Roberts Sean The biopolitics of China s war on terror and the exclusion of the Uyghurs.pdf

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Critical Asian Studies
ISSN: 1467-2715 (Print) 1472-6033 (Online) Journal homepage:
The biopolitics of China’s “war on terror” and the
exclusion of the Uyghurs
Sean R. Roberts
To cite this article: Sean R. Roberts (2018) The biopolitics of China’s “war on
terror” and the exclusion of the Uyghurs, Critical Asian Studies, 50:2, 232-258, DOI:
10.1080/14672715.2018.1454111
To link to this article:
Published online: 22 Mar 2018.
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The biopolitics of China ’ s “ war on terror ” and the exclusion of
the Uyghurs
Sean R. Roberts
International Development Studies Program, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
ABSTRACT
This article provides an overview of People ’ s Republic of China (PRC)
counter-terrorism policies targeting Uyghurs since 2001 when the
state first asserted that it faced a terrorist threat from this
population. In reviewing these policies and their impact, it
suggests that the state has gradually isolated and excluded
Uyghurs from PRC society. Drawing on the writings of Michael
Foucault, it articulates this gradual exclusion of Uyghurs as an
expression of biopolitics where the Uyghur people as a whole
have come to symbolize an almost biological threat to society
that must be quarantined through surveillance, punishment, and
detention. Rather than suggesting that these impacts of China ’ s
“ war on terror ” coincide with the intent of state policy, the article
argues that they are inevitable outcomes of labeling a given
ethnic population as a terrorist threat in the age of the Global War
on Terror.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 6 December 2017
Accepted 13 March 2018
KEYWORDS
Uyghurs; terrorism; China;
Islam; biopolitics
Introduction
On November 29, 2001, just over two months after the September 11th attacks on the
United States, the government of the People ’ s Republic of China (PRC) released a docu-
ment entitled “ Terrorist Activities Perpetrated by ‘ Eastern Turkistan ’ Organizations and
their Ties with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, ” which asserted that there existed a
broad network of Uyghur terrorists which enjoyed international support and posed an
imminent threat to the security of China and the world. The document argued that this
network involved the participation of virtually every Uyghur human rights and self-deter-
mination advocacy group in the world and was financed by Osama bin Laden and Al-
Qaida. Additionally, it sought to explain the largest incidences of unrest or random vio-
lence in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China during the 1990s
as being premeditated terrorist attacks carried out by this previously unknown network.