How is transnational terrorism evolving against China?

As global geopolitics has evolved from the war on terror to the US-China rivalry, the transnational terrorist threat has also morphed with a pronounced China-centric focus. For the last two decades, the US was the main target of the global militant groups for its military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. However, now China seems to be at the receiving end of both the transnational militant and ethnic groups as its global economic footprint is expanding.

Furthermore, Al-Qaeda and Daesh are moving beyond their routine ideological critique of China’s alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang province to its perceived imperialism through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Concurrently, anti-China ethnic groups in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia are also building a hostile narrative against BRI for suspectedly depriving them of the ownership of their resources and livelihood opportunities. These trends bring into sharp focus the evolution of global terrorism in the era of US-China competition.

By turning their guns towards China, Al-Qaeda and Daesh, more particularly, are positioning themselves to exploit the great power competition. Daesh believes that the US rivalry with China over Taiwan and Russia over Ukraine will pave the way for the rise of its self-styled global Caliphate.

The September issue of Daesh-Khorasan’s monthly English-language magazine, the Voice of Khorasan, carried an article called “China’s Daydream of Imperialism.” In this piece, the focus of critique was on BRI, moving beyond the routine anti-China rhetoric revolving around atrocities against Uyghurs. The article has compared China’s ambition to expand its global influence through BRI with British colonialism that spread to the subcontinent through the infamous East India Company.

Daesh-K states that Chinese imperialism will be more vulnerable as compared to its Western counterparts due to the lack of a decisive military edge over the US. Daesh-K maintains that unlike the US which created its global hegemony through military power, China is using the economic pathway to achieve its global ambitions. Interestingly, Daesh-K compares China’s BRI with the 13th Century Mongol Empire’s Silk Road project maintaining that Beijing’s global hegemony will be shortlived like that of the latter. Daesh-K quotes the examples of Chinese companies’ closures in Mozambique due to jihadist threat. It bears mention that these are not just empty threats. In 2017, Daesh-K abducted and killed a Chinese couple in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province which is home to the multi-billion-dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Though Daesh-K has been criticising China since 2015, it has emerged as the main anti-China global militant groups since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. While assailing Beijing for allegedly suppressing the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Daesh-K has tried to delegitimise the de-facto Taliban regime for its growing closeness with Beijing. China has offered conditional economic assistance to the embattled Taliban regime in exchange for addressing its security concerns.

By censuring the Taliban regime for its pro-China policies, Daesh-K has also tried to create a rift between the Taliban and the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), a Uyghur separatist group residing in Afghanistan. The more the Taliban regime will curtail TIP’s activities, the greater are the chances of its militants gravitating towards Daesh-K. In fact, Daesh-K did reach out to a disgruntled TIP faction in 2022 and managed to poach 50 Uyghur militants.

Separately, the ethno-separatist groups in Pakistan’s Balochistan and Sindh provinces are equally hostile to CPEC projects.  These groups have engaged in violent attacks against Chinese nationals and projects in Pakistan in the last few years, including suicide bombings. The last such attack was carried out by the Baloch Liberation Army’s female suicide bomber Shari Baloch in April where she targeted the Karachi University’s Confucian Centre. Other high profiles attacks against China in Pakistan include the 2018 Chinese Consulate attack in Karachi, the 2020 Pakistan Stock Exchange attack where Beijing owns 40 percent shares and the 2021 Dasu hydropower project bombing, among others. The Baloch and Sindhi separatist groups have also engaged in sporadic targeted killings of Chinese nationals in Karachi. These groups allege that CPEC projects are not only depriving them of livelihood opportunities but also furthering their political exclusion and socio-economic marginalisation.

Likewise, anti-China sentiments are extremely high in Indonesia over BRI projects. These projects have enabled Chinese companies and workers, locally known as xinyinmin, to expand their footprint in the country eating up local jobs. There are close to 25,000 Chinese migrant workers in Indonesia mainly working in Chinese firms. Around 1,000 Chinese firms, public and private, are operating in Indonesia’s construction, mining and electronic sectors. In recent years, hate crimes against the ethnic Chinese-Indonesian community have risen at an alarming rate. It is important to mention that the Indonesia-Chinese community is conflated with Chinese nationals in Indonesia.

As global geopolitics primarily driven by the great power competition will evolve, China will feature more prominently in the propaganda of transnational militant and anti-China ethnic groups. Groups like Daesh require a bigger adversary or a villain state to justify their extremist rhetoric to attract funding and recruitment. For the last two decades, the raison d'être of global terrorism was the US invasions of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Now, China’s perceived imperialism through BRI is becoming the bête noire of these groups to continue their militarism.

- The author is a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. Twitter @basitreseaercher.