The impact of China-Central Asia relations on Xinjiang Uyghur Muslim riots

Due to Xinjiang Uyghur Muslim riots escalated in recent years, the issue of cracking down of three evil forces: terrorism, separatism, and extremism in China has become a topic of worldwide interest. However, the complexity of the issue urges China to not only care about the internal obstacles but also concentrate on a big picture, a regional solution to calm the storm. This paper focuses on two key sub-topics, one is to explore the reason why Xinjiang Uyghur Muslim uprisings got motivated and the other is to assess whether the closer China-Central Asia co-operations help ease the tension. Moreover, this research attempts to investigate the other external players involved in Uyghur turmoil. The study will employ the qualitative method to analyze how Sino-Central Asia relations play a role in the process of countering East Turkistan force and ease the Xinjiang tension. The analysis and argument are based on institutionalism of Neo-liberalism to examine the impacts of China's foreign policies towards Central Asia, especially the institute of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), as well as the constructivism theory to analyze the norms, ideas that shape the political attitudes of external players on Xinjiang issue. This paper argued that in order to prevent the further sprawl of the East Turkestan forces and maintain the regional stability and peace, China will continue to work with Central Asian countries in terms of counter-three evil forces through the SCO. Finally, the research will explore the development and challenges that SCO will face and tries to analyze its impacts on the solution of Xinjiang Uyghur Muslim riots in the near future.