilisational geopoli-
tics’ in which international behaviour would be determined by civilisational attributes
(Agnew 2003: 44). This was apparent, for instance, in Turkey’s activist diplomacy
in the Caucasus and Central Asia where Ankara sought to create ‘a Turkic grouping
within which Turkey would play a leadership role economically and politically’ rather
than a supranational union (Hunter 1999: 71–2).
The Uyghur diaspora in Turkey thus appeared to have a conducive environment
in which to continue their lobbying efforts. In an episode that underscored this,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul, named a section of the Sultan Ahmet
(Blue Mosque) Park in honour of Alptekin on 28 July 1995. Officially opening
the new section of the park, he declaimed that ‘Eastern Turkestan is not only the
home of the Turkic peoples but also the cradle of Turkic history, civilization and
culture. To forget that would lead to the ignorance of our own history, civilization
and culture. The martyrs of Eastern Turkestan are our martyrs’ (East Turkistan
Information Bulletin 1995).
Ankara was becoming simultaneously circumspect about the impact of the Uyghur
issue on its emerging relations with Beijing. China exacerbated this worry by draw-
ing attention to Turkey’s problem with its Kurdish population, pointedly noting the
contradiction between Ankara’s rhetorical support for ‘self-determination’ of ‘Eastern
Turkestan’ and its repression of the Kurds. In a symptomatic development, Turkish
Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz issued a directive to his cabinet in February 1999 that
henceforth Ankara would recognise Xinjiang as a part of China and that government
ministers refrain from attending meetings or events promoting ‘Eastern Turkestan’
independence (Colakoglu 2015, 14–15).
Post-9/11, China made concerted efforts to portray unrest and violence in Xinjiang
as aided and abetted by ‘East Turkestan terrorist forces’ based abroad. In its bilateral
relations with Turkey since 9/11, Beijing has repeatedly emphasised the need for both
parties to combat the ‘three evil forces of separatism, terrorism and extremism’ in general
and ‘East Turkestan terrorism’ in particular. Some Chinese observers went further than
such official statements to suggest that Turkey’s ‘harbouring’ of ‘East Turkestan forces’
was analogous to the Taliban’s harbouring of Osama bin Laden (Shicor 2009: 43).
To dispel such perceptions, Ankara acceded to Beijing’s exhortation and cooperated
with China in monitoring the activities of ‘East Turkestan forces’ in Turkey for most
of the 2000s, although, in contrast to many Central Asian states, it did not extradite
Uyghurs to China. Throughout this time, Turkish leaders reaffirmed the position, first
stated by Prime Minister Yilmaz, that Xinjiang was a part of China. Turkish Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit, for instance, reiterated this during Chinese Prime Minister
Zhu Rongji’s 2002 state visit and argued that Xinjiang’s Uyghurs in fact constituted
a ‘friendship bridge’ between the two countries (China.org 2002).
Despite such assurances, much of China’s post-9/11 approach to the Uyghur issue
in Sino-Turkish relations has been implicitly framed by the perception that Turkey

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10 Michael Clarke

remains the political and cultural ‘epicentre’ of ‘pan-Turkism’ (Shicor 2009: 42–5).
This was strongly reinforced by Turkey’s reaction to the inter-ethnic violence that
erupted in Xinjiang’s capital of Urumqi in July 2009. The violence, which claimed
the lives of at least 200 people, and subsequent mass arrest of Uyghurs, prompted
then Prime Minister Erdogan to denounce China in terms reminiscent of Alptekin,
likening Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs to ‘genocide’ and demanding China ‘aban-
don its policy of assimilation’ in the region (Bowring 2009; Turkish Weekly 2009).
Such rhetorical flourishes, while downplayed by Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
were consistent with both the ‘civilisational geopolitics’ that has come to characterise
Turkey’s more recent foreign policy under President Erdogan and Foreign Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu and Erdogan’s past rhetorical support for the Uyghur (Murinson
2006; Walker 2007).
Meanwhile, although Uyghur advocacy groups proliferated in the Central Asian
states in the 1990s, particularly in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, they had a limited
effect on Chinese policy in both Xinjiang and the growth of Chinese strategic influ-
ence throughout the region. This was in no small measure due to China’s perception
of the threat posed to Central Asian, and by extension Xinjiang’s security, by the
growth of the Taliban in Afghanistan throughout the 1990s.
Symptomatic of the potential threat posed by Afghanistan from China’s perspective
in the 1990s was the Baren Incident of April 1990 in which a group of Uyghur men
conducted an armed uprising against Chinese police and security forces in the town-
ship with the aim of establishing an ‘East Turkestan Republic’. While the rebellion was
swiftly and forcibly quelled, the authorities subsequently claimed that the leader of the
rebellion, Zahideen Yusuf, had been the leader of an ‘Islamic Party of East Turkestan’
that was bent on launching a jihad against Chinese rule. Moreover, reports emerged
that either Yusuf had been a Uyghur veteran of the Afghan jihad or his group had
links to mujahideen groups in Afghanistan (Clarke 2007b: 50–4).
As Afghanistan descended into civil war between the regime of President Najibullah
and various mujahideen units into the mid-1990s, Beijing’s interest with respect to
the country remained largely negative—that is, to prevent any potential spillover into
Xinjiang of radical Islamism and other non-traditional security threats associated with
the country in this period, particularly weapons and drug trafficking (Chang 1997).
The potential for such dynamics to enter Xinjiang was also heightened by China’s
push for greater economic linkages with Central Asia and South Asia, a dynamic best
encapsulated by the role of the Karakoram Highway in facilitating not only trade flows
but also cultural–religious and smuggling flows between Xinjiang and Afghanistan and
Pakistan that worked against the state’s interests in Xinjiang (Haider 2005; Roberts
2004: 226–7).
Such concerns also contributed to China’s emerging diplomatic activism in the
broader Central Asian context. After the Soviet collapse, Beijing took the initiative
with the newly independent Central Asian states through its role in forming what
became known as the ‘Shanghai Five’ (S-5) grouping of China, Russia, Kazakhstan,

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 11

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 1992. This dialogue, originally focused on resolving

Soviet-era territorial disputes and military confidence building measures, culminated
in the formal establishment of the group as a regional multilateral forum in 1996.
The official communiqués released upon the establishment of the S-5 in 1996, while
signalling an intent to broaden regional cooperation on security and economic issues,
also demonstrated the interlinkages between China’s domestic, regional and global
interests as they noted the grouping’s support for China’s position in Xinjiang and
Tibet, its claims to Taiwan and desire to see a ‘multipolar’ international order (Clarke
2011: 128–9).
China’s perception of Afghanistan as a source of potential threats to not only
its security but also that of the wider Central Asian region was heightened sharply
with the emergence of the Taliban as a force in the Afghan tumult in 1994 and
their ultimate capture of Kabul in 1996. The Taliban’s provision of a safe haven
to a variety of radical Islamists from Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU), from this time onwards was of major concern not only to
the largely secular and authoritarian post-Soviet regimes in Central Asia but also
to China and Russia (which was in the midst of its first war in Chechnya) (Rashid
1999: 29–31). The IMU’s launching of yearly incursions from its bases in northern
Afghanistan into Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan from 1998 onwards would
prompt the S-5 to shift some of its focus to combating what the Chinese would
come to term the ‘three evils’ of ‘terrorism, extremism and separatism’. At the S-5’s
2000 summit, for example, the group issued a joint declaration that condemned the
Taliban for supporting ‘terrorism’, agreed to establish a joint ‘anti-terrorism centre’
and committed member states to greater cooperation to combat the ‘three evils’
(Cummings 2001: 146–7).
Regional fears of ‘Talibanisation’ contributed to the expansion and reorientation
of the S-5 to become the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The SCO
subsequently adopted the ‘Shanghai Covenant on the Suppression of Terrorism,
Separatism and Religious Extremism’, clearly establishing the group’s shared interest
in suppressing radical Islamism (SCO Secretariat 2001). In the post-9/11 decade, the
SCO developed a number of further initiatives, such as establishing the Regional
Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) in Tashkent in 2004, that have served to stifle Uyghur
opposition in Central Asia. The RATS, as Richard Weitz notes, ‘has facilitated infor-
mation sharing about terrorist threats, provided advice on counterterrorism policies,
and mobilized collective action against terrorist threats’ (Weitz 2012).
Measures such as these have contributed to the shift in the centre of gravity of
Uyghur diaspora activism beyond Central Asia, into Western Europe and the United
States. While Uyghur organisations are able to take advantage of the openness of these
societies to advocate greater Uyghur autonomy in Xinjiang, they have nonetheless been
hampered by the relative obscurity of Xinjiang, their profession of the Muslim faith
and their internal disunity. In this latter respect, the Uyghur diaspora had splintered
into numerous advocacy groups in the post-Cold War period spread across Central Asia,

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12 Michael Clarke

Western Europe and the United States without a single recognised leader and divided
on ideology and tactics (Bovingdon 2011: 142–4).
Significantly, as the centre of Uyghur diasporic activities gradually shifted from
Central Asia to Turkey and Western Europe and then to the United States over the
course of the 1990s, the ideology and tactics of Uyghur advocacy groups gradually
changed. In the early 1990s, for example, a number of prominent Uyghur advocacy
groups based in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan actively advocated the achievement of inde-
pendence for East Turkestan through armed struggle in rhetoric bearing the influence
of pan-Turkic and even pan-Islamist ideology. China’s growing power and influence in
Central Asia by the mid-1990s and increasing relations with Turkey, however, resulted
in increasing pressure on these states from Beijing to limit the operation of Uyghur
nationalist groups within their borders. A palpable effect of this transition was that the
Uyghur groups based there, while still advocating independence for East Turkestan,
began to do so in terms more palatable to Western governments/societies—such as
focusing on explicitly non-violent means and liberal models of political mobilisation
(Bovingdon 2011: 146–51; Shicor 2007: 117–25).
This was not an unusual phenomenon in the post-Cold War, ‘globalised’ world,
where many repressed and under-represented groups were competing for the attention
and support of ‘global civil society’. Clifford Bob (2002: 37) has argued in this regard
that, in contrast to many of the positive assumptions about the effects of globalisation
in the 1990s, ‘global civil society’ was not in fact ‘an open forum marked by altru-
ism’ but rather ‘a harsh, Darwinian marketplace where legions of desperate groups
vie for scarce attention, sympathy and resources’. Furthermore, in an effort to ‘sell’
their cause in this marketplace, such groups ‘may end up undermining their original
goals or alienating the domestic constituencies they ostensibly represent’ as they seek
to ‘simplify and universalize their claims’ in order to make their cause ‘relevant to the
broader missions and interests of key global players’ (Bob 2002: 37). This effect is
perhaps most visible in the establishment and rhetoric of two key advocacy groups
for the Uyghur—the Uyghur American Association (UAA) and the World Uyghur
Congress (WUC), the former based in Washington, DC and the latter in Munich,
Germany. Both of these organisations advocate the Uyghur cause in ways that are
consistent with the dominant neo-liberal geopolitical vision of the West.
The UAA, established in 1998 by a number of US-based Uyghur scholars and
activists, seeks ‘to promote the preservation and flourishing of a rich, humanistic and
diverse Uyghur culture, and to support the right of the Uyghur people to use peace-
ful, democratic means to determine their own political future’ (Uyghur American
Association 2015). The organisation since the late 1990s has maintained an up-to-date
website presenting news coverage of Uyghur- and Xinjiang-related issues and actively
lobbies the US Congress on behalf of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. Since 2002,
the UAA has also run the ‘Uyghur Human Rights Project’ (UHRP) to promote the
improvement of the human rights of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang
through the publication of detailed reports of human rights abuses throughout the

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 13

region (such as restrictions on religious observance, Chinese population control poli-

cies and so forth) and challenges to the preservation of Uyghur culture. The UAA also
receives $250,000 annual funding from the US National Endowment for Democracy.
In contrast to some of the Uyghur advocacy groups that emerged in Central Asia after
the end of the Cold War, the UAA avows that it ‘does not take a position on independ-
ence for East Turkestan, but instead focuses its goal on promoting human rights and
democracy for Uyghurs and others living in East Turkestan’ (cited in Petersen 2006:
68). This suggests that the core premise behind the organisation is that the assurance
of basic human rights for Uyghurs in Xinjiang will ultimately facilitate the ‘democratic
aspirations’ of the Uyghurs. Such a standpoint also positions the organisation well
tactically to rebut Chinese claims that it is advocating an exclusively Uyghur homeland
(Bovingdon 2011: 150–1; Petersen 2006: 67–8).
The WUC founded in April 2004 in Munich was the outcome of a number of
years of internal debates amongst a variety of Uyghur diaspora groups in Europe and
Turkey regarding how to best unify into a single advocacy body and thus present a
coherent narrative of the Uyghur cause to the international community (Shicor 2007:
119). This latter point was of particular importance to counter the post-9/11 diplo-
matic offensive of Beijing that sought to frame all Uyghur nationalism and dissent as
manifestations of ‘terrorism’. Indeed, the mission statement adopted by the organisa-
tion, like that of the UAA, speaks directly to the neo-liberal agenda of the West, and
the US in particular, by stating that its ‘main objective’ is ‘to promote democracy,
human rights and freedom for the Uyghur people and use peaceful, nonviolent, and
democratic means to determine their political future’ (World Uyghur Congress 2015).
Highlighting its role as the central hub of an emerging ‘network’ of Uyghur advocacy
groups across the globe, the mission statement also asserts that the core goal of the
WUC is to become ‘the sole legitimate organization of the Uyghur people both in
East Turkestan and abroad’. In its attempt to be seen as such not only by the Uyghur
diaspora community but also by the international community, the WUC has explicitly
embedded itself in the neo-liberal narrative. As such, the WUC ‘endeavours to set out
a course for the peaceful settlement of the East Turkestan Question through dialogue
and negotiation’, ‘declares a nonviolent and peaceful opposition movement against
Chinese occupation of East Turkestan’ and ‘an unconditional adherence to the inter-
national accepted human rights standards as laid down in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights’ (World Uyghur Congress 2015).
The WUC can be seen as the culmination of the process noted by Bob (2002) of
the necessity for such unrepresented peoples and causes to effectively ‘market’ their
cause to global civil society. And to date, the WUC has been successful in raising the
profile of the Uyghur and Xinjiang issues. This has been due to not only the shifting
geographic centre of gravity of Uyghur advocacy from Central Asia to Europe and the
US but also the parallel shift in the rhetoric and goals espoused by bodies such as the
UAA and WUC. In a broad sense, these groups have established a ‘normative trap’
for the West by explicitly framing their goals in the prevailing neo-liberal language of

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14 Michael Clarke

‘freedom, democracy and human rights’ rather than the ‘national self-determination’
discourse of the Cold War era. Such a strategy enables these groups to link the Uyghur
cause to Western, and especially US, concerns regarding the continued rise of ‘com-
munist’ China. Such an approach was neatly encapsulated in an opinion piece on the
Foreign Policy magazine website by Nury Turkel (2009a), a prominent member of the
UAA, when he argued that

Uyghurs are not terrorists; nor are they a threat. In fact, Uyghurs could be a natural
US ally. Uyghurs are the Tibetans you haven’t heard about…Uyghurs’ struggle for
self-rule is one against dictatorship and communism, not one to establish a sharia
state through violence.

Thus, the UAA and WUC have focused much of their efforts on drawing the attention
of Western governments and publics to particular aspects of the Uyghur and Xinjiang
issues that are of priority for these actors, such as human rights abuses and the protec-
tion of ‘indigenous’ cultures (Turkel 2009b). Since 9/11, the UAA and WUC have
also sought to counter Chinese claims regarding the influence of radical Islamism by
individualising the Uyghur ‘struggle’ via the construction of Rebiya Kadeer as a char-
ismatic and recognisable leader. The success of this latter strategy can be gauged by
the fact that Kadeer is now often referred to in popular media reporting on Xinjiang
issues variously as the ‘Uyghur Dalai Lama’, ‘the Mother of the Uyghurs’ or simply as
‘the Uyghur democracy leader’. President George W Bush also met face-to-face with
Kadeer in Prague in June 2007 and praised her as a ‘human rights defender’, while
prior to attending the opening ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Bush also
made direct reference to the Uyghurs and Tibetans in a speech celebrating the 10th
anniversary of the US Congress passing the ‘International Religious Freedom Act’
(Clarke 2010: 226–8).
Standing in contrast to such advocacy is the political violence and terrorism
undertaken by a small number of individual Uyghurs and/or organisations in Xinjiang
and the wider Central Asian region. As noted earlier, China used 9/11 to press its
claims with the international community that it too confronted Islamist terrorism in
Xinjiang. China’s claims in this context increased again in intensity after large-scale
inter-ethnic violence rocked Urumqi in July 2009. Since then, numerous incidents
of violence have occurred in the region including anti-government protests, attacks
on police stations and inter-ethnic clashes. The year 2013 alone was punctuated by at
least five major incidents, including three in the major southern city of Kashgar and
surrounding areas (23 April, 10 October and 16 December), as well as in the cities
of Turpan (26 June) and Khotan (28 June). The regional authorities claimed that
these incidents were the handiwork of ‘gangs’ of ‘extremists and terrorists’ bent on
‘jihad’ with links to ‘hostile external forces’ (Branigan 2013; Radio Free Asia 2013;
The Economist 2013). In their attempts to link unrest in Xinjiang with such forces,
the authorities also made the claim that ‘up to 100 Uyghurs’ had travelled to Syria to

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 15

‘sharpen their terrorist skills’ (The Economist 2013). The year 2013 ended with what
came to be described as a ‘suicide attack’ in Tiananmen Square on 28 October when
an SUV driven by a Uyghur man accompanied by his wife and mother ploughed into
barricades before bursting into flames killing 5 people and injuring 40 others near the
iconic portrait of Mao Zedong (Kaiman 2013).
The trend towards greater extremism and violence was underlined by four major
incidents in 2014. On 1 March, a group of eight masked assailants unleashed a mass
knife attack on bystanders at the Kunming train station in Yunnan Province, leaving
29 people dead and over 140 injured. The Chinese government was quick to identify it
as a ‘terrorist attack’ by ‘extremists’ from Xinjiang, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin
Gang asserting that ‘some Eastern Turkestan flags were found at the scene’ (Australia
Network News 2014). Authorities also identified the ‘mastermind’ of the attack as
Abdurehim Kurban, indicating the likely Uyghur ethnicity of the attackers (South
China Morning Post 2014a). This attack was followed by a reported suicide bombing
of Urumqi’s main train station on 30 April that killed 3 (including the 2 attackers)
and injured 70. On 1 May, a number of assailants in two unmarked SUVs attacked
an open-air market in Urumqi, killing 43 and injuring 94. Finally, in the early hours
of the morning on 28 July, a ‘mob’ of Uyghurs armed with ‘knives and axes’ attacked
the local police and government buildings in Shache Township in Yarkand and called
for a jihad against the Chinese. The authorities ultimately quelled this incident at the
cost of the lives of 59 attackers and 37 civilians (Wen 2014a).
Beijing’s response to this intensifying violence has focused on three fronts: the
strengthening of security and counterterrorism measures; renewed exhortations
regarding the importance of stability and ethnic unity; and a renewed effort to
demonstrate the links between Uyghur ‘terrorism’ and ‘hostile external forces’. With
respect to the first issue, Beijing rapidly increased Xinjiang’s internal security budget
for 2014 to some $1 billion, and President Xi Jinping now heads a specially formed
committee on China’s new National Security Council to deal with security and to
counter terror strategies in Xinjiang (China’s Xinjiang Doubling anti-Terror Budget
2014). The authorities have also stepped up repressive measures in the region, with
Xinjiang CCP Chairman Zhang Chuxian calling for a ‘people’s war’ in which the state
will ‘exterminate’ the ‘savage and evil separatists’ who are influenced and directed by
foreign ‘extremists’ (Jacobs 2014). This has entailed not only accelerated arrests and
trials of suspected ‘terrorists’—including public, mass sentencing rallies of Uyghur
suspects—but also ongoing sweeps of Uyghur neighbourhoods and mosques in search
of potential militants and their weapons (Koplowitz 2014). The authorities have also
attempted to elicit the assistance of ordinary Uyghurs through the offer of financial
rewards for ‘tip-offs’ to police regarding suspicious individuals and activities (Radio
Australia 2014).
Finally, Beijing has made a concerted effort to draw links between the Kunming
attack and radical Islamists beyond China’s borders in Central Asia, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and the wider Middle East. Chinese government spokesmen have linked

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16 Michael Clarke

the Kunming attackers to the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), based in the tribal areas
along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, which it claims is a successor organisation
to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group it has previously held to
be responsible for various attacks in Xinjiang (South China Morning Post 2014b).
As noted previously, despite Chinese claims, there has been little concrete evidence
that ETIM mounted successful attacks in Xinjiang during that time (Clarke 2008;
Millward 2004; Roberts 2012). The TIP emerged as a successor organisation sometime
between 2006 and 2008, based near Mir Ali in North Waziristan and allied with the
Pakistani Taliban and the IMU (Zenn 2011, 2014). In contrast to ETIM, TIP has
maintained a higher profile through regular statements by its leadership regarding
events in Xinjiang (e.g., its leader, Abdullah Mansour, issued a statement praising the
Kunming attack) and its use of the Internet as a vehicle to disseminate its calls for
jihad against Chinese rule (Tiezzi 2014).
The TIP’s operational capabilities remain unclear, with the group to date only
directly claiming the 28 October 2013 Tiananmen attack. Yet the details of that incident
suggest that this claim may have been purely opportunistic. The attack was carried out
by a Uyghur man, Usmen Hasen, his wife and mother with the crude instruments of
an SUV and cans of gasoline (Mooney 2013; Roberts 2013). This is not to suggest that
the attack was not meant to cause harm but rather to note that it did not appear to bear
the hallmarks of a well-organised militant organisation. In fact, due to its geographic
isolation from Xinjiang, lack of resources and limited number of militants, it seems
probable that TIP’s influence in the region may be limited to the virtual realm of the
Internet. This is not an inconsiderable problem for China. Xinjiang Communist Party
Chief Zhang Chunxian, for instance, asserted that the easily accessible nature of Islamist
propaganda on the Internet had facilitated attacks such as that in Kunming, while
officials in Xinjiang announced that they had arrested over 200 people for accessing
or disseminating ‘jihadi’ videos on the Internet (Wen 2014b).
An increasingly problematic concern for Beijing has been the apparent shift in
locus of Uyghur militant groups from the ‘Af–Pak’ region to the wider Middle East,
particularly to the ongoing crises in Syria and Iraq. The first public reference to possible
Uyghur connections to the Syrian conflict by a Chinese official came in October 2012
with Chinese Major General Yin Jinan stating that ‘East Turkistan organizations are
taking advantage of the Syrian civil war to obtain experience and raise the profile of
Xinjiang among jihadists from other theatres’ (China Military Online 2012). In July
2013, Syria’s Foreign Minister Imad Moustapha stated in an interview with the Global
Times that at least 30 Uyghurs had travelled from jihadist training camps in Pakistan
to Syria via Turkey and that the Syrian government was sharing its intelligence on the
Uyghurs with Beijing (Lin 2013).
Reports of linkages between Uyghurs and the fighting in Syria increased in 2015.
Al Monitor columnist Metin Gurcan reported in September 2015 that an ‘Ankara
intelligence source’ estimated that ‘1500 recruits from Central Asia’, including
Uyghurs, were already fighting for Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq (Gurcan 2015).

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 17

Lebanon-based Meyadeen TV also aired a report on 3 September 2015 that purported

to show not only Uyghur fighters of the TIP engaged in military operations near
the town of Jisr Al-Shughur but also the settlement of Uyghur militants and their
families in nearby villages (Meyadeen TV 2015). US analyst, Christina Lin, asserted
in October 2015 that the TIP had established training camps in Idlib, Syria, and
had fought against regime forces there in conjunction with Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat
al Nusra (Lin 2015). Finally, Al Masdar News reported on 26 October 2015 that a
Uyghur ‘terrorist’, identified as ‘Abbas Al-Turkistani’, had been killed by the Syrian
Army in Northwest Hama (Fadel 2015).
It is important to note, however, that some of these reports do not distinguish
between Uyghur and other Central Asian militants. The Meyadeen TV report, for
instance, at 1 minute 36 seconds uses footage that purports to show a ‘Uyghur’ child
soldier, ‘Abdallah al Turkistani’, in the service of IS executing two alleged Russian ‘spies’.
The same footage, however, was taken from an IS propaganda video that was reported
on widely by international media as an IS-recruited Kazakh child soldier executing
Russian spies (NBC News 2015; RFE/RL 2015). Even with this caveat, it appears that
there is a Uyghur presence, albeit of unknown number, in Syria.
Further evidence that the issue of Uyghur migration and militancy has become
increasingly transnational in nature has also been forthcoming over recent years.
There have been well-documented cases of significant Uyghur transmigration through
Southeast Asia since 2009 in which Uyghurs detained by authorities in transit coun-
tries, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, have been travelling on either forged
Turkish passports or have claimed Turkish citizenship (Abuza 2014). This issue achieved
prominence in the aftermath of the bombing of the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok on 18
August 2015, which some reports speculated was perpetrated by Uyghurs in retaliation
for Thailand’s earlier deportation of 109 Uyghurs discovered by Thai authorities in a
people-smuggler-run camp in southern Thailand (Putz 2015).
Chinese authorities also announced they had busted a people-smuggling ring
when they arrested 10 Turkish citizens and a number of Uyghurs in Shanghai in
January 2015 (Huanqui.com 2015; Wong 2015). According to Global Times, the
ring was orchestrated by a ‘Uyghur living in Turkey and a Turkish suspect’ who
‘charged 60,000 yuan ($9,680) per person’ and also procured Turkish passports
for their prospective clients (Liu 2015). Media reporting from the Middle East
has also asserted that Turkey has supplied fake Turkish passports to IS and other
jihadist groups to facilitate recruitment of militants (Ali 2016). This charge has
also been echoed in China, with Chinese media reporting on cases of prospective
Uyghur recruits being supplied with forged Turkish documents and directed to seek
the assistance of Turkish embassies if apprehended in Southeast Asia (South China
Morning Post 2015; Xinhua 2015).
The ongoing presence of Uyghur militants along the Af–Pak frontier is, however,
the most troubling dynamic for Beijing as it not only places such militants within
geographic proximity to Xinjiang but also threatens to complicate its ‘all-weather’

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18 Michael Clarke

friendship with Pakistan and present a threat to its ambitious ‘Silk Road Economic
Belt’ agenda. Until the final years of the 2000s however, China maintained a low
profile vis-à-vis Afghanistan, a position determined by the fact that in the wake of the
US and NATO intervention in the country after 9/11, China desired

neither a Western victory that might entrench a US military presence in its backyard,
nor a Taliban victory that would pose risks to Xinjiang and the wider region. As a
result, its financial and political contributions to Afghanistan were at best tokenistic,
the minimum necessary to avoid alienating anyone. (Small 2015)

However, with the enunciation by US President Barack Obama’s ‘Af–Pak’ strategy

in 2009, China’s approach has shifted. Fundamental to the new US strategy was
the judgement that, in the President Obama’s words, ‘The future of Afghanistan is
inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan’ (Obama 2009). For the
new administration, the core issue was the connection between the Taliban, in both
Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Al Qaeda and its various fellow travellers and the threat
that they posed not only to those countries or the US but also to the ‘safety of people
around the world’ (Obama 2009).
Most significantly, alongside the announcement that a US troop ‘surge’ would herald
the ‘Af–Pak’ strategy, President Obama also identified 2011 as the endpoint for the US
military commitment to Afghanistan. Obama’s ‘Af–Pak’ strategy prompted a debate in
Beijing about what this might mean for Chinese interests, with the People’s Liberation
Army (PLA) perceiving it as a strategy to embed US military bases and forces in the
country for the ‘long haul’, while the Ministry for Foreign Affairs detected the shifting
political winds in the US in favour of the ultimate withdrawal of US forces (Small
2014: 159). Over the course of the next 2 years (i.e., 2009–11), arguably the former
view prevailed and Beijing remained largely unresponsive to US requests for coopera-
tion with respect to ‘Af–Pak’ issues, such as entreaties to assist the US in developing
alternatives to the increasingly fragile supply routes via Pakistan for the delivery of
materiel to US and NATO forces (Kuchins and Sanderson 2010). However, as the
Obama administration began its staged withdrawal of its ‘surge’ troops in mid-2011,
this debate shifted as ‘Chinese officials…were using different language to talk about
the prospect of the withdrawal of the US troops: instead of asking when it would
happen, they started expressing concern that the United States should not leave too
hastily’ (Small 2014: 160).
This perception that US withdrawal could have contradictory outcomes began to
inform Chinese policy towards Afghanistan from 2012 onwards as it sought to hedge
against worst-case scenarios. China sought to intensify its engagement with Kabul
through assisting in securing the country’s observer status in the SCO and signing
a ‘bilateral partnership’ agreement in June 2012 (Small 2014: 160). Beijing’s then
‘security czar’, Zhou Yongkang, thereafter made an unprecedented official visit to
the Afghan capital in September 2012. Zhou’s responsibilities primarily concerned

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 The Impact of Ethnic Minorities on China’s Foreign Policy 19

domestic security, suggesting that China was seeking greater security and counter-
terror cooperation in order to insulate Xinjiang after the US withdrawal (Pantucci
and Petersen 2012).
The increasing number of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang over the past 5 years has
revealed to Beijing the limitations of relying on the partial ‘outsourcing’ of its security
to the US and NATO military presence in Afghanistan and the Pakistani military along
the Af–Pak frontier. To date, China has attempted to insulate Xinjiang from the influ-
ence of Uyghur militants along the Af–Pak frontier via increased security cooperation
with Islamabad and the provision of arms and training to Afghan security forces. With
respect to Pakistan, China has attempted to steer a middle path with respect to the
Uyghur issue. It has sought to leverage its long-standing and deep ties with Islamabad
to combat and deter Uyghur militants from striking Chinese interests in Pakistan or
Xinjiang itself (Small 2014: 155–61). However, China’s increasing engagement with
the Kabul government and its attempts to broker a political settlement between Kabul
and the Taliban—including facilitating secret negotiations between the two—suggest
that it may be beginning to perceive that the interests of its ‘all-weather friend’ in fact
run counter to its own in the context of Afghanistan (Hadeer 2015).

CONCLUSION

What conclusions may we draw from the development of these two diametrically
opposed dynamics with respect to the Xinjiang and Uyghur issue? Although it may
be too soon to tell definitively, there are two interesting implications that arise from
the foregoing discussion. One concerns the future impact of ethnic minority issues on
China’s foreign policy and the other the future of ethnic minority nationalist/separatist
aspirations. The first implication revolves around the significance of the shift from
overtly ‘separatist’ (i.e., territory- and sovereignty-focused movements) tendencies
amongst the Uyghur to a more fragmented set of agendas amongst the Uyghur for
China’s foreign policy. In some respects, the parameters of the ‘separatist’ challenge
for Beijing during the Cold War were much clearer in the sense that the sources of
threat and their sources of potential support were known. Indeed, given the history of
Xinjiang and Tibet prior to 1949, the CCP was well aware that (i) important external
forces (e.g., Soviet Union, the US and Britain) had clear strategic interests in support-
ing in varying degrees moves for autonomy or independence in those regions and
(ii) Uyghur and Tibetan nationalists had recent experience and memory of autonomy
and independence from China.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, however, the picture became much more clouded.
The global trends in this period (e.g., globalisation, humanitarian intervention, revival
of nationalism, etc.) not only converged to reanimate to some degree nationalist or
separatist sentiment among Uyghurs (and other ethnic groups in China) but also

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20 Michael Clarke

provided greater opportunity for the mobilisation of their diasporas and the generation
of international concern or support for their claims. Important in this latter regard
were the Tibetan, and ultimately the Uyghur, diasporas’ decision to begin framing
their struggle not in terms of ‘national liberation’ movements of the anti-colonial era
but in terms of the post-Cold War discourse of human rights (and implicitly liberal
democracy). This enabled these diasporas to embed their causes within perhaps one
of the most pressing debates in the West: the implications of the rise of China.
The events of 9/11 for their part had a contradictory effect here. On the one hand,
they appeared to confirm the arrival of a ‘borderless’ yet increasingly fractured world,
while on the other prompted states to reinvigorate traditional modes and institutions
of control. This dynamic, Ulrich Beck asserted, was characteristic of the arrival of a
‘world risk society’ where security risks or threats had become temporally, spatially
and socially ‘de-bounded’ (Beck 2002a, 2002b). One suspects that Beck would frame
China’s response to such an environment and the risks/threats posed by the Uyghur
in particular (defined as it has been by a hardening of state power and control within
Xinjiang) as the inadequate response of a traditional nation-state that cannot help but
perceive ‘the inner complexity, the multiple loyalties, the social flows and fluid risks
and people that world risk society has caused to slosh across national borders’ as
‘a threat to their existence’ (Beck 2002a: 50).
The second point concerns the future direction of ethnic minority separatist/nationalist
aspirations. Drawing from the example of the Uyghurs and the Tibetans, it seems that
the while the transition from the rhetoric and tactics of ‘national liberation’ or ‘self-
determination’ to greater reliance on the discourse of human rights and liberal democracy
has been effective in raising the profile of their respective causes, it has been no more
effective than the former in extracting concessions from Beijing. In fact, one could argue
the case that it has been counterproductive, as it has entrenched the perception in Beijing
that the Uyghur and Tibetan diasporas and their leaders are pawns in the West’s (i.e., the
US) agenda to manage or combat China’s growing global power and influence.

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