Evolving dynamics in Xinjiang

The situation in Xinjiang has evolved in response to both national and international factors. Xinjiang was incorporated into the Qing Empire during its westward expansion in the eighteenth century. Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the region has experienced waves of ethnoreligious clashes and resistance to the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) rule. As part of the integration project and economic drive under Mao Zedong, the migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang was promoted in the 1950s, a trend that intensified in the 2000s under the Great Western Development Campaign (Smith Finley Reference Smith Finley2020; Vuori Reference Vuori2024). This led to a growing sense of discrimination among minorities in Xinjiang, which in turn escalated tensions and interethnic clashes between Han Chinese and local minorities. Ethnic resistance to Party rule has been a recurring issue, particularly after the 1980s (Bovingdon Reference Bovingdon2010; Smith Finley Reference Smith Finley2020; Vuori Reference Vuori2024), exacerbated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Central Asian states in 1991 (Kam and Clarke Reference Kam and Clarke2021; Roberts Reference Roberts and Clarke2018; Smith Finley Reference Smith Finley2020). The onset of heightened tensions was marked by the Baren Incident (April 4–10, 1990), followed by posterior violent clashes between ethnic groups and security forces, such as the February 1997 incident in Ghulja, where protests were violently suppressed by Chinese security forces (Smith Finley Reference Smith Finley2020).

Economic development and the construction of a unified national identity (中华民族 Zhonghua minzu) have long been regarded as essential for political stability and territorial unity, particularly in border regions like Xinjiang. Greitens et al. (Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020) signal the 2011 push, from Party-related scholars in China, for a “second-generation minority policy” as a turning point that aimed at prompting an emphasis on patriotism over ethnic identity which, despite being originally disregarded, did eventually crystalize in the official discourse. During the first Xinjiang Work Forum in 2010, Hu Jintao focused on “leapfrog-style development” to boost the economy in Xinjiang and ensure harmony in the region, while Xi Jinping highlighted the importance of ideology in protecting security in Xinjiang during the second Xinjiang Work Forum in 2014 (Famularo Reference Famularo and Clarke2018). As a set of ideas, belief systems, norms, and imagery that shape people’s interpretation of reality, ideology has been described as an instrument of power and social control (Foucault Reference Foucault1972). Public discourse serves as a channel through which political authorities can guide and garner public support, thereby ensuring legitimacy. In the context of Xinjiang, political and ideological re-education is central to the Party’s efforts in social engineering and state-building (Kam and Clarke Reference Kam and Clarke2021).

In this aspect, the period of 2013–2014 marked a significant turning point, as both international and national events triggered the implementation of stronger, more widespread preventive measures in Xinjiang. The war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State were important international events that significantly influenced China’s approach and discourse on Xinjiang (Clarke Reference Clarke2018; Greitens et al. Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020; Vuori Reference Vuori2024). Nationally, a series of deadly attacks – such as the October 2013 Tiananmen Square attack, the March 2014 train station stabbing in Kunming, and the April 2014 market bombing in Urumqi – represented an escalation of tensions and an expansion of the threat beyond Xinjiang. Consequently, surveillance of Uyghur social life and religious practices intensified, with the government linking these conflicts to religious extremism. This marked the beginning of an increasingly repressive set of state responses to the Uyghur population (Smith Finley Reference Smith Finley2020) and the launch of the People’s War on Terror (反恐人民战争 fankong renmin zhanzheng), a core component of China’s holistic counterterrorism strategy in the region (Xie and Liu Reference Xie and Liu2019; Zhang Reference Zhang2022). Through extensive propaganda campaigns, the Party called for public participation in combating terrorism, implicitly evoking Mao’s People’s War (Kam and Clarke Reference Kam and Clarke2021) and aligning with Xi Jinping’s policies, which underscores the role of ideological tenets in combating extremism (Zhang Reference Zhang2021).

Further intensifying these efforts, Chen Quanguo was appointed as Party Secretary in Xinjiang in 2016, implementing what Vuori (Reference Vuori2024) describes as a macrosecuritization strategy. Apart from the expansion of big data surveillance (Vuori Reference Vuori2024), China has pursued since 2017 what Zenz (Reference Zenz2023) characterizes as an unprecedented re-education campaign in Xinjiang, linked to the promulgation of the Regulations on De-extremification in March that same year. International reports estimate 800,000 to 3 million people from ethnic minorities have been detained in 1,200 camps in Xinjiang (Smith Finley Reference Smith Finley2019; Greitens et al. Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020; Baker-Beall and Clarke Reference Baker-Beall and Clark2021; Vuori Reference Vuori2024; Zenz Reference Zenz2019), officially termed Vocational Education and Training Centers (VETCs). According to Zenz (Reference Zenz2023), these re-education centers represent an innovative form of Maoist labor reform, aimed at social integration and overcoming non-Han resistance through ethnocultural assimilation into Han Chinese culture. These re-education measures aim to regulate the “values, beliefs, and loyalties of the Uyghurs so that they become useful subjects for maintaining the regime’s political security” (Kam and Clarke Reference Kam and Clarke2021, p. 629).

The official discourse reflects these political shifts. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, China adopted a new rhetoric that reframed previous conflicts in Xinjiang as part of its counterterrorism efforts, rather than counterrevolutionary struggles – as they were previously referred to (Rodríguez-Merino Reference Rodríguez-Merino2023; Vuori Reference Vuori2024). At the core of these changes in discourse is China’s official concept of Three Evil Forces – a three-in-one threat that sees separatism, religious extremism, and terrorism as interdependent (Li et al. Reference Li, Fan and Yang2019). In this triad, nevertheless, the separatist element remains a central concern, representing “the ultimate goal [of terrorism in China] whereas terrorism is the instrument to achieve the goal; and extremism lays the ideological foundations of terrorism” (Zhou Reference Zhou and Clarke2018, p. 75). In this framing, the western province of Xinjiang has been officially referred to as the main battlefield.Footnote ¹ The so-called Three Evil Forces have been regarded as a growing and major threat to China’s national security, particularly following Chinese President Xi Jinping’s transition to power in 2013. After the release of the UN Plan of Action Against Violent Extremism in 2015, Xinjiang’s official White Papers began to cite this document, aligning their focus with its emphasis on adapting national responses to “local and national drivers of extremism” (UN General Assembly 2015, p. 12) as well as incorporating preventive tools such as “education, skills development, and employment facilitation” (UN General Assembly 2015, p. 18). This served to integrate the Party’s portrayal of separatism in Xinjiang with international efforts to combat terrorism and extremism through ideology.

Given the central role of discourse as a legitimating tool, several authors approached the situation in Xinjiang through critical frameworks. Representing key references to this paper, Rodríguez-Merino (Reference Rodríguez-Merino2023) and Clarke (Reference Clarke2018) applied Securitization Theory and CTS to explore the Party’s discursive portrayal of and response to terrorism. In a later work, Kam and Clarke (Reference Kam and Clarke2021) apply Foucault’s concept of biopower to refer to the Party’s assimilation efforts in Xinjiang. From their side, Lan and Navera (Reference Lan and Navera2022) apply CDA to explore hidden islamophobia in China’s media and social media, pointing at how governing elites (including assimilated Muslims) are to define accepted religious practices, throwing light on the representation of extremism in discourse. Recent scholars notice the polarization of actors around religious extremism (Yu et al. Reference Yu, Yue and Yan2023; Zhang Reference Zhang2021), but lesser attention is paid to its original connection to separatism as the fundamental variable to consider. This paper draws on prior literature with the aim of contributing to the field by applying a systematic corpus-based CDA capable of providing empirical evidence and further exploring the Party’s ideology behind its discourse, as well as its pragmatic consequences on social practices.

Language, power, and legitimacy in CPC discourse

In authoritarian governments, the application of the label “terrorism” tends to focus less on its violent dimension than on the fundamental challenge it poses to the authority of the regime (Aksoy et al. Reference Aksoy, Carter and Wright2015; Daxecker and Hess Reference Daxecker and Hess2012). In the case of China, the CPC’s official counter terrorism discourse deliberately aims to project its image as a benevolent, responsible, and capable leader, both within China and to the international community.

Focused on four central concepts of subjectivity, legitimacy, power, and language or discourse, CTS enquires how the label of terrorism is applied within political discourse to legitimate power; by doing so, it demonstrates the malleability and subjectivity of the concept. Since fundamental values determine how different political systems interpret the threat of terrorism and how they respond to it (Wilson and Piazza Reference Wilson and Piazza2013), these particularities must be reflected in the official discourse. CDA equally interprets discourse primarily as a persuasive device that contributes to the establishment and/or preservation of power relations in society, connecting discourse with social practices and context (Wodak and Meyer Reference Wodak, Meyer, Wodak and Meyer2009). The choice of specific lexical items within a political discourse is determined by their capacity to “…effectively emphasize or de-emphasize political attitudes and opinions, garner support, manipulate public opinion, manufacture political consent, or legitimate political power” (van Dijk Reference van Dijk1997, p. 25). Thus, this paper recognizes the importance of CDA to explore themes within counterterrorism discourse and, at a narrower or micro-level, linguistic elements (such as particular semantic structures) that ultimately unveil the underlying political ideology and priorities. The legitimating role of political discourse is developed through van Leeuwen’s (Reference van Leeuwen2008) analytical method for CDA, which proposes a set of categories of legitimation (namely, moral evaluation, rationalization, authorization, and mythopoesis) to critically analyze the representation of social practices within the discourse and determine how their participants are validated or rejected. The application of rational and moral evaluations categorizes participants in positive or negative terms, ultimately determining their worthiness of trust. These rhetorical tools are applied to political discourse to extol the leading power and discredit opponents through polarization, wherein positive representations (associated with “I,” “us,” or “we”) are implicitly or explicitly contrasted with negative representations (related to “they” or “them”) (Heath-Kelly Reference Heath-Kelly and Jackson2016; van Dijk Reference van Dijk1997; van Leeuwen Reference van Leeuwen2008). Political discourse also applies both personal and impersonal authorization – customs (traditions or habits), authority (norms, law, regulations), and/or recommendations (by legitimate actors, institutions, and so on) to justify why a specific measure was adequate or needed (van Leeuwen Reference van Leeuwen2008). Through discourse and the representation of social practices, members of society are implicitly bound to either pole and are thus considered either an ally or an enemy of the ruling power. Discursive polarization is, therefore, a form of tacit exclusion or inclusion.

With the aim of building up on the connection between counterterrorism discourse, legitimacy, and policymaking, this essay advances the discussion on the Party’s counterterrorism through an underutilized empirical methodology (corpus-based CDA) and by exploring a little-studied corpus (Xinjiang White Papers – XJWP). White papers represent official statements on politically relevant issues for the government. In the context of China, white papers are dedicated to a broad range of themes, including development, energy or food security, human rights, national defense, Tibet, and Xinjiang, among others. Sources to access these documents are relatively inconsistent. The first white paper, published in 1991, was dedicated to Human Rights in China. By analyzing the official discourse on Xinjiang, and not just counterterrorism discourse, this analysis provides a broader perspective, able to establish links with other themes seemingly unrelated to the construction of the threat, yet fundamental to interpret the ideology that underpins what has been labeled as preventive measures in Xinjiang. In this regard, this analysis provides empirical evidence on the following arguments: first, it analyzes the quantitative evolution of official counterterrorism discourse in China to prove its alignment to the international discourse, emphasizing the ideological variable of the threat (extremism) as a bridge between international terrorism and separatism in Xinjiang. The discourse advances toward this goal through the institutionalization and role model of international institutions such as the UN or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), applying discursive strategies such as overgeneralization, deliberate omission of fundamental elements, or reversal of accusations to protect its legitimacy and advance its objectives of stability in Xinjiang. Second, this research proves the central role of ethnic assimilation and the acceptance of the Party’s political leadership by revealing the rhetorical politicization of religion and social polarization. These are sustained by the discursive construction of development and modernization as collective goals led by the Party, portrayed as moral and rational, and consequently represented as legitimate. In this context, the discourse proves the promotion of social unity and a mass line of action constructed around the “people’s war on terror,” carrying practical implications by excluding and incriminating those who do not participate in the struggle as enemies of the people, implying therefore a social division based on support to the Party’s leadership (or lack thereof).

Corpus-based critical discourse analysis of Xinjiang White Papers

White Papers in China are official documents that convey the government’s position on key political issues, covering topics such as human rights, national defense, development, ethnic politics, energy or food security, Tibet, and Xinjiang, among others. The source to access these papers, however, is inconsistent. The first accessible White Paper, published in 1991 on human rights in China can be found on China.org, but this source only includes papers up to September 2019. The State Council of the People’s Republic of China’s official website provides White Papers from March 2011 onward, while the State Council Information Office’s site only includes papers from 2017 to the present (as of 2024). At the time of writing, twelve White Papers have been dedicated to Xinjiang, with the most recent, published in September 2021, addressing Xinjiang’s population data and dynamics.

This paper draws on research conducted between 2017 and 2019,Footnote ² developing an in-depth quantitative analysis of nine Xinjiang-related White Papers published from 2003 – the year the first white paper on this theme was released – through 2019. During this period, a total of 117 White Papers were published, nine of which focused on Xinjiang and are the focus of this analysis. Since this article aims to explore the legitimating function of China’s discourse in addressing an international audience, the analysis is based on official Chinese-English translations provided by the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China.

Xinjiang has been since 2001 officially framed as the key source of terrorism concerns by the CPC (Rodríguez-Merino Reference Rodríguez-Merino2023). Particularly, the pace of the Party’s publication of white papers on Xinjiang (2003, 2009, and then annually since 2015) seemingly signals their reactive character to a set of significant national and international events mentioned in the prior section. These publications reflect a need to justify political measures that, ultimately, reflect the Party’s perception of the threat as a sign of its own lack of legitimacy in Xinjiang. A deep, systematic analysis of XJWP, published by the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, provides a needed holistic approach to the issue. It does not only provide a direct insight into the Party’s representation of the terrorist threat – and its evolution – but, most importantly, its observation in a broader perspective, providing evidence of its connection to ethnic and religious distinctive identity as fundamental concerns for the Party. The corpus in this paper is composed of all XJWPs available between the first publication in 2003 and 2019, consisting of nine official documents published within a 16-year period and totaling 87,629 words (Table 1).

Table 1.

Corpus: 2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers

This paper applies a synergistic methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative tools to gradually scrutinize the discourse. Data collected through Corpus Linguistic (CL) tools is first filtered, selected, and scrutinized using LancsBox Corpus Linguistics software (Brezina et al. Reference Brezina, Weill-Tessier and McEnery2020), exposing discursive patterns that would otherwise remain imperceptible. Drawing from the results from a prior examination of the most frequent nouns and adjectives within XJWPs (García-Noblejas Reference García-Noblejas2022), this paper explores the evolution of the framing of terrorism, separatism, and extremism through the application of mainly three CL tools: keyword search, “keyword in context” (KWIC) and collocations. Keyword search allows the location and comparative observation of key terms and derived terms from their respective lexical roots (“terrorist,” “extremist,” “separatist,” and so on); KWIC provides a list of contextual items (left and right) of the desired term, thus throwing some light on its framing throughout the corpusFootnote ⁴ ; participants in the discourse and their association to other elements are explored through the analysis of collocations – the most frequent immediate surrounding items – which are visually represented through GraphColl (graphics of collocations). The corpus is later carefully codified through NVIVO software, consisting of the gradual assignation of codes to sets of information within the corpus (open coding), requiring their increasingly detailed labeling to guarantee a loyal representation of the contents. Drawing on van Leeuwen’s model (Reference van Leeuwen2008), this process paid special attention to participants and legitimating categories (particularly argumentation, evaluation, and authority) within the discourse. Results are interpreted through recurrent, regressive, and reciprocal feedback between quantitative and qualitative results. Chronological observation of these allows the location of priority shifts in the discourse, their significance, motivations, and objectives (Ädel Reference Ädel, O’Keeffe and McCarthy2010).

Results: Corpus-based CDA of Xinjiang White Papers (2002–2019)

The application of the Three Evil Forces within the discourse has shifted since the publication of the first XJWP in 2003. Figure 1 shows their respective evolution within the corpus, unveiling some interesting milestones: the first publication in 2003 arrived a year after the inclusion of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in the US List of Terrorists and Groups Identified Under E.O. 13224 (until November 2020, when it was removed) and the United Nations Security Council Consolidated List in 2002 (United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1390 [2002]); the publication in 2009 – where extremism is still less prominent than separatism – follow disturbances in 2008 in the context of the Olympic Games and posterior riots in Urumqi in 2009. In this context, the official discourse defends that these riots were in fact planned and promoted by the Uyghur diaspora (particularly the World Uyghur Congress, blamed by the CPC of sparking separatist ambitions in Xinjiang), who is accused of instigating ideological infiltration with the aim of splitting Xinjiang (Buckley 2009). In 2015, separatism became noticeably diminished in relation to terrorism and extremism for the first time, marking an important milestone since it reflects some determining events at the national and international level: internationally, 2012 saw the rise of the militant organization the Islamic State (ISIS) and posterior publication of the UN Plan of Action Against Violent Extremism. At the national level, 2015 is the first XJWP published after the election of Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the CPC in 2012 and a wave of attacks within and beyond Xinjiang province that occurred between 2013 and 2015. Under Xi’s leadership, some aspects of the mentioned “second-generation ethnic policy” (Greitens et al. Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020) are emphasized and reflected in the discourse. 2015 and 2017 also saw the publication of the Xinjiang Religious Regulations and Regulations on De-Extremification, respectively. Also in 2015, President Xi promoted a fifth “identification”Footnote ⁵ between the Chinese people and the Party (Klimeš Reference Klimeš2018). As Fig. 1 shows, separatism is prominent only in the discourse prior to 2015, whereas extremism becomes more frequent after 2015, peaking in 2019 as the most frequent term among the three for the first time. This change in the discursive prioritization of extremism over separatism runs parallel to national policy shifts focused on the ideological dimensions of the threat. Furthermore, this tendency aligns with that of international anti-terrorist discourse, aiming to legitimately apply ideological measures in Xinjiang as part of international efforts against extremism. This shift further reflects shifts in political action from 2015, ultimately related to the VETCs in Xinjiang which, as will be shown, are framed as measures to contribute to ethnic and religious minority integration (through legal, linguistic, religious, and vocational education) to the rest of China and, consequently, their development and modernization.

Figure 1.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: Frequency of Application and Evolution of “Terroris-,” “Separatis-,” and “Extremis-.”

Even though references related to terrorism are quantitatively emphasized throughout the corpus (with a total of 341 hits, followed by extremism with 269 and separatism with 57), a closer examination of its framing proves the qualitative centrality of the ideological variable (represented by extremism). Out of 166 total references to the node “terrorism” in the whole corpus, Table 2 and Fig. 2 show that 106 were followed by the conjunction “and” (all of which appeared only immediately after 2015), which reflects its association with extremism – 88 combinations, out of which 18 include the modifier “religious.”

Table 2.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: collocations of “terrorism”

Figure 2.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: GraphColl Representation of Collocations of “Terrorism.”

Nearly all these combinations are present in the final two XJWP, except for two that appear in the 2016 XJWP. This tendency to characterize extremism as “religious” increases within the context of “vocational education and training” in Xinjiang, where the full construction of “terrorism and religious extremism” is applied fifteen times (the other three times occurring in the first 2019 XJWP). Although ideology has generally been regarded as a central tool used to promote Party legitimacy (Holbig and Gilley Reference Holbig and Gilley2010; Kubat Reference Kubat2018; Wu and Devine Reference Wu and Devine2018; Zhai Reference Zhai2021), the emphasis on the ideological variable of the terrorist threat runs parallel to Xi’s ideological campaign, ostensibly linked to an increased emphasis on stability – and religious extremism as a root cause of instability, particularly in Xinjiang (Famularo Reference Famularo and Clarke2018; Greitens et al. Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020; Li et al. Reference Li, Fan and Yang2019; Zhang Reference Zhang2022) and Tibet. The concept of terrorism thus serves as a legitimating concept which, in practice, highlights the ideological aspect of the threat.

Analysis of extremism

A first extraction of key clusters – frequent terms left and right to “extremism” – showed its direct connection to “religious (extremism),” “violent (extremism),” and “and.” To sharpen the analysis, Table 3 and Fig. 3 show the context of one term left and right to “extremism,” using a threshold of five repetitions.

Table 3.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: collocations of “extremism”

Figure 3.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: Graphcoll Representation of Collocations of “Separatism.”

Since the rhetorical association between terrorism and extremism has been already explored, this section brings attention to the modifier “violent” (six repetitions) and its distribution in the corpus, being exclusively found within the last XJWP dedicated to the polemic VETC in Xinjiang, and only in the context of the UN’s 2015 Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism. The deliberate exclusion of the modifier “violent” elsewhere in the corpus indicates that “extremism” in China does not necessarily need to imply violence to be considered a threat. Such omission suggests the application of pre-emptive ideological measures, signaling what Greitens et al. (Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020) refer to as an attempt to “…keep contention from emerging altogether, rather than trying to respond after it has materialized” (38). The emphasis on ideological measures gets materialized in one of the metaphorsFootnote ⁶ located in the discourse, depicting the threat as “mental shackles” or mental poison that supposedly limit the chances of people to prosper,

It is hard for some people who have been convicted of terrorist or extremist crimes to abandon extremist views, as their minds have been poisoned to the extent of losing reason and the ability to think sensibly about their lives and the law. Without necessary intervention measures it will not be possible for them to cast off the shackles of religious extremism, get back to normal life, and improve their prospects for a better future.

SCIO (2019c) Vocational education training in Xinjiang, 4.

The exploration of “extremism in” through KWIC indicates that “in accordance to the law” is its most frequent five-gram to the right. This analysis also unveils an emphatic use of the term “law” precisely within the 2015 XJWP with a total of fifty mentions (compared to thirteen and twelve mentions within prior XJWP in 2003 and 2009, respectively). It was 2015 when the first counterterrorism legislation in China was promulgated, serving as legitimating impersonal authority. The exploration of a broader context of “extremism in” through KWIC unveils the protection of “normal” religious practices in opposition to “religious extremism,”

The autonomous region has always pursued the policy of freedom of religious belief, protected normal religious activities, worked hard against extremism in ensuring the life safety of the people, and effectively prevented spreading of religious extremism.

SCIO (2015) Historical Witness to Ethnic Equality, Unity and Development in Xinjiang, 21.

Even though a clear description of what is considered “normal” is lacking, the critical interpretation of the discourse provides some clues. First, extremism is framed as the “ideological base” of separatism and terrorism, thereby justifying measures aimed at promoting Uyghur integration into the ethnic Han majority, rationalizing ethnic assimilation as a preventive measure. Furthermore, the framing of “Party members” and “patriotic religious individuals” as victims of religious extremism highlights political ideology as a determining variable in the depiction of participants within the discourse,

They [religious extremists] tell people not to obey anyone but Allah and incite them to resist government management. They abuse those who do not follow the path of extremism as pagans, traitors and scum, urging their followers to verbally assault, reject, and isolate non-believers, Party members and officials, and patriotic religious individuals.

SCIO (2019a) The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang 2019, 10.

Religion gets thus politicized by suggesting patriotism and “Chinese cultural concepts” as a countering measure against religious extremism. This way, “normal” religious practices are implicitly related to patriotism and religious people’s identification with China, in contrast to religious extremists, who attempt to split the country.

Xinjiang encourages religious organizations and believers to promote patriotism, peace, unity, moderation, tolerance and benevolence through their sermons and preaching, spread the Chinese cultural concepts of advising people to perform good deeds, teaching people morality and being merciful, and lead religious believers in maintaining proper faith and honest deeds, and resisting religious extremism…

…Xinjiang religious circles, taking root in the local soil and culture, have furthered scripture study with Chinese characteristics, inherited and carried forward the fine traditions of patriotism, peace, unity, moderation, tolerance and benevolence, opposed violence and advocated the rule of law and order.

SCIO (2016) Freedom of religious belief in Xinjiang, 10–11.

This representation is constructed over the Party’s interpretation of a unified ideology and the integration of China’s ethnic and religious groups as a source of stability, which translates into the application of ideological measures to that goal. More particularly, the categorization of knowledge deficiency as root causes of people’s vulnerability constructs a discursive logic where the application of educational and vocational measures to prevent extremism is framed as a rational alternative. Ethnic minorities in Xinjiang are thus portrayed in XJWP as vulnerable to the influence of international terrorism due to their inability to speak Mandarin Chinese and lack of professional skills and understanding of the law,

Some areas in Xinjiang were severely disturbed by terrorism and the infiltration of religious extremism. For this reason, some people cannot speak, read or write in standard Chinese, have a weak understanding of rule of law, and have difficulty finding employment through a lack of employable skills. As a result, such people are more inclined to be incited or coerced into criminality by terrorist and extremist forces.

SCIO (2019a) The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang, 26.

The polarization of participants in the discourse in terms of political ideology further points to their differentiation as “insiders”/“Chinese” or “outsiders”/“anti-Chinese.” CDA revealed the use of metaphorical expressions that imply the external source of the threat.

Penetration of religious extremism has been curbed in accordance with the law. Influenced by international religious extremism, religious extremism has been spreading in Xinjiang in recent years.

SCIO (2017) Human rights in Xinjiang – Development and progress, 13

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, religious extremism made further inroads into Xinjiang.

SCIO (2019a) The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang, 9.

Furthermore, CDA demonstrates the portrayal of China as a victim of a sort of conspiracy between separatists and “international anti-China forces” (Dickson Reference Dickson2016) in the discourse,

The tiny group of separatists who had fled abroad from Xinjiang collaborated with those at home, and looked for opportunities to carry out splittist and sabotage activities with the support of international anti-China forces.

SCIO (2003) History and Development in Xinjiang, 12.

With the support of international anti-China forces, the “East Turkistan” forces have resorted to all means, fair or foul, to organize, plan and carry out acts of separatism and sabotage.

SCIO (2019a) The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang, 9.

This representation victimizes China, which further serves to consolidate a nationalist identity against an external enemy (Rodríguez-Merino Reference Rodríguez-Merino2023; Tanner and Bellacqua Reference Tanner and Bellacqua2016) that aims at splitting the country. Thus, a holistic analysis of China’s official counterterrorism discourse requires the consideration of its separatist variable, further explored below.

Analysis of separatism

Among the triad of terms, “separatism” is the less frequent in the discourse. Despite its quantitative discretion, its qualitative relevance is shown through its rhetorical connection to terrorism. Table 4 and Fig. 4 show the collocations corresponding to a span of five words to left and right to the node, revealing “and” (24), “terrorism” (13 rep.), and “extremism” (12 rep.) as the most frequent clusters emerging under a threshold of five repetitions.

Table 4.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: collocations of “separatism”

Figure 4.

2003–2019 Xinjiang White Papers: Graphcoll Representation of Collocations of “Extremism.”

The application of KWIC to “separatism and” reveals how years 2003 and 2009 see the term “separatism” directly associated with East Turkistan forces,

Especially in the 1990s, influenced by religious extremism, separatism and international terrorism, part of the “East Turkistan” forces both inside and outside China turned to splittist and sabotage activities with terrorist violence as their chief means. Some “East Turkistan” organizations openly stated that they would use terrorist and violent means to achieve their purpose of separation.

SCIO (2003) History and Development in Xinjiang, 12.

In the 1990s, influenced by terrorism, separatism and extremism, the “East Turkistan” forces both inside and outside China turned to terrorist violence as the chief means of their separatist activities. The terrorist nature of the “East Turkistan” forces was eventually recognized by the whole world.

SCIO (2009) Development and Progress in Xinjiang, 25.

This emphasis on the East Turkistan forces is related to the opportunity offered by the inclusion of the ETIM in the USAFootnote ⁷ and the UN list of terrorist groups in 2002, implicitly legitimating the alleged connection between international terrorism and the separatist threat in China. Nevertheless, the discourse deliberately broadens the reference to the group into the abstract and imprecise term of East Turkistan “forces,” magnifying the threat and consequently justifying more expansive measures. The threat is then framed as a generic actor that bridges the ideology of international terrorism and Uyghur separatism, thus justifying the East Turkistan forces as a shared regional and global concern,

In addition, the “East Turkistan” forces pose a threat to regional security and stability. The “East Turkistan” terrorist organizations, with ETIM as representative, have carried out actions in Central and South Asia over a long period of time, creating many bloody incidents of terror and violence, including assassinations, arson and attacks on police.”

SCIO (2009) Development and Progress in Xinjiang, 26.

Since the 1990s, especially after the September 11 attacks in the US, the “East Turkistan” forces inside and outside China have stepped up their collaboration as terrorism and extremism spread around the globe, trying desperately to establish “East Turkistan” through “Jihad” (holy war).

SCIO (2019a) The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang, 9.

Despite its combination with “terrorism” and “extremism,” and its quantitative discretion compared to these two, qualitative discourse analysis proves that the fight against terrorism in China is focused on what the Party perceives as a separatist threat derived from a lack of legitimacy in Xinjiang.

An exploration of the preposition “on” (the most frequent collocation to the left of the node after terrorism) mostly referred to SCO conventions and programs “on Combating/Fighting Terrorism, Separatism, and Extremism.” These combinations are applied especially within the context of the last two XJWPs dedicated to combating terrorism and discussing the VETC in Xinjiang. The role of SCO in this context is relevant because it adds to the legitimacy provided by the UN, working as impersonal authorization through regional legal cooperation.

Table 3 and Fig. 3 further show a connection between separatism and ethnicity. Ethnic separatism has been closely studied as a conflict between identities, that is, that of the “motherland” against a distinctive ethnic identity (Greitens et al. Reference Greitens, Lee and Yazici2020; Zhou Reference Zhou2017). The focus on ethnic separatism thus serves to justify measures to promote the integration of ethnic minorities into a collective Chinese identity as a preventive tool. In this regard, Bovingdon (Reference Bovingdon2010) explains that,

the [Party] depicts the populace as yang to the dangerous yin of separatists: the people are the vast majority, sensible and noble in worldview, closely linked with the Party and the military, and bound to win in their never-ending quest to tie Xinjiang more tightly to China. Yet, again as elsewhere, the [Party] showcases the enemy to unite the people in opposition to it. (42)

The aim of this discursive linkage is thus not so much a matter of ethnicity (or religion) as it is one of loyalty to the Party.

Discussion: legitimating categories within China’s official discourse on Xinjiang

This analysis of Chinese counterterrorism discourse has employed a mixed-methods approach to quantitatively identify and qualitatively interpret discursive sources of political legitimation for both the Party and its measures. This final section discusses the most meaningful results with the aim of shedding some light on the Party’s legitimacy as the transversal priority within its own counterterrorism discourse.