I. Introduction
Intermestic security challenges arise when there is concern in a country that a dissatisfied minority relies on transnational bonds with a foreign kin group for support. Ruling majorities and their governments, rightly or wrongly, may perceive such cross-border bonds as threatening because they solicit unwanted foreign support for dissatisfied minorities. This can lead to complications not only in domestic politics but also international relations (hence, the term ‘intermestic’).
To illustrate, consider the affinities of ethnic Russian minorities in Russia’s near abroad with Russia’s majority. Until recently, scholars found that this was rather trouble-free.Footnote 1 Ethnic Russians make up more than 20 per cent in countries like Latvia or Kazakhstan, and they often face discrimination from ruling majorities and the state in their countries of residence. Yet, until recently, they hardly received support from Russia. This was due to deliberate Russian restraint which, today, does not seem to hold any longer. In early 2014, when Ukraine entered a political crisis, Russian-speaking rebels in the east and south of the country received support from Russia. It is debated to what extent that support arose from domestic groups within Russia and to what extent it was state sponsored. Regardless, it has posed a severe intermestic security challenge because it escalated an already tense situation into a full-blown war over secession.
Intermestic security challenges are observable all over the world and especially in Eurasia. In principle, they can be of an ethnic and of an ideological kind (or a combination of both). Trans-border ethnic kinship plays an important role in many civil wars, from Pashtuns in Pakistan supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan to Kurds in Turkey supporting co-ethnics in Syria and Iraq.Footnote 2 Ideologies shared across borders are of similar importance, with secular ideologies in decline since the end of the Cold War but religious ideologies, most notably transnational Islamism, on the rise.Footnote 3 Ethnic and ideological bonds do not only contribute to civil wars but also to a variety of other political calamities such as state fragility, irredentism, or even interstate war.Footnote 4
Instead of studying such dismal scenarios, this article focuses on intermestic security challenges involving China’s Muslim-majority neighbouring countries that have not only not escalated into major conflict but also been successfully managed by Beijing and other governments.
II. Intermestic security challenges
This article makes three contributions. First, it offers a thorough conceptualisation of intermestic security challenges to advance the emerging research agenda on the ‘internal-external security nexus’.Footnote 5 It builds on existing literature referenced in the footnotes and offers a more elaborate theoretical model than has hitherto been available. Second, the article offers insight into how states can sometimes manage intermestic challenges. What can a government do to prevent transnational bonds from becoming a force multiplier for insurgents? How can it manage a situation where a dissatisfied minority might rely on transnational bonds for foreign support? Under what circumstances can governments forestall political destabilisation and the escalation of violence? Third, the article examines specific empirical cases to sharpen the theoretical model and enable a better understanding of the causal processes involved. Research on further cases may then serve to test the model, modify it, or replace it with a better model should that be necessary.Footnote 6
The cases under study are all unlikely cases of successful management, where governments have been able to manage difficult intermestic security challenges against all odds. This is fortunate as we are more likely to derive important lessons from cases where, without prior knowledge, we would expect a high risk for the escalation of domestic and/or international conflict, but where governments have actually been successful in preventing or containing such escalation.
Why are my cases unlikely cases of success? Scholars have found that a ‘transnational ethnic alliance’ is more difficult to handle when a minority in Country A is dissatisfied but has foreign kin who share power, or are dominant in, a politically relevant nearby Country B.Footnote 7 In such cases, the dissatisfied minority in Country A is part of a transnational constituency that is not only ‘self-conscious and identifiable’ but also ‘politically salient’ in Country B.Footnote 8 Under such circumstances, the dissatisfied minority in A is likely to receive support from kin in B, exacerbating the challenge. Managing such a situation is difficult for the government of either country.
What is more, managing intermestic security challenges appears more difficult when ethnic kinship combines with ideological bonds. Ethnicity has always played a role in intermestic relations, but the role of ideology has changed. During the Cold War, communism was the most salient transnational ideological bond. After the decline of secular ideologies during the 1980s and 1990s, various forms of political Islam have replaced communism in this role.Footnote 9 Today, the worst intermestic challenges are those where transnational Islam and ethnic kinship combine.
All cases selected for study are about transnational bonds that are both ideological and ethnic, and invite foreign support from groups who share power, or are dominant, in relevant nearby countries. They all concern relations between China and its Muslim-majority neighbouring countries, which is helpful to enhance comparability and control for other factors. During the Cold War, Malaysia, and Indonesia were confronted with communist parties dominated by their ethnic Chinese minorities, raising concerns of foreign support from Maoist China. More recently, Beijing has been concerned that Uyghur insurgents in northwestern China may gain support from their Turkic co-ethnics and Muslim coreligionists in Central and South Asia. While these are unlikely cases of successful management in the ways outlined above, China and its Muslim neighbouring countries have largely been able to manage either challenge against all odds.
This stands in contrast with the political experience elsewhere. India has struggled with Islamist groups supported by ideological kin in Pakistan, as well as the Pakistani ‘deep state’, to the point of being targeted by foreign terrorists and fighting several wars over Kashmir. Similarly, Russia has been a major target of Islamist militants and has fought wars in the Caucasus. While China has been struggling with broadly comparable intermestic security challenges, Islamist, and secessionist attacks have not reached a similar intensity, nor has China had to fight any such wars. Relations between China and its Muslim neighbourhood are certainly not trouble-free, but they are better than relations between India, or Russia, and their respective Muslim neighbourhoods.
The contrast shows just how unlikely successful management has been in the case of China and its Muslim-majority neighbouring countries. This begs the question of how this has been possible and what, if anything, one may learn from it. The question is of obvious relevance. Europe, for instance, finds itself on the brink of comparable challenges. Western Europe has for a long time not fought any wars on its territory, but there was a ‘Muslim factor’ in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. More recently, Europe has been targeted by jihadists linked to Europe’s neighbouring region south and east of the Mediterranean.Footnote 10 In the Middle East itself, Sunni and Shia sectarianism have combined with ethnic kinship, notably but not exclusively among Arabs, posing significant intermestic security challenges to, and leading to the overturn of, several political regimes.Footnote 11
The first section provides a conceptualisation of intermestic security challenges, including the way they arise and can be managed. Subsequently, I present the evidence from my two cases.
∙ In the first case, China is at the receiving end of an intermestic challenge posed by the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim minority in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang. China and its Muslim neighbours in Central and South Asia have managed the challenge by jointly containing the ‘three evils’ of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism.
∙ In the second case, Malaysia and Indonesia have been at the receiving end of a challenge posed by their ethnic Chinese minorities. In this case, the challenge receded in the 1990s when China managed to persuade Malaysia and Indonesia that the matter was moot as the ethnic Chinese were no longer receiving support from their ancestral homeland.
The conclusion shows that managing intermestic security challenges (rather than mismanaging them, or not managing them at all) can make a real difference for the stabilisation of difficult political situations, and that further empirical research is likely to yield valuable further insights.
II.i Theoretical model
Before proceeding to the empirical analysis, it is necessary to define intermestic security challenges and develop a rigorous framework for comparison. As a shorthand, an intermestic security challenge can be defined as a situation where there is concern in a country that a dissatisfied minority relies on transnational bonds with a foreign kin group for support.Footnote 12
Figure 1 develops this into a theoretical model. An intermestic security challenge arises when three conditions are met: There are transnational bonds between a dissatisfied minority in Country A and a foreign kin group in Country B; the minority in County A can rely on that bond for support; and, obviously, the Government of Country A sees this as a problem (Figure 1).
Figure 1 Intermestic security challenge.
The transnational bond may be of an ethnic or ideological kind. If the bond is of an ideological kind, it may be constituted by a secular ideology like communism or by a religious ideology such as political Islam. The transnational bond may elicit different forms of foreign support: material and ideational, logistic and financial, and so on. Financial support may include transfers from a foreign diaspora and various other forms of conflict financing.Footnote 13 It may also include regular remittances, proceeds from ethnic and trade networks and, potentially, transnational organised crime.Footnote 14 That said, it is important not to underestimate the importance of ideational and logistic support. In the model above, all of these are subsumed under the broad category of foreign support. Such support is more likely when the foreign kin group is aligned with the Government of Country B, and receives political patronage in return. The entire situation turns into an intermestic security challenge when two further conditions are met: the Government of Country A is in conflict with the dissatisfied minority, and perceives foreign support as unacceptable.
Perceptions can be warranted or not. Hence, an intermestic security challenge can be real or imagined (or both). Government A may imagine that a dissatisfied minority receives foreign support even when this is not the case; and even when there is foreign support, Government A may perceive this as a problem for domestic stability when in reality there is no such problem. In the long term, perceptions and reality are likely to align. If Government A is at loggerheads with a minority, it is almost certain to identify it as a problem when the minority can rely on foreign support. Conversely, if there is no foreign support then this will eventually sink in with Government A, although that realisation is far from automatic and may take considerable time.Footnote 15
Given the intermestic nature of the challenge, a purely domestic strategy is unlikely to succeed. Apart from trying to disrupt the ability of the dissatisfied minority to access foreign support, Government A is also going to operate at the transnational and international level. At the transnational level, Government A will try to undermine the bond in order to counter any foreign support that might result from it.Footnote 16 At the international level, Government A will want to enlist Government B in its strategy. This will in turn force Government B to develop its own strategy, either to accommodate or to antagonise Government A. As a result, Governments A and B will adjust their international relations, either towards intensified collaboration or towards greater confrontation. On either side, strategising will thus take place at various levels (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Management strategies.
For Government A, the most important objective is to come to terms with the dissatisfied minority. For both governments, having positive relations is an important objective. Neither will want the intermestic challenge to escalate into a hot conflict, either domestically or at the international level. Tactical objectives at different levels can be in conflict with each other, but the ideal outcome and ultimate measure of successful management is when Government A is able to prevent the escalation of domestic conflict while having positive relations with Government B.Footnote 17
Consider, for example, the Uyghurs in China’s restive northwestern border region of Xinjiang (domestic minority). As a Turkic Muslim ethnicity, the Uyghurs have links with ethnic kin and coreligionists in Central and South Asia (transnational bond). Beijing fears that Uyghurs may receive foreign support in pursuit of what China calls the ‘three evils’ of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism (intermestic challenge). Accordingly, Beijing adjusts its policy towards the Uyghurs and its relations with its Central and South Asian neighbours. The latter have been amenable and manage the challenge together with China (international relations).
Another case in point are the ethnic Chinese minorities in Indonesia and Malaysia (domestic minorities). The ethnic Chinese have diasporic links with their ancestral homeland (transnational bond). During the Cold War, there were concerns in Malaysia and Indonesia that communist China was supporting the ethnic Chinese, and this strained domestic relations with the ethnic Chinese in either country, which were already tense (intermestic challenge). At that time, the problem overshadowed diplomatic relations with China. After the Cold War, Beijing allayed Malaysian and Indonesian fears and relations became far more friendly (international relations).
II.ii Antecedent conditions
Passing from theoretical model to empirical explanation, let us examine the causal factors that give rise to intermestic security challenges. My case studies are helpful for this purpose. It is hazardous to make wider inferences from a small number of cases. Nevertheless, the attempt can be revealing and generate plausible hypotheses that may ‘travel’ beyond the original cases.
Before the onset of the Chinese reform era, the Uyghurs did not pose an intermestic challenge to communist China. Malaysia and Indonesia, however, had a case that their ethnic Chinese minorities were posing a challenge. The situation was reversed after 1978. Since then, the Uyghurs have been an intermestic challenge for China. The ethnic Chinese, by contrast, have hardly posed a real challenge to Malaysia and Indonesia since the early 1980s. Thus, my cases comprise both periods when an intermestic challenge arose, and periods when it failed to arise.
Why have transnational bonds sometimes posed a challenge (ethnic Chinese before 1978; Uyghurs after 1978) when at other times they have not (Uyghurs before 1978; ethnic Chinese after 1978)? Table 1 provides an overview of the constellations of antecedent conditions leading to either outcome, as well as the sources of the intermestic challenges in the cases studied.
Table 1 Causal factors.
In all cases under study there is an ethnic bond, but taken by itself it has limited causal power. Ethnic affinity is certainly not sufficient to produce an intermestic security challenge. Whether before or after 1978, the Uyghurs and overseas Chinese have always had grievances that would appeal to foreign ethnic kin. Nevertheless, these grievances have led to an intermestic challenge in only two cases, and not in the other two. Hence, while ethnic affinity can lead to an intermestic security challenge, it will depend on other factors whether this actually happens.
Nor is ethnic affinity necessary for an intermestic challenge to arise. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union and China supported communist insurgencies in the absence of ethnic affinity. Today, Islamist insurgents sometimes receive foreign support without ethnic affinity. There are plenty of cases where co-ethnics do not support their foreign kin. Even so, it seems clear that ethnic affinity makes the emergence of an intermestic challenge more likely.Footnote 18
It seems that the presence or absence of an ideological bond has greater causal power. Until the 1970s, Maoism connected mainland China with important segments of the ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia. This posed a serious intermestic security challenge to Indonesia and Malaysia. After the Cold War, when the demise of communism weakened that link, the challenge began to disappear. In the Uyghur case, transnational political Islam connects Muslims in Xinjiang with coreligionists in Central and South Asia. Before 1978, these links were largely absent. This was not only due to tight border controls and draconian oppression, but also because there was no significant ideological connector. It was only after the Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both of which occurred in 1979, that transnational political Islam became available as a transnational ideology to pose a significant challenge to powerful nation states.
Like ethnicity, ideology is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce an intermestic challenge. Ideological affinity cannot be a necessary condition because there are intermestic challenges even in its absence. For example, until the 1990s the Basques in France supported the Basques in Spain without any ideological reason, posing an intermestic challenge to Madrid. Nor can it be a sufficient condition because it is not the transnational bond as such that produces the challenge. An intermestic challenge only arises when the bond generates foreign support. This is not always the case. During the Cold War, there were plenty of communist movements all over the world, but even groups sharing the same ideology did not always support each other. After 1978, the Chinese Communist Party abandoned its support for ethnic Chinese communists. To cut a long story short, it seems that ideological affinity makes the emergence of an intermestic challenge considerably more likely, especially when it comes on top of an ethnic bond.
It is important to note, however, that perceptions matter. Malaysia was quick to realise that its Chinese minority had ceased to receive support from China, and this is where the problem ended. Indonesia, by contrast, took until 1998 to come to the same realisation (as the case study will show). Thus, in the Indonesian case, the intermestic challenge outlasted foreign support by as much as two decades. Sometimes it is enough if foreign support is only perceived.
Another interesting variable is whether or not a domestic minority is able to raise a territorial claim. It is important to note that an intermestic security challenge may arise even in the absence of a territorial claim. Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese have posed an intermestic challenge without being able to claim any particular part of Indonesia or Malaysia as their own.Footnote 19 The Uyghur case, however, suggests that the ability to raise territorial claims is an aggravating factor.Footnote 20 Consider the following thought experiment: Imagine that the Uyghurs, like the Hui, were dispersed all over China so that they could not raise a territorial claim over ‘East Turkestan’. If that were so, it would mitigate the intermestic challenge posed by the Uyghurs.
In sum, a preliminary analysis suggests that intermestic security challenges result from a combination of ethnic and ideological affinities, when such affinities translate into foreign support that is seen as problematic. The ability to raise territorial claims is an aggravating factor.
II.iii Causal trajectories
After the analysis of antecedent conditions, let us move to the examination of causal trajectories. This helps uncover the actual processes underlying the model discussed in the last two sections. Moreover, it will enable us to extend the analysis to the eminently relevant question of strategy. What can states do about intermestic security challenges? How can they manage them?
In the Uyghur case, there was no intermestic challenge prior to 1978. China tightly controlled its territory, and political Islam had not yet (re-)emerged as a transnational ideological bond.Footnote 21 Since then, China’s political decision to open itself for trade has unleashed an intermestic challenge, which in turn necessitated a management strategy. The following mechanism has been at work:
a. Political motivations led to liberalisation moves.
b. Liberalisation led to cross-border commerce and mobility of people.
c. Commerce and mobility invigorated transnational bonds.
d. Invigorated transnational bonds led to foreign support.
e. Foreign support led to real and perceived intermestic challenges.
f. These challenges led to – mostly successful – political management.Footnote 22
In the case of the ethnic Chinese, the countries challenged were Malaysia and Indonesia. Hence, one might expect that they should have pursued similar strategies. Interestingly, however, the decisive step in addressing the challenge was not so much Malaysian and Indonesian management but China’s abstention from further supporting the ethnic Chinese. The causal mechanism at work was remarkably different from the one observed in the Uyghur case.
a. The perceived intermestic challenge was a legacy issue from the Cold War when the ethnic Chinese were seen as the ‘Fifth Column’ of the Chinese Communist Party.
b. After the Cold War, communism declined as an ideological bond connecting mainland China and the ethnic Chinese, despite the continued existence of ethnic grievances.
c. Since then, China has largely abstained from supporting the ethnic Chinese.
d. Malaysia was quick to realise that the intermestic challenge had disappeared.
e. Indonesia came to the same realisation considerably later, around 1998.
f. In both cases, diplomatic relations with China eventually improved, and the situation of the ethnic Chinese became a merely domestic issue.
In either case, China has shown considerable stewardship in managing an intermestic challenge. In the Uyghur case, Beijing has leveraged its power and influence to prevent or stymie foreign support from Central and South Asia for Uyghur ethnic kin and/or coreligionists. In the case of the ethnic Chinese, deliberate Chinese self-restraint put the issue at rest after Maoism had lost its lustre. Since then, Beijing has abandoned most of its erstwhile support for Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese and left them at the mercy of the majority populations in their countries of residence, thus removing a key obstacle to the improvement of diplomatic and business relations.
There is interesting variation between the cases. In the Uyghur case, China is at the receiving end of an intermestic challenge that has deteriorated since 1978. In the case of the ethnic Chinese, China is the country from which the challenge used to emanate. The Uyghurs have a clear homeland in Xinjiang, enabling them to raise territorial claims. The ethnic Chinese have never been able to raise any territorial claim, and the challenge has evaporated since the end of the Cold War. Regardless of such differences, real or perceived foreign support for minorities has posed a challenge to domestic stability in either case, complicating international relations.
III. China and its Muslim neighbourhood
China has more Muslim-majority neighbouring countries than any other non-Muslim state. In Central and South Asia, China has land borders with five Muslim countries surrounding its Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, the quintessential ‘land of borderlands’:Footnote 23 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Southeast Asia, China claims a further three Muslim-majority countries as its neighbours: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei.Footnote 24
A quick survey of China’s Muslim neighbourhood suggests that, in all cases, transnational bonds of domestic minorities with foreign kin groups have complicated not only domestic politics, but also interstate relations. In the case of China’s Central Asian neighbouring countries, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, there are Chinese concerns that Uyghur bonds with Turkic and/or Islamist sympathisers might undermine regional stability and exacerbate ethnoreligious unrest in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. In Southeast Asia, there were and partly still are Malaysian and Indonesian concerns that ethnic Chinese citizens (or, initially, denizens) might be disloyal and draw on ancestral bonds with their motherland to betray their country of residence.
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are all former Soviet republics located in Central Asia. With the exception of the Tajiks, the titular nations of all Central Asian countries (also comprising Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) are ethnic kin of the Uyghurs, belonging to the family of Turkic nations and speaking similar languages. Estimates vary, but Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have a significant Uyghur diaspora.Footnote 25 China fears that Central Asians might support their ethnic and religious kin in Xinjiang. Thus far, however, this has been thwarted by the harmony of interest between Beijing and the ruling elites of Central Asia’s newly-independent states, each of which is more interested in nation building and regime stability than in any transnational agenda.
In South Asia, Beijing is even more concerned that Uyghurs might receive support from Islamists and/or Uyghur expats operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ever since 1963, when China concluded border treaties with both countries, Pakistan has enjoyed a special relationship with China. At the onset, the linchpin was common enmity against India, with Beijing supporting Islamabad’s territorial claims over Kashmir. The relationship has changed over the decades but remains positive, providing Beijing leverage to quell foreign support for Uyghurs from Pakistan. The Sino-Afghan border is only 92 km long, and China has made sure that it remains largely impermeable. Nevertheless, Afghanistan belongs to China’s strategic neighbourhood as a breeding ground for regional instability and transnational terrorism. Beijing fears that Uyghur Islamists might infiltrate China from Afghanistan, most likely through Pakistan.Footnote 26
Malaysia and Indonesia are located at the opposite end of China, in Southeast Asia (leaving Brunei aside because of its small size and limited importance). Beijing claims them as neighbours in the South China Sea, although Southeast Asians have a different interpretation of the maritime border whereby China is not a neighbour. Especially, Malaysia has a significant ethnic Chinese minority of 24.6 per cent, down from 35.6 per cent in 1970.Footnote 27 Indonesia has a much smaller ethnic Chinese minority of 1.2 per cent, down from 2–3 per cent at independence.Footnote 28 In either country, some ethnic Chinese have accumulated considerable wealth, making them far more significant – and resented – than percentages would suggest.Footnote 29 During the Cold War, the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia were often seen as foreign proxies rather than loyal citizens. This has eased in recent years, although there remains anti-Chinese discrimination.
III.i China and the Uyghurs
The Uyghurs are one of China’s 55 ethnic minorities, made up of 10 million Turkic Muslims. With 0.75 per cent of China’s 1.3 billion people, the Uyghurs make up only a tiny fraction of the population. However, they are the largest ethnic group in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (47 per cent), which covers more than one sixth of the Chinese territory and boasts significant mineral resources. Apart from the Uyghurs, China has nine other Muslim minorities, but none of them poses political challenges comparable to those posed by the Uyghurs.Footnote 30
In recent years, Chinese authorities have been concerned that Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang might be able to rely on transnational bonds with co-ethnics and/or coreligionists in Central and South Asia. President Xi Jinping said in April 2016: ‘We must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means and prevent ideological infringements by extremists.’Footnote 31
This has not always been so. During the Cold War, the Uyghur issue was frozen in time.Footnote 32 Until the 1979 Iranian revolution, political Islam hardly played any role as a transnational ideology. Until the early 1980s, after the onset of the reform era, Chinese borders were closed. Beijing was able to foil attempts by foreign powers to exploit Uyghur discontentment for destabilisation purposes. There was only one serious Soviet attempt to use the Uyghurs for ethnic destabilisation, in 1962.Footnote 33 American attempts to stir up the Uyghurs against Beijing were even more fanciful.
In the wake of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the (re)opening of borders transformed China’s relations with its Muslim neighbouring countries in the West, conjuring up a mix of hopes and fears. The main hope was – and is – that trade will lead to prosperity, which in turn will reduce Uyghur discontent. The main fear is that, with cross-border commerce, ethnoreligious influences may creep in. That fear can hardly be dismissed, given the unstoppable rise of political Islam. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Turkic solidarity has also contributed to the challenge.
Central Asian support for Uyghur insurgents is mostly associated with ethnic affinity (Turkic solidarity), whereas South Asian support is associated with ideological affinity (political Islam). In post-Soviet Central Asia, the space for religion is tightly controlled and restricted whereas nationalism is encouraged. Accordingly, Uyghur relations with the Turkic nations of Central Asia, as well as the Uyghur diaspora in the region, appear to strengthen ethnic rather than religious nationalism. This stands in contrast to support from Pakistan and Afghanistan, where society is seen as more religious and where strong Islamist movements are present. Besides, there are few significant Turkic ethnicities in South Asia to whose solidarity Uyghurs might appeal.
As we will see, China and its Muslim neighbours in Central and South Asia have adopted a variety of tactics to manage the intermestic challenge, taking account of specific situations and circumstances in order to separate desirable interdependence from undesirable interference.
III.i.i Central Asia
In the early reform years, Beijing’s overtures towards Central Asia were not so much to promote business but rather for political gain. Opening borders promised three advantages. First, it would free western China from its marginal position in the Chinese economy, contributing to development and mitigating unrest. Political support for trade with Central Asia started in the 1980s and 1990s, was upgraded around 2000 under the ‘Go West’ or ‘Great Western Development’ campaign, and is now promoted under ‘One Belt One Road’ initiative, which includes the idea of a ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’.Footnote 34 Second, it was hoped that Central Asian countries would view China’s economic influence as benign, rather than violating their sovereignty. Third, interdependence with Central Asia would be highly asymmetrical, allowing China to grow into an indispensable partner. This would increase Chinese leverage over Central Asian leaders, for instance to quell Uyghur diaspora mobilisation. State structures in Xinjiang embraced the policy.Footnote 35
While trade between China and Central Asia retains a political dimension, it has since acquired an economic dynamic of its own. This is so because private and semi-private enterprises in China are increasingly autonomous from the state. In their trade and investment decisions, even state-owned companies tend to follow business motivations. What is more, existing trade links have led to relationships of genuine interdependence that would be costly to disrupt.
In Kyrgyzstan, for example, business relations have gained enormous momentum. After the settlement of border disputes in 1999, Kyrgyzstan’s trade with China grew rapidly. As the only Central Asian WTO member, Kyrgyzstan became an important destination and transit zone for Chinese goods. By the late 2000s, goods from China made up 94 per cent of Kyrgyzstan’s cross-border commerce. In 2011, at least 75 per cent of the merchandise at Kyrgyzstan’s two largest bazaars originated from China. An army of shuttle traders are in the business of re-exporting goods imported from China to other Central Asian States and Russia.Footnote 36 China has also grown into an important partner for Kazakhstan in terms of infrastructure and commodity exports.
Unfortunately for Beijing, trade with Central Asia had undesirable side effects. At the downfall of the Soviet Union, when the Central Asian republics became independent, some Uyghurs were hoping that they, too, might obtain their own Muslim-majority nation state. What is more, they were hoping that the Uyghur diaspora in Central Asia might help them reach this objective. Partly spurred by that diaspora, there was popular support in Central Asia for the liberation of East Turkestan, or ‘Uyghurstan’, as yet another Turkic-Muslim nation state.Footnote 37
With increasing cross-border mobility, it became harder for Beijing to control this ferment. There was reason for concern that regime change in Central Asia might bring to power governments that would place greater emphasis on ethnic kinship and Islamic religion shared with the Uyghurs. In the event of an Islamist takeover in a Central Asian country, the new regime might allow Uyghur expatriates more leeway. As China became reliant on strategic infrastructure such as pipelines from Central Asia, it also became vulnerable to attacks on such infrastructure. Therefore, Beijing has a vested interest in the stabilisation of Central Asian regimes.Footnote 38
While Beijing sometimes exaggerated the threat from Central Asia, it did have reason to be on its guard. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Uyghurs gained considerable wealth as itinerant merchants, trading Chinese consumer goods for commodities from Central Asia and acting as middlemen between Han Chinese and Central Asian traders. Some of that wealth was used for building mosques and other community institutions. Part of it was also used to promote Uyghur ethno-nationalism, as in the case of the notorious Uyghur activist Rebiya Khadeer.Footnote 39
Anti-Chinese resentment in Central Asia has been another challenge. Especially in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, some people see Chinese influence in a negative light. Chinese merchants often outperform locals on bazaars and in factories, which can lead to considerable animosities. In Kyrgyzstan, there is resentment against Chinese merchants and workers living in segregated communities despite the fact that many of them are Muslim, presumably of Hui extraction. In Kazakhstan, there is hostility towards illegal Chinese immigrants. In 2004 and 2009, when Chinese authorities approached Kazakhstan to lease land for thousands of colonists to grow staples like soybeans and wheat, there were severe anti-Chinese protests. Recent charm offensives appear to have had relatively limited effect in Kazakhstan and, especially, Kyrgyzstan.Footnote 40
Given the intermestic nature of these challenges, Beijing has responded both at the domestic and at the international level. At the domestic level, Chinese authorities have insulated the Uyghurs from Central Asia. From the late 1990s, when shuttle trading gave way to wholesale purchasing, the Uyghur middlemen were largely cut out. Since then, Central Asian traders mostly deal directly with Han or, eventually, Hui business partners.Footnote 41 Since the 2009 Urumqi riots, Uyghur truck drivers have been unable to obtain licenses for driving oil tankers. Although not officially stated, it seems that the authorities see them as potential suicide attackers.Footnote 42 The authorities are also reluctant to issue travel documents to Uyghurs – especially to students seeking permission to study abroad, to prevent them from exposure to nationalist and/or Islamist ideas.Footnote 43
At the international level, Beijing wants to ensure that its neighbours have zero tolerance for pro-Uyghur mobilisation. In order to do so, China has embarked on intense cooperation with the Central Asian successor states of the Soviet Union. Over the 1990s, China settled all border disputes on terms favourable to its Central Asian neighbours, starting with Kazakhstan and ending with Tajikistan.Footnote 44 Since Central Asian governments share China’s view of religious nationalism as a threat to regime stability, they are mostly happy to curb Uyghur mobilisation. China often obtains the imprisonment or extradition of Uyghur activists, or at least a curtailment of their room of manoeuvre. Kazakhstan in particular is an important ally against Uyghur separatism.Footnote 45
In addition to these bilateral efforts, China has used the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO; ‘Shanghai Five’ until 2001) to manage the intermestic challenge posed by the Uyghurs. Apart from trying to improve the stability of Central Asian regimes, Beijing wants the SCO to fight the ‘three evil forces’ of terrorism, separatism, and extremism.Footnote 46 China is the only member of the SCO that has a significant separatist movement, so the reference to ‘separatism’ is clearly on Chinese instigation.Footnote 47 Beijing’s aim is to boost the capacity and willingness of its neighbours to restrain any support for the Uyghurs emanating from their territory. Under the auspices of the SCO, exercises take place almost every year to harden security forces for the fight against real or perceived terrorists, separatists, and extremists. At least 21 drills took place from 2002 to 2015, with thousands of military and police simulating a robust response to various threats.Footnote 48
III.i.ii Pakistan and Afghanistan
While Pakistan does not have any significant indigenous Turkic minorities (Afghanistan does have some, but the Pashtuns are dominant), political Islam is an important social and qpolitical force. Unsurprisingly, therefore, China’s intermestic challenge from South Asia is associated with religious rather than ethnic affinities. This is different from Central Asia, as we have seen. Nevertheless, the cycle has been similar in both cases: liberalisation policies invigorated not only cross-border commerce and mobility of people but also transnational bonds with, and foreign support for, the Uyghurs; this has posed real and perceived intermestic challenges, which in turn have prompted both sides to undertake measures geared towards managing those challenges.
In the Pakistani case, this has unfolded in the context of Islamabad’s famous special relationship with Beijing.Footnote 49 In 1959, at a time when China was internationally isolated, China and Pakistan started building the Karakoram Highway (known in China as the Friendship Highway), connecting Islamabad with Kashgar in Xinjiang. In 1963, the two countries concluded a border agreement settling all territorial disputes.Footnote 50 In the first few years after the agreement, China backed Pakistan’s territorial claim for the Indian part of Kashmir. Over the 1970s, Chinese support for Pakistan, including the Pakistani nuclear programme, took a more covert form compatible with the simultaneous cultivation of relations with India. Even though China has since been keen to avoid symbolic gestures towards Pakistan that might unnecessarily antagonise New Delhi, Beijing, and Islamabad keep emphasising that the ‘all weather’ special relationship continues.Footnote 51
Initially, the motivation was plainly political. The Karakoram Highway, through which Sino-Pakistani trade must pass, was constructed between 1959 and 1979 for military purposes, including the provision of Pakistan with ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. From the early 1980s, with the onset of the Chinese reform period, commercial motivations came to the fore. The Highway opened to the public in 1986. More recently, China has tried to intensify its links with Pakistan by developing an economic corridor, including a railway and a pipeline, from Gwadar, a harbour in the Pakistani region of Baluchistan, via the Karakoram all the way to Xinjiang. If successful, this may bring the Persian Gulf and notably Iran into China’s strategic neighbourhood.Footnote 52
As in the Central Asian case, Sino-Pakistani interdependence is asymmetrical. China is more important for Pakistan than Pakistan is for China, and many Chinese exports are politically motivated – notably arms deals and critical infrastructure. The similarities do not end here. As in the Central Asian case, the Sino-Pakistani relationship has developed an economic dynamic of its own, as trade along the Karakoram Highway became a significant conduit for commerce.
In the early reform era, the hallmark of Sino-Pakistani commerce was the exchange of unsophisticated Pakistani staples for somewhat more sophisticated Chinese products. On the Chinese side, the trade primarily involved small Uyghur entrepreneurs buying and selling goods on Pakistani bazaars and/or trucking them to China.Footnote 53 By the early 1990s, however, Chinese authorities became wary that Sino-Pakistani commerce was conjuring up unwanted religious and cultural influence of Pakistani Muslims on their Uyghur coreligionists. Women in southern Xinjiang began wearing veils in areas where this had not been common for generations. Aspiring clerics went to Pakistan for religious training. Pakistan was also important for Uyghurs as a transit country on the way to Mecca and other destinations in the Middle East. Some Uyghurs studied at radical madrassas in Pakistan. A few even found their way to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan (22 non-combatant Uyghurs were arrested in Afghanistan and subsequently held at Guantanamo). Some Uyghurs came back radicalised, while others chose to permanently settle in Pakistan.Footnote 54
Beijing did have reason to be on its guard. During the 1980s, China had supported the Mujahedin in Afghanistan.Footnote 55 From 1989, when Uyghur unrest started to intensify, Beijing was concerned that religious extremism might spill back into China. Such concerns became more intense in April 1990 when, according to Chinese sources, an Islamist uprising in the Uyghur township of Baren was instigated by Islamists who had infiltrated Xinjiang from Pakistan and Afghanistan.Footnote 56 Since then, this has remained a concern. In 1999, Beijing complained that Uyghur militants had received training on Pakistani soilFootnote 57 . The Chinese stance hardened further after 9/11, when the international community endowed ‘counterterrorism’ with greater legitimacy. In 2009, China put significant pressure on Pakistan to crack down on Islamist militants suspected of planning attacks in Xinjiang.Footnote 58 In 2013, there was another bout of Chinese outrage at the presence of Uyghur militants in Pakistan’s region of North Waziristan.Footnote 59 In 2017, a newspaper from Hong Kong reported that Beijing had deported scores of Pakistani students after a ‘blast’ in Urumqi, Xinjiang, and urged universities across the country for caution when admitting Pakistanis.Footnote 60
What were the actual policies adopted to manage the challenge? As a first line of defence, Chinese authorities resorted to unilateral measures. In 1992, Beijing closed the Karakoram Highway for several months. Subsequently, trade across the Highway was repeatedly disrupted by Chinese efforts to curtail transnational ethnoreligious links and curb drug smuggling. Fearful that the Karakoram might become a conveyor of radicalism, Beijing announced the intention of installing a border fence in 1997. Subsequently, Beijing constructed barbed wire fences at the Khunjerab.Footnote 61
Beijing’s second and more successful response was to drive a wedge between Uyghurs and Pakistanis by reconstituting the Karakoram trade. Field research suggests that, in the late 1990s, Pakistani traders were forced to abandon their Uyghur coreligionists in favour of Han patrons and business partners. Some Pakistani traders even married local women, preferably Han, to ensure better access to visa. Around the same time, Uyghur truck drivers gave way to Han drivers. Whether intended or not, the decline of Uyghur involvement in Sino-Pakistani trade damaged relations between Uyghurs and Pakistanis. An additional source of resentment was that some Pakistani traders used their stays in Xinjiang to drink alcohol and/or sleep with Uyghur women. Ethnographic research shows that Pakistani merchants painted Uyghurs as bad Muslims and drunkards, and their women as given to promiscuity and prostitution, thus rationalising their opportunistic embrace of Han patronage and un-Islamic sexual liaisons. Uyghurs, in turn, painted Pakistanis as ruthless economic profiteers and unscrupulous womanisers and fornicators.Footnote 62
This does not only sound ugly; it actually was. However, it has been successful in terms of Beijing’s objectives. By forcing Pakistani tradesmen to transfer lucrative business relations from Uyghur to Han partners, Beijing has driven a wedge between Uyghurs and Pakistanis, reducing the exposure of Uyghurs to unwanted religious and cultural influence. Mutual recriminations have left limited room, if any, for transnational Islamic solidarity. Undaunted by the persecution of Uyghurs, Pakistanis hold a more favourable view of China than any other nation.Footnote 63
This brings us to Beijing’s third response, bilateral cooperation. Worries about extremist or terrorist elements infiltrating Xinjiang loom large in Sino-Pakistani relations. To mitigate that risk and gain leverage, Chinese authorities cultivate intense inter-agency linkages with Pakistani counterparts, while also directing public diplomacy efforts at Pakistani Islamist parties such as Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and Jamiat Ulema-e Islam (JUI). For the same purpose, China and Pakistan conduct a bilateral counterterrorism drill every two years. The scenarios played out in these exercises are highly revealing. In 2004, for example, the drill simulated an attempt by terrorists on horseback and light motorised vehicles to infiltrate Xinjiang via Pakistan from a ‘third country’, presumably Afghanistan (on Sino-Afghan relations, see Box 1).Footnote 64
Box 1 Sino-Afghan relations.
The Sino-Afghan border at the end of the Wakhan corridor is very short (92 km), highly impervious, and commercially insignificant. Despite a 1963 agreement settling all territorial issues, Beijing remains unwilling to open the border due to concerns about transnational linkages between Afghan and Uyghur Islamists. Beijing’s refusal to collaborate with the US-led occupation in Afghanistan did not prevent China from cultivating economic links. As in the Iraqi oil sector after the 2003 War, China has invested billions of dollars in a copper deposit near Kabul. Subsequently, however, the mine languished due to security and transportation problems.Footnote 65
Prior to the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, Beijing operated via Pakistan. At the time, Beijing’s goal was to prevent the spill-back of jihadism from Afghanistan via Pakistan into China, rather than fighting jihadists in Afghanistan. This has now started to change. After a series of kidnappings and attacks on Chinese facilities, Beijing has become more directly involved in Afghanistan to hedge against ‘worst-case scenarios’. In September 2012, China’s domestic ‘security czar’, Zhou Yongkang, visited Kabul. In February 2015, presumably on Chinese instigation, Afghan government forces arrested 15 Uyghur militants in Kunar Province. In 2016, China played a much-publicized role in the resumption of peace talks with the Taliban. In 2017, China has conducted military or paramilitary operations across the border in Afghanistan, in line with its counterterrorism law of 2015, which allows for the possibility of operating abroad.Footnote 66
Overall, Beijing has been successful. Officially, Islamabad has never supported the Uyghurs. Chinese experts contend that unofficial Pakistani links with Uyghur militants have weakened since the mid-1990s. On several counts, Beijing has successfully pressurised Islamabad to arrest and extradite Uyghur militants. After the suppression of the 2009 Urumqi riots, there were motions to include the issue on the agenda of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). However, Beijing was able to rely on Islamabad to prevent this from happening.Footnote 67
Nevertheless, Uyghur militants may receive covert support from the Pakistani ‘deep state’ (most notably the Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI). Islamabad is also struggling to protect Chinese nationals working in Pakistan. Due to the dismal security situation, Chinese engineers and expat workers are sometimes kidnapped or killed on duty.Footnote 68 In a dramatic event in 2007, Chinese ‘massage workers’ were kidnapped by Islamists at the Red Mosque, in the heart of Islamabad. When China was seen as having pressurised Islamabad to assault the mosque, with at least 103 people including 12 Uyghurs killed, gunmen shouting religious slogans murdered three Chinese engineers. Subsequently, a Chinese-Pakistani task force was established to address the threat to at least 10,000 Chinese citizens working in Pakistan. Even though Islamabad offered the provision of direct military protection, Beijing’s trust in Islamabad’s capacity and goodwill remains limited.Footnote 69
III.ii Malaysia, Indonesia, and the ethnic Chinese
Chinese support for ethnic Chinese living in Malaysia and Indonesia has sometimes been seen as an intermestic challenge. Some ethnic Chinese are enormously rich tycoons. Others are engaged in lowly occupations such as farm labour and mining. While the Chinese diaspora is highly diverse, indigenous Indonesians and Malaysians saw reason to resent the economic wealth of ethnic Chinese elites. At the same time, they distrusted the civic loyalty of ethnic Chinese workers who, during the Cold War, were notorious recruiting grounds for communist parties.Footnote 70
In the aftermath of decolonisation, the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia were widely regarded as Beijing’s ‘Fifth Column’. Especially during the 1960s and early 1970s, Beijing officially tried to export the revolution. In Southeast Asia, this meant patronising the overseas Chinese and their communist parties.Footnote 71 This in turn led to significant distrust of the ethnic Chinese, and of China as their foreign sponsor. Given the clandestine nature of Chinese interference, it was easy to overstate its significance and use it to legitimise anti-Chinese demagogy. In the heady days of the Cold War, one could always scapegoat China and the Chinese.Footnote 72
At the time, newly-independent Indonesia and Malaysia were striving to build nations from complex patchworks of ethnicities. In either country, a majority that saw itself as indigenous (bumiputera in Malaysia, pribumi in Indonesia) resented the wealth of Chinese business elites. At the same time, ethnic Chinese communists were suspected of being loyal to their ancestral homeland rather than their country of residence. In a situation where relations between indigenous Muslim majorities and ethnic Chinese minorities were already tense, the suspicion of foreign support could serve as an excuse for anti-Chinese mobilisation. Populist leaders depicted the ethnic Chinese elites as an exploitative, and Chinese commoners as an unpatriotic ‘other’ to justify discrimination and persecution. Given their strong resonance with popular resentment, such anti-Chinese scapegoating played an important role in bolstering regime legitimacy.
Until the 1970s, it was easy to dismiss Beijing’s denials. After all, Malaysia and Indonesia had communist parties looking to Beijing for propaganda. Quite evidently, most of their members were ethnic Chinese. Even in the absence of hard evidence, one could claim that local communist parties were receiving political and financial support from the Chinese Communist Party. What is more, Beijing occasionally offered Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese the possibility of opting for Chinese citizenship, nurturing further suspicion regarding their civic loyalty.Footnote 73
In 1980, however, China promulgated a new nationality law that officially removed the option of Chinese citizenship for all those who had permanently settled abroad and accepted citizenship there.Footnote 74 Around the same time, Beijing started emphasising the benefits of international trade while reducing its support for foreign communist parties. With the onset of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, the claim that Beijing was supporting the overseas Chinese became less plausible. As we will see, Malaysia was quick to adjust its perceptions to the realities of the post-Cold War era and embraced better relations with China. In Indonesia, however, it took the demise of Suharto in 1998 until Jakarta finally acknowledged that the era of Chinese interference was over.
Once they had adjusted to the new realities, both countries were able to base their relations with China on shared interests while dealing with any differences, such as territorial disputes in the South China Sea, without fear that China might play the ethnic card. Since Beijing has largely abandoned the ethnic Chinese to their host societies, real or perceived intermestic challenges have ceased to overshadow Sino-Malaysian and Sino-Indonesian relations.Footnote 75
III.ii.i Malaysia
In Malaysia, 24.6 per cent of the population are ethnic Chinese.Footnote 76 Much of the economy has been – and still is – run by Chinese businesses and labour, despite affirmative action to increase the wealth of the indigenous population, which is mostly composed of Malay Muslims. This has led to mutual grievances, with the Malay majority resenting Chinese economic success and the Chinese minority perceiving pro-Malay policies as a gross injustice and violation of meritocracy.
Especially after serious anti-Chinese riots in 1969, Malaysia aggressively empowered indigenous Malay (bumiputera) businesses and labour at the expense of the ethnic Chinese. Sino-Malaysian trade was partly taken over by bumiputera elites.Footnote 77 Malaysia’s longstanding leader, Mahathir Mohamad, had the declared objective of ‘improving the economic status of the Malay community, and enlarging the overall economic pie for the benefit of the non-Malay races’.Footnote 78
Since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, China has stopped supporting the ethnic Chinese and accepted that the way Malaysia treats them is a domestic issue. A communist radio station operating from Yunnan closed in 1981. The insurgency by the Communist Party of Malaysia ended in December 1989, when the party finally disbanded after a peace agreement.Footnote 79 Due to Beijing’s willingness to stop supporting the ethnic Chinese, Sino-Malaysian relations improved considerably. Mahathir Mohamad even saw China as an ally in his anti-Western agenda of reducing US influence.Footnote 80
While allowing Beijing to improve its relations with Kuala Lumpur, the new policy failed to address the plight of Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese who continue to suffer from explicit and deliberate discrimination (the flipside of affirmative action in support of the indigenous Malay, which has been enshrined in the constitution).Footnote 81 Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese suffer from discrimination not only in the marketplace but also at the communal and bureaucratic level. For example, the life of Chinese pig farmers is made difficult by Muslim neighbours and Malaysian authorities.Footnote 82
This is not to claim that Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese are powerless. The ruling coalition depends on their vote and, for example, had to back down on a controversial apostasy law.Footnote 83 However, despite official lip service to race equality, Malaysia’s central identity remains that of the bumiputera ‘sons of the soil’, which are mostly Malay Muslims. Ethnic Chinese, as well as Indians, are per definition excluded from this central identity.Footnote 84 Some of the latter have a strong urge to transcend such fixed categories, but this remains at best a distant dream.Footnote 85
While race relations in Malaysia remain complicated, and while many indigenous Malays continue to resent the economic strength of the Chinese community, three decades after the end of the Cold War few Malaysians would argue that the transnational bonds of the ethnic Chinese with their ancestral homeland pose a significant intermestic security challenge.
III.ii.ii Indonesia
Like in Malaysia, the Chinese business diaspora in Indonesia concentrates enormous wealth. Also like in Malaysia, the indigenous majority resents the concentration of wealth in Chinese hands.Footnote 86 Again like in Malaysia, indigenous Indonesians sometimes regard the ethnic Chinese as disloyal citizens. When President Suharto came to power after an abortive coup in 1965, he blamed ethnic Chinese in general, and the Communist Party in particular, for the turmoil. Countless ethnic Chinese died in the subsequent bloodbaths. Beijing reacted by repatriating thousands of ethnic Chinese. Jakarta, in turn, suspended diplomatic relations with Beijing.Footnote 87
It took 23 years, from 1967 to 1990, until the two countries finally resumed diplomatic relations. Even then, at a time when Malaysia was already warming up to China, Indonesia stuck to the China threat thesis. In line with public discourse depicting the ethnic Chinese as reckless businesspeople and disloyal citizens, anti-Chinese riots broke out in Medan, Sumatra, in April 1994. When Beijing expressed concerns, Jakarta bemoaned foreign interference. As the Indonesian government hastened to declare, ‘China had better mind its own internal affairs.’Footnote 88
In 1998, even more serious anti-Chinese programmes occurred on Sumatra and Java. They coincided with a political situation when the Asian Financial Crisis was precipitating Suharto’s demise. Although the exact course of events remains somewhat unclear, it seems that elements of Suharto’s fledgling New Order regime, in an effort to exploit a combination of populist resentment and Islamist agendas, conducted a campaign of publicly denouncing the ethnic Chinese. The campaign culminated in the infamous May riots in Jakarta, when Chinese shops were burnt and looted, and more than 1,000 people lost their lives. Scores of ethnic Chinese fled from the archipelago, and significant Chinese investment left the country. This was particularly damaging given the fact that Indonesia was already suffering from the fallout of the financial crisis.Footnote 89
The stage seemed set for another round of declarations of concern from Beijing, followed by vitriolic rebuttals from Jakarta. This time, however, nothing of that sort happened. Even when more than a hundred Chinese women had been raped in Jakarta, leading to strong expressions of outrage and solidarity among ethnic Chinese across the region, it took Beijing more than two months to express any concern.Footnote 90 When it finally did, Beijing used euphemistic and reconciliatory language, calling the incidents a ‘misfortune’ and labelling the victims as ‘Indonesians of Chinese descent’ (yinni huaren) rather than overseas Chinese (huaqiao). In the words of China’s ambassador, the predicament of Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese was ‘part of Indonesia’s domestic politics. Its resolution must come from the Indonesian government itself. The Chinese government must not act as if it could be the chef in somebody else’s kitchen.’Footnote 91
It seems that, had it not been for the mobilisation of ethnic Chinese all over the world as well as nationalist rallies by university students in China, even this muted response would not have been forthcoming. Beijing did not do anything that might have jeopardised its diplomatic ties with Jakarta, and continued its economic relief for Indonesia’s crisis-stricken economy. To reassure Indonesian leaders and the public, President Jiang Zemin made clear that China would ‘never try to use people of Chinese origin living in Indonesia to seek political or economic gain there’.Footnote 92
Thus, paradoxically, it took the Jakarta riots for Indonesia to overcome the Cold War legacy of mistrusting China. By its inaction in 1998, Beijing had finally signalled persuasively that it was a ‘responsible’ power rather than trying to interfere in Indonesia’s domestic affairs by supporting the country’s ethnic Chinese. What is more, unlike Suharto’s ancien régime, Indonesia’s new democratic government did not need the China threat thesis to bolster its legitimacy.
This is not to say that anti-Chinese sentiment in Indonesia has completely evaporated. Indonesian perceptions ‘continue to be colored by various stereotypes associated with the ethnic Chinese minority’.Footnote 93 Indigenous (pribumi) Indonesians continue to resent the fact that businesspeople from the PRC sometimes prefer to deal with their ethnic kin. Nevertheless, anti-Chinese resentment in the post-Suharto era has mellowed compared to the previous regime, and to some extent this has enabled the ethnic Chinese to reinvent their identity as Indonesian citizens.Footnote 94
Although after a considerable time lag compared to Malaysia, the perception of an intermestic challenge has ceased to play any discernible role in Sino-Indonesian relations. Contentious issues such as maritime disputes in the South China Sea are dealt with at the diplomatic level, with occasional outbursts of nationalist passion and military swaggering. No matter how serious the crisis, Beijing never tries to use Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese as a proxy. Beijing kept silent when the ethnic Chinese governor of Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, faced an ugly blasphemy campaign leaving the Chinese minority feeling ‘unsafe’.Footnote 95 Nor does China intervene when ethnic Chinese suffer from other forms of discrimination at the hands of their host society.
IV. Conclusion
Intermestic security challenges arise when there is concern in a country that a dissatisfied minority relies on transnational bonds with a foreign kin group for support. Such challenges occur when ethnic and/or ideological affinities translate into foreign support seen as problematic. They are aggravated when the dissatisfied minority is able to raise territorial claims.
The good news emerging from this article is that intermestic challenges can be managed. The bad news is that, if they are not managed well, they can escalate into civil wars and other political calamities. Examples abound, from ethnic bonds contributing to the Balkan wars of the 1990s to the ongoing ‘sectarianization’ of the Middle East.Footnote 96 Especially in the so-called ‘Shia Crescent’ spanning from Iran to Libya and from Yemen to Bahrain, sectarianism appears more salient than ethnic bonds.Footnote 97 Elsewhere, ethnic bonds continue to play a predominant role: Russians in Ukraine; Kurds in Syria and Iraq; Tamils in Sri Lanka.Footnote 98 All of these ethnic and/or ideological bonds pose intermestic security challenges that have ushered in serious political mayhem.
In the cases examined, China has managed significant intermestic challenges in pragmatic and nuanced ways. The case of the ethnic Chinese was perhaps a bit less challenging because Beijing had agency as the real or perceived originator of foreign support. What is more, the ethnic Chinese were never in a position to raise territorial claims. The demise of communism has enabled China to stop posing, and China’s Southeast Asian neighbours to stop perceiving an intermestic challenge, leading to improved diplomatic relations. Beijing has ended its former policy of patronising the ethnic Chinese, and is reaping the benefits of better diplomatic relations.
In the Uyghur case, the rise of political Islam as a transnational ideology and the opening of China’s borders after the 1978 reforms have exacerbated the claims of ethno-nationalist Uyghur for Xinjiang as their homeland and/or as an Islamic entity. This territorial dimension has made the intermestic challenge posed by the Uyghurs more serious for Beijing. At the same time, China is at the receiving end of the challenge and hence its agency is somewhat constrained. Nevertheless, Beijing has taken a broad range of political measures to contain the unintended effects of intensified cross-border commerce. The approach ranges from domestic and unilateral to bilateral, as with Pakistan, and multilateral, as in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
Even though Beijing has been relatively successful in managing either challenge, there are limits to what its policies are able to accomplish. Despite Beijing’s efforts, unwelcome religious influence continues to emanate from Muslim-majority countries and contributes to the radicalisation of Uyghurs. What is more, China’s repressive and authoritarian approach sometimes leads to a backlash. In Malaysia and Indonesia, China is impotent in the face of discrimination against ethnic Chinese as an official policy (Malaysia) and at the popular level (both countries). It is hard for Beijing to turn the clock back and speak up on behalf of ethnic Chinese. In the rare instances when this happens, it triggers angry reactions that make it politically rather costly.Footnote 99
IV.i Where to go from here
Despite the limits to what China has been able to accomplish, the achievement of managing two difficult intermestic security challenges is remarkable. It is worth asking to what extent other countries might be able to replicate the management strategies adopted by China.
In fact, other countries already adopt similar strategies, albeit short of deliberate imitation. Turkey’s post-Cold War abstention from supporting ethnic Turks in Bulgaria bears resemblance to China’s post-Cold War abstention from supporting ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia.Footnote 100 Thus far, Ankara’s abstention from supporting Turks in Bulgaria compares favourably with Albania’s failure to display similar abstention from supporting co-ethnics in ‘greater Albania’.Footnote 101
Reformers in Iran who are interested in better relations with other countries, and especially with Sunni-dominated countries, might take a page from this playbook. A first step would be to stop supporting Shiite and other sectarian groups in foreign countries, just like Beijing did with regard to foreign communist parties dominated by ethnic Chinese. The next step would be for Tehran to make this policy shift irreversible and to communicate it in unambiguous terms. Taking Indonesia’s tardy response to the Chinese policy change as an indicator, some of Iran’s neighbouring countries might take their time to register the change and stop antagonising Tehran. All the more, Tehran would have to declare its restraint publicly, convincingly, and repeatedly.
China’s collaboration with its Central and South Asian neighbouring countries in containing the Uyghurs is an even harder act to follow. For obvious reasons, liberal countries may not be willing or able to go down that route. However, less liberal countries may be so inclined and, as in the case of the ethnic Chinese, there are already historical precedents for this. Initially, the Gulf Cooperation Council was a response to the Iranian revolution of 1979. More recently, Saudi Arabia has cobbled together an anti-Shia alliance called Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition.Footnote 102 There are obvious parallels between these regional projects and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
The ‘West’ may also have its lessons to learn. Recent policies such as President Trump’s ‘travel ban’ against visitors from certain Muslim countries betray a focus on nationality rather than ideology. While there is nothing wrong with the idea of migration control and while it would be rather impractical to sort migrants based on their ideological orientation, an ethnic focus may turn out counterproductive. The analysis of antecedent conditions suggests that the ideological element is more important than the ethnic element of intermestic challenges, and the case studies confirm that operating on the ideological element is more productive. If this is so, then the West should focus on Islamism rather than, say, Middle Eastern ethnicity. It plays into the hand of Islamists when they can present Western policies as ethnically motivated or even racist. Politicians must strive hard to explain that, far from this, their policies are moves in a battle of ideas.
While there is legitimate disagreement as to what might be admissible on normative grounds, this article has shown that intermestic security challenges can be managed. Future research will add nuance and uncover further management strategies. In the meantime, the theoretical model developed and the strategies discussed may turn out useful in many other settings, from the ‘Kurdish question’ via the ‘Shia crescent’ to transnational Islamism in Western Europe.
Biographical information
Jörg Friedrichs, Dr Phil., is Associate Professor of Politics at the Department of International Development and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford. His current research focuses on relations between Muslim minorities and non-Muslim majorities. He has published in journals such as International Organization, International Theory, Asian Survey, and Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. His fifth book, on Hindu-Muslim relations, is due to appear in 2018.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Raphael Bradenbrink, Nathan Brown, John Gledhill, Kevin Fogg, Elaine Ho, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Rinku Lamba for helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers who have helped to make this a better article.
