Last week’s White House summit discussed the best way to counter violent extremism. It’s too bad key Chinese officials weren’t there — they might have learned something. China faces an extremely serious problem domestically with armed militants. There is growing violence in Xinjiang, a massive region populated by a predominantly Muslim, ethnically Turkic minority known as Uighurs. Moreover, at least 300 Chinese citizens have joined the Islamic State, according to Chinese diplomats.
Indeed, Beijing puts fighting terrorism near the top of its agenda in conversations with other governments. And for many of those governments, cooperating with China on counterterrorism seems to make sense. Beijing lacks the capacity to track extremist groups outside its borders, and other countries understandably seek greater support from and participation by China on a host of pressing international issues.
But whether Beijing genuinely espouses the summit’s stated goal of addressing the root causes of violent extremism — or simply wants to appear cooperative abroad while pursuing ominously repressive and counterproductive policies at home — is less clear. For example, that the prominent Xinjiang economist Ilham Tohti was sentenced on Sept. 2014 to a life sentence on the baseless charges of “separatism” suggests Beijing’s agenda has little to do with upholding human rights.
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