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China’s Perception of the Threat and Response

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Ethnic Identity and National Conflict in China

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Abstract

In 2008, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), believed to be inactive since 2003, returned to violence. More than thirty people died in violence in Xinjiang in August 2008. On August 4, 2008, just four days before the Olympic Games began in Beijing, one of the most deadly terrorist attacks occurred in the city of Kashgar, killing sixteen soldiers of People’s Armed Police Force (PAPF).2 The government blamed the killings on the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) that had threatened earlier to sabotage the Beijing Olympic Games. On October 21, 2008, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced the names of eight terrorists belonging to the ETIM, who plotted and committed terrorist activities in China. The spokesman of the MPS said that these “diehard” ETIM members had planned or organized attacks, and had recruited and trained members to sabotage the games since 2007.3 All eight men named were Uighurs, seven of whom left China in the 1990s, with the other departing in 2006. One suspect, Metusun Abuduhalike, the authorities claimed, propagated “extreme and violent terrorist thoughts” to extremists in Xinjiang, who had subsequently set up terrorist groups.4 The MPS also called for “global cooperation” to ferret out the where-abouts of the eight fugitive terrorists and extradite them to China.5

We will firmly take control of the initiative in the struggle and resolutely oppose hostile forces inside and outside China who use ethnic issues to infiltrate and sabotage.

—Hu Jintao, President of People’s Republic of China, May 2005.1

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Notes

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  1. Rohan Gunaratna
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  2. Arabinda Acharya
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  3. Wang Pengxin
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© 2010 Rohan Gunaratna, Arabinda Acharya and Wang Pengxin

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Gunaratna, R., Acharya, A., Pengxin, W. (2010). China’s Perception of the Threat and Response. In: Ethnic Identity and National Conflict in China. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230107878_7

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