Michael Clarke's edited volume on terrorism and counter-terrorism in China provides a well-researched, careful and multi-faceted look at terrorism and counter-terrorism issues facing the People's Republic of China (PRC) today. The book is a valuable resource for scholars interested in Xinjiang, in Chinese security and foreign policy behaviour, and in terrorism and counter-terrorism globally; it should be read widely, and not just by those who study Xinjiang or China.
The volume begins with a chapter by Clarke that provides the historical context for the book's later chapters, and that frames their contributions in terms of the “internal-external security nexus” that has long characterized CCP thinking about security threats. The next section unpacks domestic developments, examining the PRC's changing legal framework for counterterrorism (Zunyou Zhou), the application of domestic counter-terrorism policy in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR, Julia Famularo), and the unintended, often negative effects of China's narratives about and policies toward the XUAR since 2009 (Sean Roberts). The second half of the volume turns outward, looking at developments in the various regional environments wherein terrorism and counterterrorism have become increasingly salient to Beijing: Central Asia (Andrew Small), the Middle East (two chapters, by Mordechai Chaziza and Raffaello Pantucci) and South-East Asia (Stefanie Kam Li Yee).
The descriptive contribution that this volume makes simply by placing issues that are often treated in disaggregated fashion into a single framework is significant. As is highlighted in the Introduction, the tendency to dismiss terrorist threats to China as either insignificant or a mere excuse for repressiveness has limited the accumulation of knowledge about both the threat and Chinese policy responses. Taken together, however, these chapters make a compelling case that “China is now facing a terrorist threat at home that has links abroad” (p. 18), and has experienced a “major shift in the nature of [that] threat” (p. 26). Several of the chapters point out, with varying degrees of emphasis, that Beijing's own policies vis-à-vis its Uyghur population have worsened rather than mitigated this threat, rendering fears about Uyghur terrorism a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” in the words of chapter contributor Sean Roberts (p. 99). But the chapters also make a convincing case that a self-created threat is no less real because of its origins, and provide detailed evidence on both the evolution of that threat across time, borders, and regions of the world – as well as on how it has prompted a set of internal and external policy responses by the Chinese party-state.
The volume also highlights several gaps that remain in our understanding of these issues, and where future research could make important contributions. The first is a better understanding of how threat assessments and counter-terrorism policy are formulated within the party-state system, particularly in light of the fact that these issues involve actors from China's domestic security (politics and law), foreign policy and military systems. It would have been helpful, for example, to understand more clearly where terrorism fits in China's national defence strategy, or how it is being formulated and implemented bureaucratically given the context of Xi Jinping's efforts to push forward with institutional reforms in both the PLA and the internal security apparatus. While Julia Famularo's treatment of policy developments on the ground in Xinjiang and Zunyou Zhou's chapter on the PRC's new legal framework for counterterrorism are both important contributions, there is room to add a complementary analysis that identifies where terrorism fits in broader PRC threat assessments and how the Party-state then formulates a combined domestic/foreign policy to address the various facets of that threat.
The second area where scholars could build on this volume is in placing China in comparative context, which as the volume notes is rarely done in either China-specific work or broader literature on terrorism (p. 4). Much of the scholarship on domestic responses to terrorism focuses on potential infringement of civil liberties in Western democracies; this volume, however, highlights a set of inter-connected but differential terrorist threats across regimes that are neither Western nor (fully) democratic – not just in China, but also in Central Asia, South-East Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa. How do these differences change threat perceptions, policy responses, and the likely effects of counter-terrorism policies? I suspect here that careful analysis of China has much to contribute to our general understanding of political violence and state response, and also that comparing China to other non-democracies who may be similar or different in a whole range of ways could shed some further light on the drivers and implications of these phenomena in China itself.
Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in China provides valuable empirical understanding of China's security environment and policies, both domestically and internationally, at a time when these questions are important and relevant. In doing so, the volume also points the way for future research that can build on this work to continue to advance our understanding of China's security behaviour, both at home and abroad, and of terrorist threats and counterterrorism responses in the changing global environment.
