China is strengthening cooperation with other countries in preventing home-grown terrorists from going to Syria and Afghanistan to join Islamic States (IS) and come back with enhanced terrorist skills, a group of Chinese academics said on Wednesday.
At a seminar held at the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA), Xing Guangcheng, director of Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said many terrorists from China, a large part of them from the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, are testing different routes of going abroad.
One of the route that they took more frequently in recent years are the one, which runs from Xinjiang to China's southern provinces such as Yunnan and Guangdong, to Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and then through Turkey to Iraq and Syria.
When they are stopped either in China before going abroad or in Southeast Asian countries and are convinced that they would never make it to the Mideast, they would very likely choose to make some desperate gestures and "do something big locally."
Many countries, including China, Vietnam and Thailand, have seen terrorist attacks of this nature in the past few years, Xing said.
China's law enforcement departments have beefed up cooperation with their counterparts in many Southeast Asian countries, which have been aware of the risks of the free flow of the so-called migrating jihadists.
Xing said China worries about the radicalization of local youth and is even more concerned with their travel to the Mideast to get terrorist training and coming back to pose bigger threat to the security of the society.
Apart from tightening border control to prevent their outflow and influx, China is counting on local communities in fighting against the local terrorists.
China's National Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism Law last year, providing the country with a legal framework to fight terrorism.
China understands that Australia and in fact the international community is faced with the threat of terrorism, Xing said. That's why China is cooperating with many experienced powers, such as Russia, the Europen Union and the United States, in combating terrorism.
"China's central government has put the livelihood of people of all ethnicities in Xinjiang at the center of its policy. A more stable society in Xinjiang would undoubtedly facilitate the economy to develop more rapidly," said Gao Jianlong, president of Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences.
Xing said Xinjiang, which is at the center of the Silk Road Economic Belt, would serve as a transport hub, as well as a trade and cultural center of the trade belt. With the infrastructure and a variety of industries established in the past 60 years, Xinjiang is well positioned to play a bigger role in the country's Belt and Road initiative.
Xing and the rest of the Chinese Xinjiang cultural exchange delegation will also hold talks with Chinese Australians in Sydney before heading for New Zealand later this week.
