China Attacks Escalate as Militants Raise Stakes: Analysts

AFP

07 May 2014

A series of dramatic attacks in Chinese public spaces signals a worrying new attempt by militants from mainly Muslim Xinjiang to raise the stakes in response to Beijing’s heavy security measures, analysts say.

Violence, long concentrated against local security authorities and in street rioting, has since late last year been aimed at high-profile targets both inside and outside the resource-rich region.

A fiery vehicle crash in Tiananmen Square — symbolic heart of the Chinese state — last October was followed by a horrific knife attack in March at a railway station in the southern city of Kunming in which 29 died and 143 were wounded.

… Rohan Gunaratna, professor of security studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, welcomed Xi’s comments as long overdue.

“China now faces a very significant threat from terrorism emanating from the ideology and also by the training infrastructure that the Turkestan Islamic Party has established in North Waziristan” in Pakistan’s tribal areas, he said.

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