In sharp contrast to its hardline response to Uyghur-related violence at home, China’s counterterrorism policies abroad have long relied more on carrots rather than sticks. They are, however, still governed by the same cautious tendency to avoid risk. In their conversations with regional partners, Chinese officials speak of cooperatively eradicating the “root causes” of terrorism, which they attribute to a lack of social and economic development and the absence of dialogue between different countries, religions, and ethnic groups. For instance, Chinese premier Li Keqiang has painted the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, a signature Belt and Road project, as a means of “weaning … the populace from fundamentalism.”Footnote ¹

China’s expansion abroad, however, has put stress on these traditional positions and sparked a new military component to China’s international counterterrorism cooperation. Behind the self-effacing rhetoric on cooperation lurks the reality of China’s mounting economic and military strength. Increasingly, that strength has translated into new forms of militarized regional engagement.

For example, in late 2016 reports began to circulate that People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces were regularly patrolling inside Afghanistan’s far eastern Wakhan Corridor.Footnote ² Beijing quickly denied infringing on its neighbor’s sovereignty but did note that “the law enforcement authorities of the two sides have conducted joint law enforcement operations in border areas to fight against terrorism.” Experts, however, were quick to point out that “law enforcement and military patrols are rather blurred terms” in a place like Afghanistan.Footnote ³

Map 5.1 The Wakhan Corridor

More recently, evidence emerged that Chinese troops were stationed in Tajikistan near the border with Afghanistan and were regularly conducting counterterrorism missions there – well before US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces withdrew from the country.Footnote ⁴ These deployments are indicative of the tightening link between China’s economic and security relationships in Central Asia.

If China continues to prioritize security and stability in the region, it may increasingly find itself pulled into the vacuum produced by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Those in the United States who lament the withdrawal from Afghanistan often express the concern that it will again become a haven for terrorists who might then target the United States.Footnote ⁵ What generally goes unappreciated is that, in the present environment, militants would be just as likely to strike China or Chinese interests. In other words, a haven for militants in Afghanistan is at least as much a Chinese problem as an American one.

Concern over this risk is evidenced by China’s rapid engagement with the Taliban in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the expansion of those discussions into matters of counterterrorism. Uyghurs in Afghanistan increasingly worry that China will make desperately needed financial assistance to Afghanistan contingent on their repatriation.

The counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan are not isolated incidents. China increasingly prioritizes regional stability to protect its foreign investment. Moreover, counterterrorism cooperation allows China to extend its political reach abroad, a longstanding goal. However, China’s emergence on the world stage also introduces vulnerabilities for the aspiring great power.

Until relatively recently, China was able to hew closely to Deng Xiaoping’s admonition to “keep a low profile” internationally. Limited foreign policy kept China off the radar of international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. This situation is rapidly evolving for two reasons.

First, ambition has pushed China to expand abroad in search of economic growth. Abroad, China finds the resources, market access, productive destinations for accumulated capital, and the prestige it seeks. But China’s expansion into Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa places it squarely in the regions of the world that are most contested by violent extremist groups, for whom foreign incursion is a particularly egregious offense.Footnote ⁶

Second, as China increases its prominence as a stakeholder in the global order – starting with its accession into the World Trade Organization but extending more recently to cooperative security efforts abroad – militants opposed to elements of that order will increasingly see the country as a legitimate target for terrorist attacks. China may chafe at US dominance in the existing global order and seek to reshape it to better suit the country’s interests, but one way or another it is increasingly an owner of that order – and with ownership comes risk.

In this chapter, we systematically explore the heightened role of counterterrorism in China’s foreign policy. We identify the inherent trade-off between engagement and vulnerability to violent nonstate actors that confronts the country and the policies that China employs to manage these competing risks.

Counterterrorism in Chinese Foreign Policy

China has only recently come to view militancy abroad as a top-tier foreign policy issue. This prioritization is the product of two distinct but converging trends. On the one hand, the elevation of counterterrorism was used instrumentally to diffuse heightened tension with the United States. On the other, it was a response to very real concerns over both internal violence emanating from Xinjiang and regional threats to China and Chinese investments.

China’s strategic use of counterterrorism in its foreign policy can be traced to the early days of the George W. Bush administration. During his 2000 presidential election campaign, Bush promised that he would shift from treating China as a “strategic partner” (as it was under Clinton) and instead treat it as a potential “strategic competitor.”Footnote ⁷ For their part, Chinese policymakers – long accustomed to hawkish rhetoric from American candidates that turns more benign upon entrance into office – seem to have shrugged this off as rhetoric.

While China may have anticipated the same pragmatic transition from the Bush administration, instead the campaign threats escalated into what Beijing saw as ominous policy signals once the new administration assumed office. For example, immediately following his inauguration, Bush telephoned every major world leader except Chinese president Jiang Zemin, signaling an intent to downgrade Beijing’s position.Footnote ⁸ This snub was taken seriously. As China’s then foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan wrote in his memoir, “To a certain extent the word competitor implied the US position as being in opposition to China and it was disturbing to think about the possible adverse impact on China-US relations should the Bush argument become the China policy of the US government.”Footnote ⁹

It did not take long for diplomatic slights to give way to a real crisis: In April 2001, a US EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft and a Chinese fighter jet collided, leading to the death of the Chinese pilot, the detention of the twenty-four US crew members, and a nadir in bilateral relations.Footnote ¹⁰ The sides arrived at a mutually face-saving settlement over the course of ten days, but the damage was done. Shortly after the crew was released, the White House announced a multibillion-dollar weapons package for Taiwan and Bush pledged that the United States would do “whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself” against China.Footnote ¹¹ A month later, the US government granted Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian permission to stop briefly in the United States on his way to and from Latin America.Footnote ¹² Doubling down, the Bush administration also challenged another core interest of Beijing – Tibet – by hosting the Dalai Lama at the White House that same month.Footnote ¹³

The 9/11 attacks fundamentally altered this downward trajectory in the US–China relationship. For Chinese leadership, this was a “heaven-sent” opportunity to prevent further deterioration in bilateral relations with the United States while executing a long-sought strategic pivot toward securitization.Footnote ¹⁴ Chinese decision-makers quickly recognized that reframing policies toward the Uyghur population in terms of a common threat posed by terrorism could divert the United States’ focus away from competition while providing cover for China’s preferred domestic counterterrorism policies and regional ambitions in Central Asia.Footnote ¹⁵

Tang Jiaxuan wrote in his memoir that after exchanging views with Yang Jiechi (then the Chinese ambassador to the United States), they “agreed that 9/11 had forced the United States into a major foreign policy readjustment, and brought about a significant turning point for improving and developing China-US relations.”Footnote ¹⁶ The vice premier and former foreign minister Qian Qichen expressed a similar view in a speech at Peking University in 2002, stating, “Since the end of the Cold War, the US government had been discussing who the primary enemy is … [A]fter the 9/11 event, the answer became clear.”Footnote ¹⁷

Beijing wasted no time in seizing the opportunity. Jiang Zemin was among the first to reach out to President Bush to express his sympathy and condolences. Shortly thereafter, China voted to support UN Resolution 1368, authorizing the United States to use force in Afghanistan. This marked the first time it had voted in favor of authorizing the use of military force by the United States. The rewards were nearly instantaneous.

The Bush administration not only dropped “strategic competitor” from its lexicon but also referred to China for the first time as a “great power” and called for more constructive and cooperative relations between the two countries.Footnote ¹⁸ In congressional testimony, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised Beijing’s diplomatic support, saying that China “helped in the war against terrorism.”Footnote ¹⁹

In the year following the attack, Bush and Jiang held three bilateral meetings and emphasized the desire to strengthen cooperation every time they met.Footnote ²⁰ This culminated in the establishment of an FBI legal attaché office at the US embassy in Beijing. In short, counterterrorism, as Chinese leadership had anticipated, stabilized US–China relations.Footnote ²¹

Moreover, the new emphasis on terrorism provided China with a more reassuring context in which to pursue the modernization and internationalization of PLA activities. As we noted in Chapter 3, in the post-9/11 political context, even militarized counterterrorism cooperation could be framed as a contribution to the global commons, allowing China to achieve its aspirations while avoiding charges of revisionism.Footnote ²² The strategy parallels China’s later use of “counterpiracy efforts” as a way for its blue-water navy to cut its teeth without provoking a strong counterresponse, particularly from the United States.Footnote ²³

These gains, however, came with two potentially disastrous consequences for China’s core strategic interests.Footnote ²⁴

First, the war on terror led to an open-ended increase in the US military presence in Central, South, and Southeast Asia. As Lampton notes, Chinese leaders quickly sensed a millennia-old fear – encirclement – when they observed the trend that major states all around China’s periphery were “aligning with the US-led coalition against terrorism to various degrees and for undefined duration.”Footnote ²⁵ Indeed, Jiang feared from the start that a war on terrorism “had the potential to expand American power even further” and believed that “any extension of U.S. armed forces would not be in China’s long-term interests, particularly if American troops took up long-term residence near China’s borders.”Footnote ²⁶

Second, throwing in with the United States in the Global War on Terror fundamentally shifted China’s place in the eyes of the global Salafist jihadist movement in a way that opened new vulnerabilities to terrorism. Where China was once seen as a counterbalance to the United States – and a patron of liberation movements around the globe – jihadi propaganda suddenly characterized China as the “head of the snake.”Footnote ²⁷

These opportunities and challenges created a strategic conundrum for China. Counterterrorism became the best vehicle for its ambitions for regional expansion because it was the domain least likely to spur American opposition. But the more that China availed itself of the opportunity to expand, the more it actually needed counterterrorism to deal with the emerging threats to its interests in Central Asia.

Managing the Benefits of Engagement and the Risks of Blowback

China attempted to split the difference by engaging in international counterterrorism cooperation and exercises, but in a targeted way designed to limit blowback. Balanced in this way, counterterrorism moved to the center of Chinese security policy in Central Asia and became the primary vehicle by which China pursued its broader regional ambitions. It lies at the core of China’s recent participation in regional institutions, beginning with the Shanghai Five. The Shanghai Five, the precursor to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), was charged from its initiation in 1996 with targeting the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism.Footnote ²⁸

The Shanghai Five’s core mission transferred seamlessly to the SCO in 2001, even making its way into the title of the SCO’s founding charter.Footnote ²⁹ In both cases, the organizations’ unspoken secondary purpose was to undercut the threat of US encirclement.

Under the auspices of the SCO, China began a robust program of counterterrorism cooperation with Central Asian partner countries, starting with its historic participation in joint SCO-sponsored anti-terrorist military exercises with Kyrgyzstan in October 2002.Footnote ³⁰ China further tightened its grip on regional counterterrorism leadership with a 2003 addendum that established the SCO Regional Antiterrorism Structure.Footnote ³¹ Through this addendum, China expressed a strong preference that all members coordinate bilateral counterterrorism activities with the United States through the SCO, further limiting the United States’ reach into the region. Similarly, the SCO–Afghanistan Contact Group was created in 2005 as a consultation mechanism between the organization and that country, but its larger purpose was to provide a vehicle for China’s deeper engagement with Afghanistan as a counterbalance to the United States.Footnote ³²

While the SCO remains the preeminent regional organization, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has largely superseded it strategically. This shift has not, however, diminished the centrality of counterterrorism in China’s regional foreign policy. As analysts have been quick to recognize, many countries along the Belt and Road route are located in high-risk areas where terrorists gather and terrorist activities are common.Footnote ³³

China has emerged on the world stage and with exposure comes vulnerability. Thousands of Chinese workers have gone to Pakistan following Beijing’s pledge to spend $57 billion on BRI projects. These investments give rise to local complaints and are at constant risk of terrorist attacks.Footnote ³⁴ For example, in March 2019, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) attacked a convoy of Chinese engineers near Karachi. The organization’s spokesman made it clear the BLA would not react kindly to further outside incursion:

Chinese leadership is defensive about the criticisms and threats that investment can generate, noting that the BRI could also promote further counterterrorism cooperation and security-enhancing economic development.Footnote ³⁶ For example, Zhuang Jianzhong, Vice Director of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Center for National Strategy Studies, argues that improving the region’s economy would weaken the root cause of terrorism and stabilize Central Asia and that the United States should therefore be more positive about the initiative as a stabilizing force for good in the region.Footnote ³⁷ That said, the link between development and the reduction of terrorism is tenuous at best and these arguments sound disturbingly similar to those made about development and pacification within Xinjiang (where that policy came to naught).Footnote ³⁸

Rhetoric and political sensitivities aside, Chinese authorities are keenly aware that investment and expansion in Central Asia have the potential to produce undesirable side effects and they are actively managing those risks. The problem takes three basic forms:

1. 1. threats against Chinese nationals and assets abroad;

2. 2. threats against China itself from international terrorist organizations; and

3. 3. the integration of Uyghur grievances in Xinjiang into the global Salafist/jihadist movement.

Managing the repercussions of foreign policy adventures is certainly not a uniquely Chinese problem and there are lessons to be learned from other contexts.Footnote ³⁹ The 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States were unprecedented in their magnitude and devastation, but according to some critics of US foreign policy, they were also predictable consequences of heavy-handed US engagement in the Middle East and support for leaders in that region.

Terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom and Spain since 2003 further support the notion that a blowback mechanism might be a process by which states become the targets of transnational terrorist organizations. For states potentially in this position, managing that possibility is essential to a comprehensive foreign policy. Both countries joined the United States in Iraq as participants in the “coalition of the willing” and both subsequently experienced devastating terror attacks (the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and the London tube bombings in 2005). Spain’s government was voted out of office in part due to the public perception that its foreign policies had invited this blowback.Footnote ⁴⁰

A substantial body of work supports the validity of this mechanism, both theoretically and empirically. Much of that discussion originates with an influential paper from the Defense Science Board that argues that foreign engagement is a primary motivation for terrorist attacks against nations.Footnote ⁴¹ It states,

Developing this logic, Eland notes a relationship between American foreign intervention and terrorist attacks.Footnote ⁴³ The fundamental question is whether countries become targets of international terrorism because of “what they are” or “what they do.”

Betts noted in 1998 that “as the only nation acting to police areas outside its own region, the United States makes itself a target for states or groups whose aspirations are frustrated by U.S. power.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Driving the point home, Osama bin Laden’s original grievance against the United States was “the existence of US forces in the Arabian Peninsula.”Footnote ⁴⁵

As China takes on a more prominent role in Central Asia, it also confronts these potential consequences. As a result, China’s regional foreign policy, increasingly focused on investment in counterterrorism, must be carefully managed to optimize a series of competing priorities. China seeks to develop a credible reputation as a regional hegemon, maintain military readiness, and safeguard Chinese nationals and investments abroad; at the same time, it must minimize blowback. In practice, this means that China invests deeply in counterterrorism in places where it has substantial direct investment and militant violence threatens those investments, but it maintains a comparatively light footprint where one or both of those conditions do not hold.

In the sections that follow, we explore China’s selection of partners for counterterrorism joint military exercises (CT-JMEs) as a demonstration of this strategy in action. These exercises, which began in 2002, have become a pillar of China’s regional relationships and the most visible manifestation of the PLA’s engagement abroad.Footnote ⁴⁶ Drawing on an original and comprehensive dataset of China’s CT-JMEs between 2002 and 2016, we show that China has consistently prioritized partners where both the threat of militant violence is high and there are significant Chinese economic interests at stakes. When only one (or none) of these conditions hold, China has been inclined to keep a lower profile.

While these exercises reveal the strategic nature of China’s use of counterterrorism in its foreign policy, they also indicate yet another trade-off that Beijing must navigate as it confronts mounting terrorist threats. Specifically, the militarized interventions deemed necessary to protect Chinese political and economic investments in high-terrorism countries also increase that threat in the longer term.

Joint Counterterrorism Exercises

For most of its history, mystery has shrouded key elements of the Chinese military. The opacity comes from the PLA’s penchant for secrecy, China’s longstanding policies of nonintervention and nonalliance, and, most significantly, China’s aforementioned “low profile” in international affairs. As a consequence, until quite recently, it was relatively rare to see the Chinese military in action outside China’s borders. This posture has fundamentally changed under Xi Jinping – the country’s strategic stance has fully shifted from “keeping a low profile” to “striving for achievements.”Footnote ⁴⁷

To illustrate – on the seventeenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Russia launched its most significant military exercise since the end of the Cold War in eastern Siberia. Named “Vostok-18,” the exercise featured nearly a third of Russia’s armed forces.Footnote ⁴⁸ However, what alarmed the West was not only the scale of the exercise (which has been held every four years since 2010) but the involvement of Chinese forces for the first time in a strategic-level Russian exercise.Footnote ⁴⁹ What is often missed is that China built up to its participation in Vostok-18 – an exercise led by a former foe – through a series of less provocative counterterrorism exercises over the preceding decade.

This process began with a two-day CT-JME with Kyrgyzstan in October 2002 – just a year after the 9/11 attacks. According to Chinese official media, this was their first joint exercise with foreign forces, and it “opened the door for the PLA to go out” and demonstrate that the “Chinese military has become more mature and more confident.”Footnote ⁵⁰ The PLA leveraged a steady stream of CT-JMEs in the ensuing years to further its internationalization and professionalization, gaining experience designed to prepare Chinese forces for more significant military action overseas.

The militarization of China’s counterterrorism engagement abroad has also contributed to an ongoing shift in the regional balance of power. China has quietly emerged as the preeminent power in Central Asia on the back of its most potent weapon – direct investment. Extending military power in the context of counterterrorism cooperation as a follow-on to this investment further enables China to dominate a region critical to its ambitions. This transition is particularly significant as Russia confronts demographic decline and remains fixated on the West in its foreign policy and as the United States has withdrawn from Afghanistan and seems inclined toward a lower profile on the international stage – except when it comes to confronting China.

There are many reasons why China may want or need to hold CT-JMEs with foreign forces. The first and most straightforward among these is the training and experience such exercises can provide for PLA forces.Footnote ⁵¹

The 9/11 attacks alerted the world to the significance of nontraditional security threats, and this warning was further distilled for China by its own experience with domestic political violence. According to Kuhn, shortly after the 9/11 attacks President Jiang Zemin “worried about restive Muslim populations in troubled Xinjiang province” and wondered “whether terrorists there might be plotting similar acts of violence.”Footnote ⁵² In reaction, Jiang “ordered a review of security regulations and asked that more stringent procedures be enforced.”Footnote ⁵³ Beijing’s initial audit revealed not only China’s vulnerability but also a broader lack of counterterrorism capability.Footnote ⁵⁴ Li Wei – arguably China’s best-known counterterrorism expert – contended that “despite the long-standing terrorism threat facing China, when it comes to conducting effective counter-terrorism operations, China is still in its infancy.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Since that time, China has invested heavily in enhancing its counterterrorism capabilities at home and abroad. In Chapter 4, we discussed the massive investments made in domestic counterterrorism capabilities, but the tallies are no less impressive on the international side. This includes agreements on law enforcement cooperation and intelligence sharing with dozens of countries, sending security personnel abroad to attend counterterrorism courses, and, of course, participating in CT-JMEs.Footnote ⁵⁶

Chinese officials have never been shy about their willingness to learn from the experience of their CT-JME partners. For instance, in a press conference after the China–Pakistan “Friendship-2011” CT-JME, the PLA’s Deputy Chief of the General Staff Hou Shusen reportedly said that the “Pakistani military has been in the front line for fighting terrorism since 2003 and has accumulated a lot of experience for China to learn.”Footnote ⁵⁷ China has proven willing to learn counterterrorism lessons from countries around the world, even from erstwhile strategic competitors such as the United States and India.Footnote ⁵⁸

The types of forces that China typically contributes to these joint exercises clarify its objectives. Reports indicate that the majority of counterterrorism exercises, both unilateral and joint, have involved PLA Special Operations Forces (SOF), providing them experience in a variety of operating environments.Footnote ⁵⁹ Akin to the US Navy Seals, these forces are indeed the most likely to be used in targeted counterterrorism interventions, though they are also important domestically and would play a key role in any broader regional intervention.Footnote ⁶⁰ China’s particular interest in training SOF in terrorism scenarios is likely a reaction to the efficacy of American SOF in the US-led overthrow of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, among many other engagements.Footnote ⁶¹

China’s growing overseas interests also incentivize CT-JMEs. As China’s economic development strategy moved from “bring in” to “go global,” Chinese nationals and investments abroad have inevitably become more vulnerable to terrorist attacks as these individuals and investments become more prominent in terrorism hot spots around the world.Footnote ⁶²

A 2016 policy brief from the European Council on Foreign Relations reported a total of nineteen terrorist attacks causing forty-eight deaths of Chinese nationals overseas in the 2004–2016 period.Footnote ⁶³ These incidents include both cases in which Chinese nationals were collateral victims (e.g., the 2013 Boston marathon bombing, the 2015 Bamako hotel attack in Mali, and the 2016 Brussels bombing) and cases in which they were the primary targets (e.g., the 2015 bombing at the Erawan Shrine in Thailand, the execution of Fan Jinghui by the Islamic State in 2015, and the suicide attacks on the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in 2016).Footnote ⁶⁴

This threat grows as the BRI extends China’s presence deeper into the regions of the world where jihadist militant organizations are most active. Evidence suggests that Chinese leaders are keenly aware of this possibility and take it seriously. For example, at a high-level 2014 meeting on foreign affairs, Xi Jinping explicitly stated that “we should protect China’s overseas interests and continue to improve our capacity to provide such protection.”Footnote ⁶⁵

The CT-JMEs with foreign forces are a means by which to achieve this goal.Footnote ⁶⁶ China’s longstanding (though eroding) nonintervention policy, along with a regional strategy based on coopting local regimes, makes unilateral counterterrorism engagement undesirable. Some degree of cooperation with local forces is necessary for both legal and practical reasons. Indeed, one important reason why China abandoned its decades-old prohibition on training with foreign militaries, according to Dennis Blasko, was to “identify early-on problems inherent in multilateral operations” in the wake of the post-9/11 threat posed by al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations on China’s western borders.Footnote ⁶⁷

In addition to their importance for preparedness, CT-JMEs send an important signal to the region and beyond.Footnote ⁶⁸ The visible presence of Chinese soldiers and weapons can deter potential challengers (terrorist or otherwise) by demonstrating China’s capability to conduct military operations outside its borders. More importantly, exercises and joint training indicate local forces’ willingness to cooperate with China in their commitment to protecting Chinese assets in their countries. An article published by the Office for International Military Cooperation of the Central Military Commission acknowledges this function: “[T]he regularization of the ‘Peace Mission’ series of counterterrorism joint military exercises has effectively deterred the ‘Three Evils’ and exerted positive and important impacts on regional security.”Footnote ⁶⁹

Beijing also clearly leverages joint military exercises as a further means by which to internationalize Uyghur political violence and to legitimize its policies at home. As we have discussed here and elsewhere, the 9/11 attacks provided the CCP with an opening to place the Uyghur question firmly within the framework of the war on terror.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, despite some immediate dividends, such as the United States’ designation of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist group, Western criticism of China’s repressive ethnic policies in Xinjiang has only grown alongside mounting mistreatment of the Uyghur minority.

The CCP has long bristled at this criticism and it has pushed back on perceived “double standards” when it comes to combating terrorism. For example, at an anti-terrorism conference at the Seventy-Second Session of the UN General Assembly, China’s delegate, Shi Xiaobin, stated,

Thus, CT-JMEs with foreign forces are integral to China’s campaign to sell its framing of Uyghur unrest as terrorism and one of the “three evils” along with extremism and separatism. Countries that agree to participate in a CT-JME with China are expected to explicitly or implicitly accept China’s expansive definition of terrorism.

China has, at times, faced criticism for its relatively modest contributions to broader international counterterrorism efforts.Footnote ⁷² Though it is perhaps not what Western critics had in mind, Chinese authorities see growing regional military-to-military cooperation, including CT-JMEs, as a way to refute this critique. For example, the Chinese official media trumpeted the 2016 establishment of the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism, a counterterrorism group that included China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Tajikistan. It was China’s first multilateral cooperation mechanism and the state media called it a clear rebuttal to the West’s depiction of China as a free rider in the international fight against terrorism.Footnote ⁷³ In this light, CT-JMEs become a legitimacy- and image-building tool that demonstrates to domestic and international audiences that China has partners in its approaches to counterterrorism and is therefore acting as a responsible and constructive international stakeholder.

Finally, CT-JMEs were one of several mechanisms by which China could balance against the US military presence on its western periphery prior to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Concern over strategic encirclement has agitated the CCP since its inception. A People’s Daily article in 1966 accused “the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and India of collaborating in the military encirclement of China.”Footnote ⁷⁴ In the early 2000s, the locus of this worry shifted to Central Asia as Chinese officials fretted over the new presence of US troops on its western border after the invasion of Afghanistan. These fears have deepened with the US pivot to Asia and renewed security cooperation among the United States, India, and Japan.Footnote ⁷⁵

While the benefits are clear, there are also costs associated with CT-JMEs. Most notably, these exercises are expensive. Although precise expenditures are unknown, a 2015 Global Times article cited the increasing number and scale of all types of joint military exercises held by the PLA and foreign forces as a significant contributor to the growth in China’s defense expenditures in recent years.Footnote ⁷⁶ The global economic recession of 2008–2009 was also blamed for the more modest Peace Mission 2009 CT-JME with Russia, suggesting some degree of cost sensitivity.Footnote ⁷⁷

Despite the significance of expenditures on CT-JMEs in yuan, the domestic political costs are likely a more significant concern for Beijing. China’s ever-growing military expenditures, at the expense of domestic investment, have already triggered a national debate over “guns or tofu.” In an interview with the New York Times, Shambaugh noted that “given other demands on state expenditures from various sectors – the stimulus, unemployment, insurance – to continue giving the military 15 percent increases year on year does cause some Chinese to raise questions.”Footnote ⁷⁸ Indeed, during the Peace Mission 2014 CT-JME, the CCP posted articles online to rebut the widely discussed rumor that China alone had paid for all SCO and Russia–China joint military exercises.Footnote ⁷⁹

While military cooperation on counterterrorism clearly has value, China has long been suspicious of exclusive reliance on military means to eradicate political violence – at least abroad. In his speech at the G20 summit soon after the 2015 Paris attack, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi emphasized, “China holds that joint forces should be formed to fight against terrorism and that both the symptoms and root causes of the issue should be addressed.”Footnote ⁸⁰ A 2016 People’s Daily article explicitly warned that China should not follow the Western “misunderstanding” of counterterrorism, arguing (without apparent irony) that the war on terror would only generate more grievances.Footnote ⁸¹ For China, the long-term answer to militancy in unstable regions lies in economic development.Footnote ⁸² For example, in the Pakistani case, China has long insisted that the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor not only provides Pakistan with opportunities for social and economic development but also serves as the “route one must take” to tackle the root causes of violence and unrest.Footnote ⁸³

The same sensibilities are reflected to some extent in prior domestic policies in Xinjiang, which are heavy on sticks but also hinge on the belief that rising economic tides would resolve underlying grievances even for marginalized populations. There is reason to anticipate that this is as mistaken abroad as it is domestically – and for similar reasons. Even if there is local economic benefit, grievances will emerge if China is seen as benefitting disproportionately, and particularly so if an excess of the spoils go to Chinese nationals living on foreign soil (as has historically often been the case with Chinese investments and projects abroad).

In contrast to its regional engagement, China refrains from full participation in global counterterrorism efforts – particularly the more militarized efforts – in hopes of remaining a secondary target for international terrorist organizations.Footnote ⁸⁴ Until the 2010s, China was largely able to achieve this goal as its status as a developing country and a potential challenger to the United States reduced its symbolic value as a target for the jihadist movement.Footnote ⁸⁵ Osama bin Laden even saw the US–China rivalry as a strategic opportunity. For example, in an interview in 1997, bin Laden said, “The United States wants to incite conflict between China and the Muslims. The Muslims of Xinjiang are being blamed for the bomb blasts in Beijing. But I think these explosions were sponsored by the American CIA. If Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and China get united, the United States and India will become ineffective.”Footnote ⁸⁶

But China’s ability to keep a low profile is evaporating as it emerges as a global power. As we have demonstrated, China’s growing global footprint has inevitably made its nationals and assets more vulnerable to international terrorism. However, what worries Beijing is the fundamental change in jihadist groups’ strategic thinking about China. Shortly after the July 5 Urumqi riot, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) threatened to attack Chinese workers in Algeria and other projects in North African to avenge Uyghur deaths.Footnote ⁸⁷ A few months later, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda in Pakistan, Abu Yahya al-Libi, called on Uyghurs to prepare for a holy war against the Chinese government.Footnote ⁸⁸ Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi condemned China as a country in which “Muslim rights are forcibly seized.”Footnote ⁸⁹

These countervailing incentives and constraints have led China to pursue international counterterrorism cooperation, but with a certain amount of caution. CT-JMEs can contribute to preparedness and secure investments against threats, but China focuses these efforts to allocate resources optimally and minimalize externalities. The ultimate goal is to reap the dividends from joint exercises while minimizing the risk of blowback. Thus, when selecting CT-JME partners, China prioritizes countries where the threat of terrorism and China’s economic interests are both high.

The underlying logic is straightforward. Working with countries that face significant terrorist threats allows China to gain military experience while burnishing its image as a responsible actor. At the same time, limiting these activities to countries where China’s economic interests are high allows China to concentrate its resources on protecting its overseas nationals and assets while mitigating the threat of blowback. Significantly, this dynamic only holds true when the partner country faces domestic terrorist threats rather than transnational terrorism. China’s concern with Uyghur militancy may give Beijing an additional incentive to learn from countries that have experience dealing with domestic terrorism. However, there is a significant incentive to avoid drawing the ire of internationally oriented terrorist groups.

Assessing China’s CT-JMEs

Assessing the strategic logic behind China’s CT-JMEs requires a full inventory of these exercises. To accomplish this, we rely on three sources for China’s military and diplomatic activities: D’Orazio’s Global Joint Military Exercises Dataset (1970–2010),Footnote ⁹⁰ Haas’s dataset on SCO Military Exercises (2002–2015),Footnote ⁹¹ and the PLA Diplomacy Database (PLADD) managed by the National Defense University (2003–2016).Footnote ⁹² After merging the datasets and deleting duplicates, we analyzed each event to confirm that it was indeed a joint military exercise.Footnote ⁹³ As a final check for possible missing events, we conducted an extensive search of online and primary sources in both Chinese and English, including China Military Online, People’s Daily Online, China Daily, the Ministry of National Defense website, and China’s biennial defense white papers. This process uncovered 190 joint military exercises between Chinese and foreign forces between 2002 and 2016.

We considered these exercises to be CT-JMEs if either Chinese officials or the host country identified counterterrorism as the primary purpose of the exercise. By this criterion, we identified 65 out of these 190 joint military exercises as CT-JMEs. Our coding differs from PLADD’s categorization in important ways. PLADD narrowly defines counterterrorism exercises as “lower intensity, smaller unit activities that resemble conventional combat on the lower end of the spectrum of conflict.”Footnote ⁹⁴ While PLADD is focused strictly on the actual function of the forces, we emphasize the diplomatic language used to frame the activity. Two examples illustrate this distinction. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s signature multinational joint military exercises, the Peace Mission series, are categorized by PLADD as “combat” rather than counterterrorism, due to their scale and the involvement of multiple military services.Footnote ⁹⁵ We, however, code all Peace Mission exercises as counterterrorism because the Chinese Ministry of Defense explicitly states that the Peace Mission series should “deal with the threat imposed by the ‘Three Evils’ of terrorism, separatism, and extremism” and “enhance the capability of joint counterterrorism missions among participating countries’ militaries.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Another example is the biannual AMAN multinational maritime security exercises held in Pakistan since 2007. While PLADD categorizes all AMAN exercises as “combat support,” we treat these exercises as counterterrorism because Chinese official news sources clearly identify them as being focused on maritime terrorism and other nontraditional security threats. This approach to definition allows us to capture a broader range of Chinese transnational military activities that have been conducted in the name of counterterrorism so that we can probe more deeply into the motivations underlying China’s counterterrorism foreign policy.Footnote ⁹⁷

Figure 5.1 shows the distribution of all types of PLA joint military exercises with foreign forces and demonstrates the extent to which counterterrorism has come to dominate the agenda. In the 2002–2016 period, counterterrorism scenarios accounted for more than a third of all exercises. The prominence of CT-JMEs is even more eye-catching in terms of the total number of days China spent on each type of exercise. Opaque PLA reporting and its culture of secrecy make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to collect detailed information on the exact number of troops involved or the types of weapons used; however, the duration of exercises is almost always reported and serves as a relatively accurate proxy for size and scope.Footnote ⁹⁸ From 2002 through 2016, the PLA spent 700 days on CT-JMEs, or about 44 percent of the total time it spent with foreign forces on joint exercises or training.

Figure 5.1 PLA joint military exercises, 2002–2016

Figure 5.2 plots the number of days China spends on CT-JMEs by year, and there is a clear upward trend over time.Footnote ⁹⁹ This suggests an increasingly important role for the military in China’s international counterterrorism policy.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Figure 5.2 CT-JME days by year, 2002–2016

Map 5.2 illustrates the geographic distribution of China’s partners in counterterrorism exercises. In the 2002–2016 period, thirty-nine countries from around the world had participated in at least one CT-JME with China. Unsurprisingly, China’s CT-JMEs have been concentrated among its immediate neighbors. Among these partners, Pakistan leads with 181 days, followed by Russia with 138 days, Thailand with 124 days, and India with 111 days.

Even among neighboring states, China has consistently prioritized those countries where both terrorist threats and China’s economic interests are high. For instance, despite China’s relatively high foreign direct investment (FDI) in countries such as Vietnam and Mongolia, these countries are relatively insulated from terrorism, leading China to spend far less time with them on CT-JMEs. This strategic pattern holds at the other end of the spectrum as well. For example, while Afghanistan has been on the front lines when it comes to terrorism, China’s relatively low economic interests and fear of blowback there have led it to avoid high-profile CT-JMEs with Afghan forces in favor of quieter interventions, such as the patrols discussed at the outset of this chapter. It is also likely that China avoided such engagement with Afghanistan to forestall the inevitable tension with the United States that such exercises would have generated.

Western democracies (including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) showed some early interest in training with China in the years after 9/11, but the incentives to do so rapidly waned. Due to mounting human rights concerns, Western democracies are increasingly reluctant to embrace China’s definition of terrorism, especially as it relates to domestic policy toward the Uyghur minority. China is also wary of being associated with Western democracies that remain the primary targets of current jihadist campaigns. Moreover, the growing geostrategic military competition between these parties further diminishes all parties’ interest in any East–West joint training venture.

Map 5.2 China’s CT-JME partners, 2002–2016

Digging Deeper

To examine the strategy underpinning China’s CT-JMEs more systematically, we turn to a brief statistical analysis of the factors that drive cooperation.Footnote ¹⁰¹ To do so, we measure the extent of CT-JME cooperation in terms of the total number of days each country spent on exercises with China in a given year.Footnote ¹⁰² As we are primarily interested in assessing the interaction between the level of terrorist violence and Chinese investment in the potential host country, we have two primary explanatory variables in the model. The first, Terror Attacks, is a count of the total number of terrorist attacks that occurred in that country each year.Footnote ¹⁰³ To capture investment, we generate PRC FDI, which is a measure of China’s yearly outward direct investment in each country. For our purposes, FDI is a more appropriate indicator of overseas economic interests than bilateral trade, especially in terms of exposure to terrorist threats, because FDI typically involves China sending personnel to and establishing facilities in recipient countries.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

A secondary implication of our argument is that China should conduct more CT-JMEs with countries that face domestic terror threats, while avoiding those that are the target of transnational terrorists, so as to shield itself from becoming the target of terrorist organizations with the demonstrated capacity to project violence across borders. To capture this distinction, we further break down the Terror Attacks variable into Transnational Attacks and Domestic Attacks.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

We account for a variety of potentially confounding factors in our analysis. US Defense Pact indicates whether or not a country in a given year is in a defense pact with the United States, which, according to Gibler, indicates the “highest level of military commitment, requiring alliance members to come to each other’s aid militarily if attacked by a third party.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ The United States generally pressures its allies to refrain from holding exercises with China (or at least to hold less intensive ones). China itself may also have incentives to hold back from engaging with these countries, in order to avoid intruding into the US sphere or revealing capabilities and vulnerabilities.

We also control for Regime Type.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ As we have noted, Western democracies often view China’s domestic counterterrorism measures as a cloak for human rights violations, and we anticipate that such democracies will generally hold less intensive CT-JMEs with China.

PRC Arms Transfer is an annual measure of the total value of military technologies imported from and exported to the target state, which we obtain from the SIPRI Arms Transfers Dataset. We anticipate a positive relationship between this measure and CT-JMEs for two reasons. First, countries usually trade arms only with friends or nonrival states. Therefore, a higher arms trade value should indicate a closer security relationship. Second, from a technical perspective, countries that share weapon systems have an added incentive to train together to practice using these weapons and potentially develop their capability for interoperability.

Extradition captures whether or not a country has an extradition treaty with China in a given year. We expect a positive correlation between this variable and CT-JMEs, given that extradition of Uyghur suspects overseas has been the primary component of China’s international law-enforcement cooperation.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Finally, we control for each state’s GDP per capita (logged value), SCO membership, BRI membership (reflecting Belt and Road participants), and Distance to China (logged value). GDP per capita can have both positive and negative effect on the duration of CT-JMEs. On the one hand, richer countries may have more resources that allow them to participate in these expensive exercises. On the other hand, building and strengthening relationships with developing countries has long been the foundation of China’s general diplomatic agenda.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Both SCO and BRI are expected to increase the number of days spent together in CT-JME, while Distance is expected to decrease those numbers.

Findings

We run a series of statistical models of increasing sophistication to clarify the strategic logic driving China’s CT-JMEs.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Details about each model’s specification and coefficient tables are available in the appendix. Here, we relay only the key findings.

Figure 5.3 The conditional effect of attacks (Model 4)

Figure 5.3 clarifies the relationship between attacks and the number of CT-JME days as FDI varies. Each line represents a partner country receiving specific levels of FDI from China. We plot how the predicted number of CT-JME days changes as Terror Attacks increase while holding PRC FDI at one standard deviation below the mean, mean value, one standard deviation above the mean, and two standard deviations above the mean. The figure clearly demonstrates that China spends significantly more days on CT-JMEs with countries that experiences more terrorist attacks, but only when China also has high FDI in that country. Substantively, a country with Chinese FDI stock value equal to $1,107 billion (two standard deviations above the average, and in the top 5 percent of the sample) tends to experience a roughly three-day increase (from 1.3 to 4.2) in the number of predicted CT-JME days in a given year as the number of terrorist attacks that target this country increases from about 9 to 225.

Figure 5.4 Marginal effect of an attack conditional on PRC FDI

In Figure 5.4, we plot the marginal effect of an increase in terrorist attacks on the number of CT-JME days, over a spectrum of FDI values. This further clarifies that an increase in exposure to terrorist threats only increases the number of CT-JME days with China when China’s investment in that country is high. Tellingly, this plot also shows that when a country has a low level of FDI from China, more exposure to terrorism will actually significantly decrease its number of Chinese CT-JMEs. The implication is that China indeed acts on its incentive to avoid military presence in regions with high terrorism but low economic interests. This, in turn, suggests that China tolerates the risk of blowback only from countries in which it is already deeply invested.

Figure 5.5 Domestic attacks and transnational attacks

Figure 5.5 plots how the number of CT-JME days is affected by the presence of Domestic Attacks versus Transnational Attacks. A comparison between these two graphs demonstrates that, as anticipated, domestic terrorism drives the level of cooperation between the two countries. In contrast, there is no significant variation in the predicted number of CT-JME days associated with varying values of Transnational Attacks. China is steering clear of organizations with a capacity to project violence into China while cooperating in places where domestic terrorists may pose threats to Chinese investments.

Conclusion

In sum, the patterns in China’s CT-JMEs reveal a policy oriented toward safeguarding existing investment while minimizing the risk of blowback. Holding CT-JMEs with foreign forces can enhance China’s counterterrorism capabilities, protect its regional interests, and cultivate its reputation as a capable and responsible status quo power. However, conspicuously confronting militancy makes China a more prominent target for international terrorist organizations active in countries where China has a substantial economic or military presence.Footnote ¹¹¹ As a result, despite the increasingly active role played by the PLA in China’s counterterrorism foreign policy, China involves the military only when the stakes are high.

Given this strategic prioritization, we should anticipate a more substantial (but carefully targeted) presence of Chinese military in regions such as the Middle East and North Africa as China’s economic interests there grow. Indeed, the PLA has already increased its assistance to African countries seeking to build their counterterrorism capacities, such as providing military assistance and arms transfers to Nigeria in its fight against Boko Haram.Footnote ¹¹² This presents a challenge. The locations in which China is most likely to invest are increasingly fraught. At the same time, the more the Chinese do to protect their investment in these volatile host countries, particularly through visible means like CT-JMEs, the more prominent a target they become.