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The book review discusses Chi Zhang's work, "Legitimacy of China's Counter-Terrorism Approach," which examines China's rationale and mindset regarding counter-terrorism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The author argues that external observers should not dismiss China's justifications for repression, but rather seek to understand them. Zhang focuses on the concept of the "mass line ethos" and its role in China's approach to counter-terrorism. The book provides valuable insights into Chinese security policy and is relevant to scholars studying Xinjiang, Uyghur studies, and terrorism and counter-terrorism. However, it does not fully address the question of why the Chinese Communist Party has taken such drastic measures in Xinjiang. [Extracted from the article]

Previous explanations on China's counterterrorism strategy have highlighted the results of China's strategy of repression in Xinjiang, the historical antecedents and institutional foundations of its counterterrorism policies, as well as international and domestic sources of China's counterterrorism strategy. While acknowledging the importance of all these dimensions, this article draws attention to a largely neglected feature of China's counterterrorism strategy: the Chinese party-state's social engineering of Xinjiang. Building on Maoist-era practices such as the mass line and the 'friend vs. enemy' binary, the Communist party under Xi Jinping has integrated surveillance technologies as part of its strategy of preventive counterterrorism and 'de-extremization'. This article argues that the Chinese party-state's embrace of modern technologies, a weak liberal tradition in China, Xi Jinping's rise to power in late 2012, and the appointment of Chen Quanguo as Xinjiang's party-secretary in 2016, provides the socio-political background for the intensification of securitization, surveillance and introduction of 're-education and training centres' in Xinjiang. Surveillance technologies now complement collective, face-to-face methods of surveillance and Maoist-era techniques of mass mobilization, enabling the Chinese party-state to govern and manage the biopolitical spaces of Uyghurs with greater intensity, according to the state's precise norms. The legalization and institutionalization of 'de-extremization' has also led to the shift from mass 'de-extremization' propaganda to 'drip-irrigation' ideological and political re-education of individuals deemed at risk of extremism. The result is an increased capacity by the Chinese party-state to surveil and control the region, and to more effectively negate the possibility of individual resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Beijing’s ambitious ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) is driven by the convergence of Innenpolitik and Aussenpolitik motivations including a desire: to counterbalance perceived American predominance; to ensure economic growth to underpin the CCP’s legitimacy; and to present China as a viable alternate global leader to the United States. Due to challenges posed by Xinjiang and China’s geopolitically ‘hybridity’, the most likely effect of the BRI will be the division of the Indo-Pacific into a sphere of Chinese predominance in its Eurasian continental setting and the maintenance of American predominance in its maritime setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that China's approach to Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War has been shaped by the desire both for security in Xinjiang and for geopolitical advantage in Central Asia. While Beijing's Xinjiang calculus was ascendant from 1991 to 2001, since 2001 a broader geopolitical calculus has emerged. This latter factor has been encapsulated in President Xi Jinping's 'One Belt, One Road' strategy, which, at its core, is an outgrowth of Beijing's decades-long agenda to integrate Xinjiang and utilise this region's unique geopolitical position to facilitate a Chinacentric Eurasian geo-economic system. While China's Xinjiang calculus determines that it shares an interest with the USA in combating radical Islamism in Afghanistan (and Central Asia more broadly), the geopolitical calculus of the 'One Belt, One Road' strategy points to a fundamental incompatibility between US and Chinese interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Uyghur Muslims community in China's autonomous territory of Xinjiang. It discusses the terrorists attacks in Xinjiang as inspired by the Islamist organizations Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It looks at the possibility of Palestinization of the Uyghur conflict as reflected through the book "My West China: Your East Turkestan" by Chinese dissident Wang Lixiong due to the policy of repression, restriction, and investment by the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949.

The aims of this paper are threefold: to provide some historical background on ethnic separatism in the PRC; to identify the causes of ethnic separatism; and to provide an assessment of the current separatist challenges to the PRC and their implications for China's domestic politics and foreign relations. The paper demonstrates that the nature and scale of the challenge posed by any one ethnic minority to the PRC is largely a function of three major factors: the historical relationship between the ethnic group and the Chinese state; the geographic concentration of the ethnic minority; and the degree of acculturation to the dominant Han society. In this regard the paper identifies Xinjiang and Tibet as the ethnic minority regions that pose the most enduring separatist challenge to Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent commentary on China's approach to Afghanistan has argued that it is either driven by opportunistic “free riding” on US-NATO efforts or a fundamental caution determined by security concerns in its restive province of Xinjiang. In contrast, this paper argues that China has three primary goals with respect to Afghanistan that mirror those toward the other states in “Greater Central Asia”: (1) to ensure the security of Xinjiang; (2) to secure the development of greater economic links, including investment in natural resources; and (3) to combat the influence of the United States and India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the recent surge in both governmental and academic advocacy of nuclear disarmament, including initiatives of the Obama administration and the Australian and Japanese governments, the spectre of further nuclear proliferation arguably remains a key challenge for international security. This article suggests that this is particularly the case in Asia due to three major dynamics: (1) the stasis of the international non-proliferation regime embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; (2) the state of flux in the global and regional strategic nuclear environment; and (3) increasing regional demand for nuclear energy. This article argues that developments in each of these realms of nuclear affairs hold the potential to increase proliferation pressures in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although a significant amount of attention has been paid to the implementation of anti-terror laws and their impact on human rights in the West, relatively little has been paid to this issue in the Chinese context. China has not been entirely immune from the anti-terror legislative wildfire generated by 9/11. I argue that the international dynamic of privileging security concerns over protecting human rights is prevalent in China and is acutely felt in the specific regional context of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. China's anti-terror laws contribute not only to further human rights violations in Xinjiang but also hold the potential to criminalize dissent throughout the PRC via the application of an ambiguous and expansive definition of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Beiijing's handling of the Xinjiang and Uyghur issues at the domestic, regional and international levels is characterised by a number of contradictions. Domestically, the July 2009 unrest suggests that China's longstanding approach to Xinjiang is at risk of failure due to the contradictions inherent in the logic that underpins Beijing's strategy. Regionally, Beijing faces a contradiction between its growing influence on the governments of Central Asia and the ambivalent attitude of Central Asian publics towards China. Internationally, the major implication of the July unrest has been to signal the internationalisation of the Uyghur issue whereby it has become a significant irritant in Beijing's relations with a number of major Western states, including the USA and Australia. It has been Beijing's own approach to Xinjiang domestically and its handling of the Uyghur issue in its diplomacy that has contributed to the internationalisation of the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that violent Uighur separatism and terrorism conforms in a number of important respects to the human security theory of terrorism, particularly in the realm of political and civil rights. However, it argues that impetus has been given to the various separatist organisations in the region by the development of interconnections between the largely internal aspects of China's policy of integration in the region and the wider Central and South Asian dynamic of Islamic radicalism since 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that China's foreign policy since 1991 has been guided by the evolution of a grand strategy of "peaceful rise" that seeks to ensure China's smooth transition to great power status. Moreover, it suggests that a strategic preoccupation with Central Asia has become an important expression of this grand strategy. Framing these arguments is a third overarching one that postulates that China's foreign policy in Central Asia is not only intimately related to the strategy of "peaceful rise" but also to a particular, historically and geopolitically informed narrative of China's "Inner Asian" power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the ongoing international debate concerning the efficacy or otherwise of the NPT and IAEA in preventing or managing nuclear proliferation, Australia's undertaking to enter a nuclear cooperation agreement with the People's Republic of China (PRC), once identified as a “strategic competitor” of Australia's major alliance partner the United States (US), suggests that Australia's approach to proliferation issues is being re-evaluated. This paper argues, utilising an analysis of the relationship between the evolving US approach to nuclear issues and Australian policy, that the Howard government's evolving approach to nuclear issues can be characterised as an attempt to balance the competing imperatives of maintaining Australia's reputation as a nuclear non-proliferation standard bearer, regional strategic and economic considerations and the weight of the Australia-US alliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The statement that Xinjiang is an integral province of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is not as banal as it would first appear. The primary question that arises from this statement is how - by what processes and strategies - was Xinjiang brought to its contemporary situation as a province of the PRC? This paper seeks to highlight that, although Xinjiang's history since the eighteenth century has been one of great turbulence and dynamism, underlying continuities in both the practice of Chinese power and perceptions of Xinjiang impact profoundly on contemporary China's rule of Xinjiang. Therefore, this study attempts to chart the transition of the Qing goal of territorial incorporation of the region based upon a system of indirect rule c.1760 to the post-imperial Chinese state's goal of territorial incorporation based on the extension of direct, modern strategies of government and control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper charts the development of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) reevaluation of its strategy of control and development in Xinjiang in the post-Mao era. It argues that the reevaluation and restructuring of the CCP's socioeconomic priorities after the repudiation of the Maoist line, and the ideological innovations that followed thereafter, produced contradictory dynamics in Xinjiang that reinvigorated the potential for the convergence of internal unrest and external interference by the close of the 1980s, laying the foundation for the intensification of ethnic minority opposition during the 1990s. The emerging strategy toward Xinjiang during this period attempted to utilize the strategic and "frontier" nature of Xinjiang to strengthen the endeavor of integration, stimulating the beginnings of a number of dynamics both within Xinjiang and the wider Central Asian region that would challenge Chinese power and policy in the final decade of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since September 11, 2001, and the subsequent U.S. politico-military penetration of Central Asia there has been much speculation regarding China's perceived strategic "defeat" in that region, which is said to have compromised China's long-term plans regarding the integration of Xinjiang. This paper, however, will argue that the strategic implications of the U.S. penetration of Central Asia have in fact resulted in the re-invigoration and reinforcement of China's goal and instruments of integration in Xinjiang. This dynamic has been expressed within Xinjiang, in the form of the strengthening of the major instruments of internal control and development, and externally in the form of China's foreign policy calculus in the context of its relations with the states of Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]