Terrorist arrests just tip of the iceberg

• Source: Global Times
• [21:46 June 30 2010]
• Comments

Since the July 5 incident last year, the local authorities heightened security and emphasized monitoring terrorist activities. That worked.

Another reason is that most of the locals there are still living a hard life. They want to work and make some money and make their living easier.

What the government is doing by investing in Xinjiang and promoting its tourism has greatly helped the local residents. Therefore, one side is the terrorists who come and destroy everything, and the other side is the government who is doing their best to help. Who are the ordinary people going to turn to for help? The answer is clear.

In general, the security situation in Xinjiang has got better. But what may be being plotted and planned is unknown. In an area with lots of conflicts in terms of religion, belief and money, there will be a lot of problems that we cannot anticipate.

GT: How is China cooperating with other countries in terms of depth and progress at the moment?

Li: In general it has been going well and has made a lot of progress. The progress can be seen in various reports with their leaders of some terrorist organiza-tions being killed or captured in other countries. Some of the terrorists have been extradited back to China in the last few years, which severely weakened their power.

There are problems too. One is that even though most of the Chinese terrorist groups in China are based in foreign countries, they manage to keep low key and manage to escape the monitoring of the authorities there. For example, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, although the Chinese government has been working together with the authorities on an official level, to completely get rid of the terrorists there is going to take a lot of time and cannot be achieved easily.