China strengthens terrorism battle
Print Edition
CHINA is strengthening cooperation with other countries to prevent homegrown terrorists from going to Syria and Afghanistan to join Islamic State and coming back with enhanced terrorist skills, a seminar in Australia was told yesterday.
Xing Guangcheng, director of the Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Australian Institute of International Affairs that terrorists from China, many of them from the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, were testing different routes of going abroad.
One used frequently in recent years runs from Xinjiang to China’s southern provinces, to Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and then through Turkey to Iraq and Syria.
When they are stopped either in China or in Southeast Asian countries and realize they may never make it to their desired destination, they very likely choose to make some desperate gestures and “do something big locally,” Xing said.
Many countries, including China, Vietnam and Thailand, have seen terrorist attacks of this nature in the past few years, Xing said.
China’s law enforcement departments have beefed up cooperation with their counterparts in Southeast Asian countries, which are aware of the risks of the free flow of so-called migrating jihadists.
Xing said China worries about the radicalization of local youth and is even more concerned with those who travel to the Middle East for terrorist training and come back to threaten security at home.
The entire international community is facing the threat of terrorism, Xing said. That’s why China is cooperating with many other powers, including Russia, the European Union and the United States, in combating terrorism.
Gao Jianlong, president of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences, told the meeting: “China’s central government has put the livelihood of people of all ethnicities in Xinjiang at the center of its policy. A more stable society in Xinjiang would undoubtedly facilitate the economy to develop more rapidly.”
Xing said Xinjiang, which is at the center of the Silk Road Economic Belt, would serve as a transport hub, as well as a trade and cultural center of the trade belt. With infrastructure and a variety of industries established in the past 60 years, Xinjiang is well positioned to play a bigger role in the country’s Belt and Road initiative, he said.
Xing and other members of a Xinjiang cultural exchange delegation will hold talks with Chinese Australians in Sydney before heading to New Zealand.
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