ABSTRACT
China’s evolving use of military and paramilitary forces in Xinjiang is a key factor in understanding the counter-insurgency’s effectiveness. With its large endowment of political will, analyzed in the previous chapter, China undertook actions to counter the insurgency in Xinjiang ranging from direct use of the military to altering the region’s education and religion policies. The present chapter, assessing the changing use of force in society, is the first in a series of three chapters which together explore the tools through which China has attempted to counter Xinjiang’s insurgency. With each mechanism individually, and taken together as a whole campaign, China has implemented an overwhelmingly bottom-up approach.
