Terrorism

Militaries from the two most populous nations on earth have been collaborating on anti-terror training. In December, China and India each sent 130 soldiers to take part in the 8th anti-terrorism joint exercise held in India.

China will move to “normalize” mass internment facilities in Xinjiang and open what Beijing calls education facilities in the region in the future, amid rising US-China clashes over the treatment of ethnic minorities in the western region. In a press conference on Monday, Shohrat Zakir, chairman of the Xinjiang government, took aim at foreign media and western governments, blaming them for distorting the image of China’s controversial counter-terrorism efforts in the predominately Muslim region, in particular its mass detention of Uygurs accused of harboring extremist ideas by the authorities. “The US is getting restless and has launched a smear campaign against Xinjiang,” he said. “But no f

China is paying for the construction of an anti-terrorist training camp on a narrow and hilly strip of land in northeastern Afghanistan. The new camp is located in the Wakhan Corridor, at the juncture of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and China. Over the past three years, China has been providing over $70 million of military aid to its South Asian neighbor. China’s People’s Liberation Army has the biggest military force in the world by number of soldiers. Its defense budget is the second-largest in the world and is growing, but it still spends much less than the Pentagon.   Minnie Chan, a senior military reporter for the South China Morning Post, broke the story of the new training camp.