How China Uses Informal Exports of Weapons to Isolate Xinjiang

Global Asia

When a trove of Chinese weapons were discovered in Gaza in January, the ritual denials were hardly convincing to veteran security analysts. Beijing has long used shadowy weapons exports to achieve strategic objectives, from Myanmar to the Middle East.

Maintaining friendships with Middle East countries and militant groups is one way Beijing keeps those entities from supporting any potential unrest among the Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, writes Bertil Lintner.
Published: June 2024 (Vol.19 No.2)

THE DISCOVERY of a huge cache of Chinese weapons in Gaza earlier this year has raised some important questions: How did the guns get there, and how tightly do the Chinese control the export of weapons manufactured by its many defense industries? And if the Chinese are aware of the final destination of the exports, why do they allow it to happen? The Chinese were quick to deny any knowledge of how the weapons had ended up with Hamas. Wu Qian, a government spokesperson, said at a press briefing in Beijing on Jan. 25: “China has always adopted a prudent and responsible attitude in arms exports.” The spokesperson went on to assert that China has “never provided any weapons” to conflict areas, including the war between Israel and Hamas. Only food, medical and other emergency aid were allowed, he said.

It would be hard to convince any serious security analyst to believe these claims. Vast quantities of Chinese weapons have been pouring into conflict zones such as northern Myanmar for years. Chinese guns, including FN-6 surface-to-air missiles, have been found in the Syrian civil war, and the militant Hezbollah in Lebanon is known to have Chinese weapons also. In Gaza, Chinese military equipment seized by the Israel Defense Forces include assault rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition and telescopic sights. British daily newspaper The Telegraph quoted in its Jan. 5 issue an Israeli intelligence officer as saying that “this is top-grade weaponry and communications technology, stuff that Hamas didn’t have before and especially on such a large scale.”

In fact, the Chinese not only know how the hardware ended up there, but, for political reasons, they turn a blind eye to such weapons traffic. According to a Western security analyst: “The Uyghur separatists remain a key security concern for China and they appear to be trying to neutralize support for them from potential ideologically and religiously-similar groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as well as the Taliban by allowing Chinese weapons to be provided via Iran and Pakistan so long as the groups don’t then provide material or ideological support to the East Turkestan independence movement.”

Security concerns guide Beijing’s informal weapons exports as well as its overt ties with the Islamic world. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region — which nationalists call East Turkestan — covers an area of more than 1.6 million square kilometers in northwestern China and is the traditional home of the Uyghurs, who speak a Turkic language and are predominantly Muslim.

Xinjiang, which literally means “new border area,” was the name given to the region when it was taken over by China’s Qing emperors in the mid-18th century. But it was only after the nationalist revolution in 1911-12, which overthrew the last imperial dynasty, that the new republican leaders tried to turn China into a more modern state with a functioning central government and fixed borders. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China, sought mostly unsuccessfully, to establish a “union of nationalities,” which he identified as Han, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan and Uyghur. Xinjiang, however, saw several rebellions against Chinese rule, including the proclamation of the short-lived East Turkestan Republic in 1933. In 1934, the Soviet Union invaded the area and it was then ruled by local as well as Chinese warlords.

As Mao Zedong’s communists saw it at the time, it was their task to unite the fragmented country, and, in the beginning, they were open-minded when it came to the question of ethnic minorities. The first “state constitution” of the Communist Party of China, which was adopted in 1931 as a blueprint for a future, communist-ruled China, stipulated that “all Mongolians, Tibetans, Miao, Koreans, and others living on the territory of China shall enjoy the full right to self-determination, i.e. they may either join the Union of Chinese Soviets or secede from it and form their own state as they may prefer.”

This policy lasted until the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed on Oct. 1, 1949. But respect for ethnic rights was still adhered to and the new China consisted of autonomous regions, including Xinjiang, and even autonomous counties in some provinces. The communist authorities recognized at least 55 ethnic minorities besides the Han majority. It could be argued that this was a showcase system where the majority Han were the dominant force, while leaving some space for minority languages and the preservation of local cultures. But it was nevertheless a recognition of the fact that China is a multi-ethnic country.

Rising Human Rights Abuses

Now, President Xi Jinping’s government is promoting a less tolerant pan-Chinese identity known as zhonghua, while the Han, or Mandarin, language previously known as hanyu (“the Han language”) has become guoyu, or “the national language.” Part of the drive to turn China into a single nation-state is to replace teaching in minority languages in schools with guoyu — and that has sparked protests in Korean- and Mongol-speaking areas. Uyghurs as well as Tibetans have fared even worse and been forced to attend “vocational training programs,” which the Chinese government claims are for educating “rural surplus workers” and skill training for “poverty alleviation.” But according to official Chinese documents, those programs also aim at “diluting the negative influence of religion.” And those “programs” are more than lessons in a classroom. As many as two million Uyghurs are believed to be interned in heavily-guarded camps from which it is almost impossible to escape.

In July 2019, China’s State Council issued a white paper titled “Historical Matters Concerning Xinjiang” in which it claimed that the region “has long been an inseparable part of Chinese territory” and that its Uyghur population has been “formed through a process of migration and integration.” They are part of “Chinese civilization” and “Islam is neither the indigenous nor the sole belief system” of the Uyghurs, the paper said. Internment in camps for “vocational training,” therefore, has been a humiliating experience. Attempts to “assimilate” Uyghurs include being forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, which is against their religious beliefs, and to celebrate Chinese Lunar New Year.

On Aug. 31, 2022, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) concluded in a report that “allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention” in the camps “are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.” People have been arrested on “purported grounds of counter-terrorism and counter-‘extremism.’” Forced separation of children from their families has “caused particular suffering to affected Uyghur, Kazakh and other predominantly Muslim minority families.” In essence, China has committed “serious human rights violations” against the Uyghur and “other predominantly Muslim communities.” There are also Muslim Kazakhs, Kirghizs, Uzbeks and Tajiks in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government responded angrily to the report, saying that it is “based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces” in the United States and other Western countries. China is only “deradicalizing” militants, the authorities claimed. In its response to the OHCHR, Beijing lists alleged terrorist attacks carried out by what in other Chinese statements are described as “separatists, religious extremists and terrorists.” A 2001 Chinese report alleged that “Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan have provided the ‘East Turkistan’ terrorist organizations with equipment and financial resources and trained their personnel.” Liu Xuxi, a special representative on African affairs, did not mention Xinjiang specifically in a statement issued on March 28, 2023 but he referred to “terrorist activities” carried out by Boko Haram, Al-Shabab, the Islamic State, and Al-Qaeda to show that the terrorist threat is universal.

But the movement for a free East Turkestan bears little or no resemblance to those groups. China has in official documents named 40 pro-East Turkestan entities located around the world. Most of them were unknown in the outside world and those that could be identified seemed to be local groups in foreign countries lobbying for the East Turkestan cause. But there is no doubt that there is widespread resentment and anger with what many locals perceive as the Chinese occupation of their homeland. The only really violent incident, though, occurred in July 2009. According to the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, it began with a confrontation between Uyghur migrant workers and Han Chinese at a toy factory in Guangdong Province in southeastern China that left 10 Uyghurs dead.

International Silence

The incident caused anger in Xinjiang, where Uyghurs demonstrated against the government’s handling of the affair. It soon turned anti-Han, and approximately 192 people, of whom two-thirds were Han, were killed and thousands more injured on both sides. The anti-Han sentiment was also sparked by what the Uyghurs see as Han colonization of their homeland. Due to migration from other parts of China, the Uyghurs today make up officially only 45 percent of the 25.8 million population. Uyghurs living in exile believe that the actual figure of Han settlers could be much higher than that.

There is growing resistance to Chinese rule but, according to the Combating Terrorism Center, “Uyghur militancy does not comprise a monolith — let alone a radical Islamist monolith — characterized by Beijing… Overall, the radical Islamist strain of Uyghur militancy constitutes a fringe among Uyghur militants, not the dominant trend claimed by Beijing.” In July 2016, however, Britain listed one of the groups, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, as a terrorist organization and the US viewed until October 2020 the supposedly affiliated Turkestan Islamic Party as terrorists as well. There is an East Turkestan Government-in-Exile based in Washington, DC and a number of other advocacy groups. Critics of Chinese policies argue that China is deliberately overestimating the importance and capabilities of the East Turkestan groups in order to justify its suppression of Uyghur culture and identity and campaigns to have them absorbed into the Chinese mainstream.

But, among China’s security services, fear of an uprising in Xinjiang remain, and their worst-case scenario is a link-up between Uyghur dissidents and what could be seen as like-minded groups and individuals abroad. China, therefore, has used its economic clout to pre-empt countries and organizations in the Islamic world from providing any support, or even sympathy, for the sad state of the Uyghurs. And those efforts have been successful. In Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and the Arab world there are frequent protests against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, India’s Kashmir policies, and even the plight of Muslim communities in southern Thailand and the Philippines. But few, if any, have galvanized around the Uyghurs and their dire situation in Xinjiang.

Malaysia’s then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said in an interview with Turkish media in July 2019 that condemning China over its treatment of the Uyghurs “would not achieve anything… We do what we can. We don’t knock our heads against a stone wall simply because it is there.” Malaysia’s then opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, said in September 2018 that the reason why governments in Muslim-majority states have not spoken out about the Uyghur issue is that, “They’re scared. Nobody wants to say anything.”

After becoming prime minister in 2022, Anwar has spoken out about the situation in Gaza and even said that Malaysia will maintain ties with Hamas and “not punish” the group. He has also urged media outlets not to describe Hamas fighters as “militants,” comparing the group with the African National Congress, which fought to end apartheid in South Africa. But he has said nothing about the Uyghurs. Instead, he complained in a speech in Melbourne, Australia, on March 4 this year about pressure from the US and its allies to take sides in regional rivalries with China: “Right now, China seems to be the leading investor into Malaysia… [we] do not have a problem with China.”

Former and now jailed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan repeatedly defended China on the Uyghur issue, as he did on July 1, 2021: “Our interaction with Chinese officials, that version of what is happening in Xinjiang is completely different to the version of what we hear from the Western media and the Western governments… Because we have our very strong relationship with China, and because we have a relationship based on trust, so we actually accept the Chinese version. What they say about their programs in Xinjiang, we accept it.”

Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina, has also defended China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. Saudi Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman said when he visited China in February 2019, that “we respect and support China’s rights to take counter-terrorism and de-extremism measures to safeguard national security.” Uyghurs who have made it to Saudi Arabia have even been arrested on unclear grounds.

Making Friends with Weapons

In its attempts to make sure that the Uyghurs do not get any support from the Muslim world, China has gone as far as befriending the Taliban in Afghanistan. Since they returned to power in August 2021, Western countries severed their formal links with Kabul. China, though, maintains diplomatic relations with the Taliban government and provided Afghanistan with aid after an earthquake in June 2022. Chinese companies are also looking into investment opportunities in Afghanistan, primarily in mining. The reason for China’s ties to Kabul is obvious. In the past, the Turkestan Islamic Party did have training camps in Afghanistan, but those were closed following the 2021 Taliban takeover as the new regime sought aid from China.

Apart from getting governments in the Muslim world on its side, Beijing has also been trying hard to make sure that Islamic militants remain neutral in what it sees as its internal affairs. And there could be no better way than to make the militants at least partly — and directly and indirectly — dependent on Chinese-made weaponry. But that can only be done through a third party, and, in the Middle East, that is Iran, Beijing’s most trusted ally in the region.

Reuters reported on Oct. 31, 2023, that “Hezbollah’s main supporter and weapons supplier is Iran. Experts say the Islamic Republic sends arms to the group by land via Iraq and Syria, both Middle East countries where Iran has close ties and influence. Many of the group’s weapons are Iranian, Russian or Chinese models.” Hezbollah is known to have 107mm artillery rockets derived from the multiple rocket launcher. China has supplied these to both Iran and Syria, who in turn produced their own versions, and then transferred them to Hezbollah, whose arsenal also includes the Chinese-developed Type 81 rocket, which can be fitted with a cluster-munitions warhead.

Whether made under co-operation agreements with the Iranians, or actually manufactured in China, Beijing must be aware of those weapons transfers, and has done nothing to stop them. Beijing’s official Global Times published on March 13, 2013 photos from a Free Syrian Army website showing a Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile downing two government helicopters. The Chinese, who back the Syrian government, may not have been entirely pleased with this but seized the opportunity to write that “such publicity will raise the image of Chinese defense products on the international arms trade market,” and “the confirmed sightings of surface-to-air FN-6 missiles developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation sparked a wave of online interest among Chinese military enthusiasts and observers.”

A look at Myanmar, where non-state actors for years have been recipients of massive supplies of Chinese-made weapons, can shed some light on how convoluted the deliveries can be. During the decade 1968–78, the Chinese provided the insurgent Communist Party of Burma (CPB) with more aid than any other communist movement outside Indochina. Automatic rifles, machine-guns, mortars, recoilless rifles, radio equipment, jeeps, trucks and petrol were sent across the border. It could be argued that this was during the hardline communist period when China did not even try to hide its efforts to export revolution. But then, in 1989, the hill tribe rank-and-file of the CPB mutinied and formed the United Wa State Army (UWSA) and before long established a cordial relationship with China, which for geostrategic reasons wanted to maintain the foothold the CPB once had provided inside Myanmar.

Today, the UWSA is better armed than the CPB ever was — but the transfer of military hardware is now done in more elaborate ways. The transfer of Chinese military equipment to UWSA has included HN-5A Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, or MANPADs, heavy machine-guns, automatic rifles, mortars, artillery, armored fighting vehicles, and other sophisticated military equipment. Among the most recent deliveries are FN-6 MANPADs, 105mm recoilless guns, 122mm howitzers, 107mm surface-to-surface free-flight missiles, Xinxing (New Star) wheeled armored personnel carriers, and even Chinese-made weaponized drones.

This is not the kind of equipment that could be supplied by some local Chinese army commander in Yunnan. The deliveries were almost certainly directed from the highest level in Beijing, and to disguise the origin are often shipped into the UWSA’s area via Laos. Asia Times reported on Jan. 28, 2020, that “official end-user certificates issued to cover exports by state-run manufacturers such as North China Industries Group Corporation (NORINCO) and China National Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation (responsible for FN-6 foreign sales) have listed the Lao Defense Ministry as the recipient.” The hardware is sent to Laos, and then shipped across the Mekong River to an area on the Myanmar side controlled by another former CPB force and UWSA ally. From there, the weaponry goes west by truck to the UWSA’s own area. The UWSA, in turn, shares the weaponry with other ethnic armed organizations in Myanmar.

Getting to Hamas

How the Chinese weapons are funneled through Iran to its Hezbollah and Hamas allies is less clear, but it most certainly also involves middlemen and forged documentation, if any documentation at all. For Israel, this is a very serious matter. The Israeli intelligence officer quoted by The Telegraph also said after the discovery of Chinese weapons in the hands of Hamas: “This has come as a big surprise as before the war, relations [with China] were very good… and the question is, did it come directly from China to Hamas or not?” China has not condemned the Oct. 7 attack from Gaza into Israel and, in another move to placate Hamas, the Chinese have allowed militant outfits to have an unofficial delegation based in Beijing. But, even so, arms being shipped indirectly via Iran is still the most likely scenario, according to security analysts.

China is unlikely to replace the US as the main outside power in Middle Eastern conflicts. But, by deploying its usual multi-layered policy maneuvers, China has gotten what it wants. Through its convoluted dealings with militants, China is now a player to be reckoned with — and, at the same time, it has improved its standing in the region by facilitating the April 2023 first-ever talks between the foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. China has secured its coveted position as “everybody’s friend” in a situation where there is a regional and even international backlash over US support for Israel. The benefit for China? There will be no support for the Uyghurs from radical Islamists — or governments — in the Middle East.