China arrested 27,164 criminal suspects last year in the volatile Xinjiang and authorities have beefed up security in the violence-prone region which borders PoK and Afghanistan by deploying more troops, making it the country’s largest provincial-level military region. 

The military reinforcement comes against a backdrop of the US troops pulling out of Afghanistan and extremists launching terrorist attacks on civilian targets, state-run China Daily reported. 

Xinjiang, the province with majority of Uygur Muslims is experiencing most violent attacks in by East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an Al-Qaeda backed outfit which became active in the backdrop of unrest between Uygurs and Han migrants. 

…“Southeast Asian countries, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, have become popular transit points for Chinese nationals travelling to jihadist hotspots,” Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University said.