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Until rather recently, China was able to hew closely to Deng Xiaoping's advice to maintain a low profile internationally, particularly in regions of the world salient to the most active and dangerous international terrorist organizations. This limited foreign policy had the unintended-though surely welcome-consequence of keeping China off the radar of the international jihadist movement. Highly capable groups such as al-Qaeda neither directly threatened the country nor forged deep alliances with indigenous Muslim terrorist groups aligned against the Chinese state. Chinese policymakers have also had notable success limiting both the volume and effectiveness of terrorist attacks on their own soil, but this relatively calm state of affairs is under increasing pressure and is rapidly changing for several reasons.
First, China's global economic and political emergence has introduced an international jihadist element into what had been a largely isolated domestic movement. Economic growth and great-power ambitions have propelled China onto the international stage in search of resources, market access, and prestige. The growing Chinese footprint in the Middle East and North Africa is of particular concern since these regions are those most hotly contested by extremist jihadi organizations that consider foreign incursion into Arab lands an especially egregious offense.1 Second, signals of increasing acceptance of a stakeholder role in the global economic and political order-such as China's ascension to the World Trade Organization, the Beijing Olympics, and Chinese cooperation in security efforts such as the antipiracy campaign off the cost of Somalia- increase the extent to which those opposed to that order see the country as a legitimate target for terrorist attacks. Where China was once viewed as a patron of liberation movements (including those active in Palestine) and a counterbalance to the United States and the Soviet Union, current jihadist propaganda characterizes it as inheriting the designation of "head of the snake" from the United States.2 Third, Chinas ongoing security crackdown in Xinjiang has forced the most militant Uyghur separatists into volatile neighboring countries, such as Pakistan, where they are forging strategic alliances with, and even leading, jihadist factions affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The result is cross-fertilization between previously isolated movements, leading to the diffusion of tactics and capabilities that have the potential to substantially increase...