Terrorism In China is Concentrated in Uyghur Areas

Abstract

The Uyghur people opf NW China have cast onto the world stage as many human rights watch groups accuse China of crimes against humanity and genocide. A map of terrorist activity in China indicates that more armed assualts, bombings, and other acts occur in Xinjiang, the home of the Uyghur ethnic minority living in NW China.

The Problem

The Uyghurs are one of 55 ethnic group living within the political boundaries of modern-day China. Their origins are from Central and East Asia, generally around the Tarim Basin. Their political status in China has escalated to the global stage with accusations against China of attempted genocide. The US Holocost Museum presents personal stories of Chinese Persecution against the Uyghurs including identify-based persecution, mass detention, surveillance, efforced sterilization, forced labor, and forced assimilation.

The Data

The data are from the Global Terrorism Database for China (2010-2018) using the variables attacktype_text and nkill. There were two main attack types, armed assault and bombing/explosion. The remaining smaller categories (facility/infrastructure attack, hijacking, unarmed assault, hostage taking, assassination, unknown) were collapsed into the category Other for visualization purposes. The nkill variable is a count of individuals killed by the attack. Each of the three types of terrorist attacks are uniquely colored then sized by number of individuals killed. Because the kill rate range is 0-50, the use of count data created massive size disparity. I scaled the variable by taking the log10nkill/4. Projection: Web Mercator Basemap: ESRI Gray (light) GWID: G30867171

Mapping the Problem

Map of Terrorism Activity in China