Terrorism In China is Concentrated in Uyghur Areas
Executive Summary
Problem: Terrorism in China is widely assumed to be minimal given the reach and control of the Chinese state. Whether that assumption holds – and where conflict does occur – has implications for understanding the relationship between state power, ethnic suppression, and political violence.
Approach: Global Terrorism Database (GTD) records for China (2010–2018) were mapped using QGIS to visualize the geographic distribution of terrorist attacks by type and lethality. Attack types were categorized and scaled to reveal spatial patterns that aggregate statistics obscure.
Insights: Contrary to the assumption of near-zero terrorism, attacks are geographically concentrated – and that concentration aligns directly with Uyghur-majority regions. The map makes visible what policy summaries flatten: political violence in China is not diffuse, it is targeted in space and tied to an indigenous people under documented state persecution.
Significance: The Uyghurs are one of 55 recognized ethnic groups in China, with origins in Central and East Asia around the Tarim Basin. Their genetic history reflects population movement along the Silk Road – a compelling case study in human variation and migration. Their contemporary political status has reached the global stage, with accusations of genocide documented by international observers including the US Holocaust Museum. Mapping terrorism data spatially reveals the geographic dimension of this conflict in a way that numbers alone cannot.
Key Findings
- Terrorism in China is not evenly distributed – attacks cluster in Uyghur-majority areas, contradicting the assumption that state control suppresses political violence uniformly.
- Armed assault and bombing/explosion account for the two dominant attack types; smaller categories (facility attack, hijacking, unarmed assault, hostage taking, assassination, unknown) were consolidated for visualization.
- Lethality varies across attack types and locations; kill counts range from 0 to 50 per event, with the highest-lethality events concentrated in the same geographic zones as attack frequency.
Research Question
Is terrorism in China geographically random, or does it concentrate in specific regions?
Research Answers
The map below shows the distribution of terrorist attacks across China from 2010 to 2018, with attack type distinguished by color and lethality scaled by point size.
Figure 1. Terrorist Attacks in China by Type and Lethality, 2010–2018
Interpretation: The geographic pattern is striking. Rather than being distributed across China’s vast territory, attacks concentrate in the northwest – the Xinjiang region, home to the Uyghur population. This spatial concentration holds across attack types and lethality levels, suggesting the pattern is not an artifact of a single incident type but reflects a systemic geographic dynamic. The assumption that China’s governmental structure suppresses terrorism uniformly does not hold in the data.
Study Design
Data Source: Global Terrorism Database (GTD), University of Maryland START Center – publicly available incident-level terrorism data.
Data Handling: Records filtered to China, 2010–2018. Two primary attack types retained as distinct categories: armed assault and bombing/explosion. Remaining categories (facility/infrastructure attack, hijacking, unarmed assault, hostage taking, assassination, unknown) collapsed into Other for visualization clarity. Lethality variable (nkill, count of individuals killed) scaled as log10(nkill)/4 to reduce size disparity across the 0–50 kill count range.
Analytical Approach:
- Downloaded and filtered GTD records for China (2010–2018)
- Categorized attack types; consolidated low-frequency categories into Other
- Applied log10 scaling to nkill to normalize point sizes for cartographic display
- Imported tabular data into QGIS; assigned coordinates from GTD lat/long fields
- Symbolized points by attack type (color) and scaled lethality (size)
- Composed final map layout with basemap, legend, and callouts in QGIS Print Layout
- Exported final map as JPEG
Projection: Web Mercator. Basemap: ESRI Gray (light). GWID: G30867171.
Project Resources
Repository: github.com/kchoover14/mapping-conflict-indigenous-china
Data: Global Terrorism Database (GTD) – publicly available from the University of Maryland START Center. Filtered to China, 2010–2018. Data are included in the geopackage (attribute layer).
Project Artifacts:
map-conflict-indigenous-china.jpeg– final map with layout applied (not reproducible from geopackage alone – see basemap note below)mapping-conflict-indigenous-china.gpkg– QGIS geopackage containing layers, symbology, and data
Basemap note: The ESRI Gray (light) basemap is an XYZ tile service and cannot be packaged into the geopackage. To reproduce the map with the original basemap, add a new XYZ tile connection in QGIS:
- Name: ESRI Gray (light)
- URL:
http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Canvas/World_Light_Gray_Base/MapServer/tile/{z}/{y}/{x} - CRS: EPSG:3857
- Min zoom: 0 / Max zoom: 20
License:
- Code and scripts © Kara C. Hoover, licensed under the MIT License.
- Data, figures, and written content © Kara C. Hoover, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Tools & Technologies
Tools: QGIS | Web Mercator projection | ESRI Gray (light) basemap
Expertise
Domain Expertise: geospatial analysis | analytical mapping | conflict data | indigenous rights | human biological variation | ethnic persecution
Transferable Expertise: Demonstrates the use of open-source geospatial tools to translate conflict databases into spatially legible evidence, with application to human rights monitoring, indigenous rights research, and policy contexts where geographic concentration of violence is analytically and politically significant.