| Army War College scholar speaks on China’s view of terrorism and security BY SALLY ACHARYA
Photo by Jeff Watts
Andrew Scobell analyzed China’s perspective on terrorism. |
When Andrew Scobell lectures, the audience is usually quite a bit different from the jeans-clad, twenty-something graduate students that made up the bulk of his listeners at AU last week. He’s more often speaking to the colonels and lieutenant colonels who attend the U.S. Army War College as they prepare to move even higher in the ranks. Scobell is a civilian China expert at the Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, a think tank whose scholars teach seminars and develop policy recommendations for the army’s senior leadership. He shared his views in the lecture “Terrorism and Chinese National Security” at the Center for Asian Studies’ Washington Asia Forum.
Whereas the United States had tended to take “homeland security” for granted, the Chinese government has long focused a great deal of effort on internal security—which is, in many ways, “synonymous with maintaining Communist party rule.”
As a result, when terrorism is discussed in China, the focus tends to be on internal security. China, he said, does not see itself as a target in a global sense. Osama bin Laden has not been known to openly criticize China. But it is in China’s interest to “play up the threat,” he said, particularly to justify crackdowns on domestic activists who are perceived as threatening national power. Beijing, he said, is alarmed about crime and disaffection that has accompanied the increased freedom of market forces. The “regime’s worst nightmare” is coordinated worker unrest in the heartland, particularly since explosives are widely used in industry and agriculture, are widely attainable, and have been used in incidents involving disgruntled workers. There has also been increasing concern raised in China about ethnic separatists in the far West, particularly among the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, a Turkic Muslim ethnic group whose vast homeland borders such volatile areas as Afghanistan and the Kashmir regions of India and Pakistan. China has claimed that more than 200 attacks were carried out by Uyghur terrorists between 1990 and 2001, and while the numbers are “probably exaggerated,” Scobell said, there have reportedly been links between some separatist organizations and Islamist terrorists. More than a dozen Uyghur Chinese citizens detained by U.S. troops in conflict zones are still being held at Guantanamo Bay, and their legal status remains uncertain. While internal security is China’s major concern in terms of terrorism, its “second layer” of concern involves its neighboring states. Central Asia is an “unpredictable zone” that concerns China because of its potential for exporting Islamic radicalism. Beijing has promised aid to post-Taliban Afghanistan in an effort to promote stability in the region. On China’s southern border, stability is a major concern. Insurgent groups in India are worrisome, and the Maoist insurgency in neighboring Nepal is “an embarrassment” to post-Mao China. The Chinese government, Scobell noted, has carefully refrained from using the term “Maoist” to describe the armed rebels, who have fought the monarchy and opposed democratic political parties in their quest to topple the Nepali government and install a Communist regime. The “third layer” of concern is global. While the Chinese are not likely targets of global terrorists, its citizens are so numerous overseas that they have been victims of terrorism, including the attacks of Sept. 11. “Before 9-11, China’s relation with the Bush administration was rocky at best,” Scobell said. Since then, however, “cooperation has been modest but real.” China has shared intelligence with the United States, permitting the opening of an FBI liaison office in Beijing, and cooperated in tracking terrorist funds. China has also, however, condemned the notion of an “axis of evil” expressed by George Bush, and has expressed concern that the war in Iraq could morph into an effort to topple unfriendly regimes across the globe. Cooperation in some aspects of fighting terrorism has not fundamentally altered U.S.-China relations, Scobell concluded. “The underlying strategic view of each state,” he said, “remains deeply suspicious of each other’s intentions.” Scobell noted that his views at AU were expressed as an independent scholar and do not reflect the views of the U.S. Army. He is also an adjunct professor of political science at Dickinson College, also in Carlisle, Pa. |
