Exercising Sovereignty China's 'Core Interests' and Unfinished National Unification

This paper applies ideas on sovereignty as a contested and variable set of practices in international politics to the People’s Republic of China’s declaration of ‘core interests’ in Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, with a particular focus on the Uyghurs of Xinjiang in the ‘post-9/11’ environment. While China’s claims to jurisdictional sovereignty in these areas are unrelenting, they continue to be contested in ways that have the potential to destabilize the Chinese state and the international relations of the region. ‘Core interests’ remain zones of unfinished or uncertain national integration and unification, requiring the regular demonstration and exercise of the state’s jurisdictional sovereignty, at times through political violence. In Xinjiang’s case the securitization of Uyghur separatism as part of the ‘global war on terrorism’ has intensified the state’s coercive exercise of sovereignty, increasing inter-communal violence between Han (Chinese) and ‘minority’ people and exacerbating serious problems of national unification.