Maintaining stability and authoritarian rule: Xi era in Xinjiang

Abstract

This chapter contributes to the broader discussion on social and political control under the Xi Jinping administration by examining the party's evolving policies towards Xinjiang. It explains a dual-track approach to counterterrorism that underpins the Chinese party-state's increasingly repressive policies in the region. While most of the works on Xinjiang focus attention on the coercive aspects of the policies in Xinjiang, this book chapter draws attention to the security logics of the policy in Xinjiang with reference to the literature on regime type and counterterrorism. Specifically, it finds that in the Chinese case, the dual-track approach involves both a reactive counterterrorism that stresses the swift imposition of force and a more pre-emptive and preventive approach that encourages mass mobilisation to neutralise potential threats. The Xi administration has begun to pay significantly more attention to the second track, particularly since 2014 following a spate of attacks that included a bombing at an Urumqi railway station while Xi Jinping was visiting the region, which was blamed on Uyghur separatists. Since 2017, Xinjiang has witnessed the rise of a security state in the form of intensified securitisation, digital surveillance and the introduction of 're-education' centres (Kam & Clarke, 2021).