China’s Soft War on Terror: Space-Making Processes of Securitization (Routledge Critical Terrorism Studies) - Softcover

Liu, Tianyang

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0367764822 ISBN 13: 9780367764821

Publisher: Routledge, 2023

Synopsis

This book explores how the Chinese government reasserts its control and management of public spaces as part of its overall counter-terrorism strategy.

The work focuses primarily on the banal and alternative forms that China’s ‘war on terror’ takes: the everyday, non-military, socio-economic and spatio-material. It presents three different cases of control associated with the state’s effort to manage material, social and digital public spaces as remedies to terrorism and ethnic unrest in China: the redevelopment project of Kashgar―the ‘home’ of Uyghur culture―from 2001 to 2017; the forging of local partnerships with potential agents (i.e. the local cadres and imams in Xinjiang) as part of the process of implementing counter-terrorism policies; and an online campaign about international terrorism that appeared on Sina Weibo. Using securitization theory as a theoretical framework, the book establishes links between human geography and critical security studies and advances the understanding of non-confrontational forms of resistance in China. It also focuses attention on the binary relationship between the securitizing agency of the state and the counter-securitization agency of ‘terrorists’, while also exploring the manner in which other societal forces interact with these processes.

This book will be of interest to students of critical terrorism studies, Chinese studies, human geography, and security studies.

About this title

About the Author

Tianyang Liu is an associate professor in the School of Politics and Public Administration at Wuhan University, China.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367764822
• ISBN 13: 9780367764821
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200