The data selection mechanism in this thesis was designed to examine China’s counter- terrorism discourse, policy and practice, aiming at understanding the key linkages between its counter-terrorism approaches and its quest for legitimacy. The primary aim of this thesis is to examine the counter-terrorism discourse. This is supplemented by a discussion of how the policy and practice are also informed by the quest for legitimacy that is embedded in the discourse. The analysis of the counter-terrorism discourse is based on doctrine documents, articles and commentaries in the
mainstream media. White papers such as “The History and Development of Xinjiang” (The Information Office of the State Council 2003) are also used to illustrate the links between China’s counter-terrorism approaches and the ways in which the history of Xinjiang is presented. Responses of the Foreign Ministry spokespersons and speeches of political elites are important sources in regard to how current political elites frame the issue of terrorism. As official documents tend to be succinct, some of the links are elaborated in more detail in the commentaries and scholarly works. For example, the
official discourse does not draw a very explicit link between the colour revolutions in the Middle East, but the scholarly works, especially in terms of political implications and their policy recommendations, clearly indicate the anxiety among the political and academic circles about the Western intervention in the democratisation process in China.
The process of frame alignment can be divided into 3 overlapping phases – the
friend/enemy grouping, mobilisation and prescription. The texts are analysed for their underlying assumptions regarding who the enemy is, who is mobilised, and what should be done. The friend/enemy grouping enables the CCP to make decisions on the nature of the violence, and take measures accordingly. The mass mobilisation,
inherited from the Mao era, is designed to help the CCP maintain public support and reduce the cost of credibility in the face of human rights violations in counter-
terrorism practice. The alignment process, in turn, reinforces the integration model that prioritises unity over diversity.
Before the 9/11 attacks and before the CCP coined the term “three forces”, political unrest was usually labelled as a “counterrevolution” (Tanner and Bellacqua 2016). The Chinese public were not familiar with the notion of “terrorism”. The reference to “hostile forces”, the “West” and “ulterior motives” helps the public to link the new term “terrorism” with the old narratives that the CCP has always been using to make sense of the conflicts that have taken place within Chinese terrorises.
Policy documents and the academic interpretations of these documents are used to explain how the official discourse of counter-terrorism is translated into practice. As discussed in Section 3.1, the discourse is used to describe the actors and the acts and make sense of the nature of the attacks. In contrast, policy documents show how diagnostic framing is translated into prognostic framing. These documents are important to analyse the ostensible disjuncture between the counter-terrorism policies and counter-terrorism discourse. The CCP adopts a developmental approach to security, which assumes that security problems can be solved by economic
development. However, this assumption is not always explicated in many of the de- radicalisation policies. Integration, economic and education policies are not linked directly with the root causes of terrorism in the official counter-terrorism discourse. The examination of the policy documents in this thesis indicates that many of the development policies are closely inter-linked with the considerations for stability and security.
In addition to the discourse and policy, the thesis also examines how the counter- terrorism practice reflects the CCP’s struggle between efficacy and justice. As a single- party state, the CCP’s counter-terrorism practice is seldom criticised within China.
Therefore, this thesis draws on reports and statements from the US, the UK, the European Union, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch in regard to their criticisms of China’s counter-terrorism practice. The triangulation of sources based on Chinese official sources, Uyghur dissidents and the international community provides information about the different ways in which they interpret violent incidents. For instance, the CCP frames the Urumqi Riots in 2009 as terrorist attacks (Xinhua 2009c). Rebiya Kadeer, the leader of the Uyghur dissident community, asserts that the incidents started as a peaceful protest (Kadeer 2009). When reports in the mainstream media in the West favour the dissident group, the CCP accuses the “West” of maintaining double standards in regard to “terrorism”.
This thesis identifies a large number of Chinese-language sources to illustrate the key linkages between China’s counter-terrorism discourse and its quest for legitimacy. The Chinese-language documents include the Anti-Terrorism Law, policy documents of local governments, and propaganda materials.14 They are supplemented with statistics
from the national and local Bureau of Statistics of China. Except a few political speeches and some of the national level policies, many of these documents do not come with an English translation. Even when there is an English version, the meaning of the term might be compromised. In some cases, the English version of an official text is provided by the official media. To make it more accessible, the English version not only paraphrases the text, but also alters the language to cater for an
international audience. The friend/enemy dichotomy is toned down to avoid causing resentment among the “Western” audience. In some cases, the translation is
inaccurate. For example, sangu shili is translated as “three evils” (see Roney 2013; Aris 2009) while “shili” per se does not contain the same pejorative connotation that “evil” does.15 The translation of “evil” distorts the degree of objectivity of the official
discourse of terrorism. In order to mitigate the limitations of using translated texts, this thesis analyses the original texts published on Chinese websites.
In addition, using original texts allows the researcher to examine the symbolic meaning of a metaphor against historical continuities. For example, Xi’s metaphor of terrorists as rats (Xinhua 2014b) can be better understood in the Chinese context. The collective memory of killing rats during the political movement “Eliminating the Four Pests” encourages the participation of the people in the War on Terror. Linking counter-terrorism with a past experience of killing rats helps to make sense of terrorism and reduce the fear caused by it.
14 Chinese policy documents are usually titled opinions, regulations, ordinances, measures, provisions according to the different legal effects.
The criteria used for the selection of data are listed below:
• whether it provides an official account of an event or counter-terrorism generally;
• whether it provides an official commentary in mainstream media (the official commentaries of news agencies often appears without an author, thereby representing the political stance of the agency);
• whether it provides a counter-terrorism or de-radicalisation narrative that is part of the master narrative;
• whether it contains any labels related to terrorism (e.g. “hostile forces”); • whether it addresses the socio-economic grievances of the communities that
might be affected by the counter-terrorism strategy;
• whether it responds to the international criticisms about the impact of counter-terrorism on civil liberty;
• whether it offers an interpretation of the current policies or policy recommendation;
• whether it shows different perceptions of the security threat between central and local governments and between the Uyghur and Han.
This non-random sampling mechanism was designed to focus on the perceptions of the CCP and Chinese officials. This thesis seeks to expose the logic of friend and enemy in China’s counter-terrorism discourse, policy and practice. Commentaries and academic sources supplement the government statements, which tend to be general and succinct. Some academic articles have been written by police officers or the researchers working at a police college. Their writings are important data to analyse in terms of the reproduction of the official discourse and interpretations that shed light on the underlying assumptions of the official counter-terrorism discourse.
The selection of the Chinese official sources was based on the consideration of the monopoly of the voice of the state media. According to the “iron rule” of Chinese media, reports on sensitive issues such as terrorism must cite official sources (see H. Shao and Du 2006). The ways in which terrorist incidents are reported are
monopolised by the major state-owned media such as Xinhua, People’s Daily, China
Daily, Huanqiu (also known as Global Times), China News Service, China Radio
International (CRI), China Central Television (CCTV), CPC News, Takungpao, Fenghuang
(the Phoenix) and Tianshanwang.16 News agencies must follow the order from higher
16 CPC News is an official website founded in 2006. The website serves as an authoritative platform that publicises information and archives about the CCP. Takungpao (大公报) is a left-wing newspaper published in Hong Kong under the leadership of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
levels, speaking with one voice (P. Lu 2006, 7). As a result, the reports on the same incidents are highly repetitive. These reports were tracked down to the original reports by the major state-owned media, and repetitive reports by other commercial news agencies such as Sina or NTES have been removed from the data.17
The data selection also involved considerations regarding the authenticity of the sources. This thesis borrows Michael Swaine’s categorisation of sources.
Authoritative: sources that are explicitly “speaking for the regime” (Swaine 2012, 1), including the Information Office of the State Council, Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Civil Affairs, Supreme Court, Supreme People's Procuratorate, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of National Defence of the People's Republic of China. People’s Daily and CPC News are authoritative as they represent the official views explicitly. Interviews with government officials are also considered authoritative.
Quasi-authoritative: sources that indirectly and implicitly represent the official view. Anonymous articles and commentaries appearing in the state media are considered quasi-authoritative in the sense that they are intended to represent the view of the media and are usually written or approved by senior editors.
Non-authoritative: low-level commentaries and signed articles appearing in the state media. They do not stand for the official view as these sources tend to be more explicitly nationalist. Commentaries published on Huanqiu are examples of radically nationalist views, but they provide important information on how the friend/enemy distinction is embedded in the official discourse of terrorism.
Authoritative sources are given more weight in understanding the CCP’s official view. Quasi-authoritative sources are less representative of the official view, but the commentaries provide more insights into political elites’ rationale. Non-authoritative sources do not stand for the official view, and are thus weighed even less in terms of authority. Constrained by the iron rule, non-authoritative sources seldom challenge the authoritative sources. However, they offer a broad spectrum of diverse reactions to explain, interpret and defend the authoritative sources, which helps to analyse how intellectuals reproduce the official discourse of terrorism.
Occasionally local government officials and scholars seek to reflect on the existing policies, but their voice is not strong enough to be noticed in a broader context in which the state is keen to demonstrate the “achievements” of its counter-terrorism
Tianshanwang is a local state-own website in Xinjiang, co-founded by the Propaganda Department of XUAR and People’s Daily.
policy. More often different sources are in line with the official view, the difference lies only in the degree of the alignment. For example, local governments are required to adjust the policies made at the central level so that they are appropriate to the local conditions. Under pressure to demonstrate competence, local governments would come up with harsher regulations. This observation is best exemplified in the
Ordinances on de-radicalisation in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is
considerably harsher than the Anti-Terrorism Law, due to the ban on a large number of activities among the Uyghur community.
The use of quantitative data involves considerations of the limitations of basic facts. Taking the number of foreign fighters as an example, it is almost impossible to identify the “real” number based on the triangulation of reports from the CCP (around 300 combatants), scholars (20 to 30 people), Syria’s ambassador to China (around 5,000 Uyghurs) and non-governmental organisations (114 fighters). The number of foreign fighters has been manipulated to the extent that the claims that the numbers are used to support are more important than the number per se. Some Uyghur dissidents have accused the CCP of exaggerating the number to justify suppression, citing Uyghur expert Sean Robet’s estimation of “20 to 30”, while others accuse the CCP of suppression, which has led to 5,000 Uyghurs fleeing China, citing the Syria’s ambassador to China. This highlights the importance of investigating the political context in which the number is discussed.
Using qualitative data raises some questions regarding the objectivity of the data. From an interpretivist perspective, this thesis does not claim to pursue absolute “objective” knowledge about the counter-terrorism discourse. Rather, it seeks to understand the political context in which concepts and ideas are embedded. As Jackson (2006, 3) argues, “discourses are never neutral or objective; they are always an exercise in social power – the power to ascribe right and wrong, knowledge and falsehood, and the limits of the reasonable”. As the data for this thesis is highly political and ideological, it is important to differentiate the “knowledge” obtained from patriotic education and the knowledge that has been tested. This research does not seek to eliminate all of the personal values of the researcher from the enquiry. Rather, the researcher reflects upon her subjectivity and maintains vigilance regarding the impact of the subjectivity on the outcome of the research. In doing so, the
researcher aims at minimising the bias caused by personal experience.
The researcher received 13 years of education in China, during which she participated in school trips to the patriotism education bases. The impact of personal experience on the researcher has two dimensions. First, the political education relies
Inevitably, the Chinese culture, which prioritises collective interests, has partly shaped her perception of the relationship between state security and civil liberties. Second, the monopoly of the official interpretation of the social reality means that China’s political education is not under pressure of competing with alternative social and political theories. As a result, the textbooks repeat the conclusion, without addressing the alternative theories. To mitigate this problem, the researcher attended training on research methods and read extensively on alternative political theories before making the decision regarding the methodology for this thesis. It was decided that critical theories are particularly helpful to examine the political context in which China’s counter-terrorism discourse is embedded.
Identifying the impact of personal experience and values helps minimise their influence on the objectivity of this research. In addition, personal experience is also helpful in identifying the linkages between China’s counter-terrorism discourse, policy and practice and its quest for legitimacy and historical continuities.