The National Interest
Spring 2002

The Other Orientalism: China's Islamist Problem

by Charles Horner

 

. . . It is a similar story in other countries nearby, where "Islam" is understood to have replaced "Third World Solidarity" as the wellspring of political energy. In Malaya during the 1950s—even before there was a Malaysia—Communist China had bet on an insurgency based on local ethnic Chinese to produce a pro-Chinese regime. In the Philippines, China had comparable hopes for the Huks’ "national liberation movement." Today, these episodes are remembered in footnotes, if at all. Now, it is Muslim, not Maoist, malcontents who have achieved worldwide celebrity and, were they to prevail, it would not be a strategic gain for Beijing but an enormous setback. This, then, is one measure of the changing situation on the Islamic side of the Sino-Islamic frontier in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. It is as though China’s situation vis-à-vis the Islamic world has been turned upside down in the course of a mere quarter century. . . .

In another sense, though, Xinjiang is thoroughly up-to-date—in the Islamic Internationalist character of its politics. The phenomenon is almost instantly recognizable in its form, content and worldwide connections. The war in Afghanistan in the 1980s is the archetype—local fighters backed by Muslims of every stripe, including Islamic governments such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, who otherwise may be bitter enemies. Whereas a "liberation struggle" of the 1970s had as its objective the creation of a "democratic republic" of Leninoid cast, an "Islamic struggle" has as its objective another kind of regime entirely. Similarly, while one combats a 1970s-type "liberation movement" with a political-cum-security program broadly understood, those who wage jihad announce in advance that they are incorrigible, so that the only way to deal with them is to kill them.

As this is a novel problem in the modern world, it is also a novel problem for China. A droll PLA general might describe it as confronting a "People’s War with Islamic characteristics."

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