Xinjiang

Behind green barbed-wire fences sit rows of men and rows of women, segregated by gender. They have been stripped of any religious clothing and instead wear royal blue jumpsuits. Behind these fences, Uyghur Muslims go to have “their thoughts transformed.” China claims these camps are necessary for preventing future acts of terrorism perpetrated by Muslim extremists. The country has built more of these camps at an alarming rate, all the while claiming that it is scaling back re-education efforts. These actions have brought the condemnation of some countries in the United Nations, as well as the United States. Attempts at further “re-education” will likely increasingly be met by more aggressive economic sanctions because detention camps violate international law and China’s promised obligation to protect human rights.

XinJiang, the Uyghur Autonomous Region, stages some of China’s most violent separatist movements, the most violent of which are developing terrorist- threats. In April, President Xi Jinping visited the region and spoke specifically on the issue of combating terrorism. While China has not officially declared a counterterrorism program, it has developed a new National Security Commission designed to counter “unconventional security” threats. China has modeled much of its new commission after that of the U.S. and may, in the future, follow the U.S. model further by developing a comprehensive counterterrorism program. Given the escalating situation in various autonomous regions, the likelihood that China will develop a broader official counterterrorism strategy is high. This analysis takes into consideration two simplified factors: the development of separatist movements in a Chinese national context, and the evolving Chinese policy of dealing with regional security threats.