“We should not have double standards,” said then-foreign ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao on September 18, 2001.

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During the Baren riot, hundreds of Uygur militants and the Chinese People’s Armed Police (PAP) fired at each other, with more than 20 people killed.

Other major groups – the East Turkestan Liberation Organisation, the World Uygur Youth Congress and the Turkestan Press Information Centre – were established in the 1990s. From 1990 to 2001, according to official government figures, they conducted more than 200 attacks, killed 162 people and wounded 440, while police handled 6,328 members from 503 groups. The four groups made China’s first wanted list, announced in 2003.

But in the aftermath of September 11 the Chinese government reacted on various fronts, launching the National Counterterrorism Coordination Group in October, amending criminal laws in December, adding a number of terrorism offences, and formally established the Counterterrorism Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security in February, 2002.

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As early as October 2001, Beijing joined a series of United Nations anti-terrorism treaties and began to seek regional and bilateral cooperation with other countries.

On its founding on June 15, 2001, China and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan had already signed the Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism – the threats the members later being referred to as the “three forces”.

“9/11 was a great development opportunity for the SCO,” said Li Lifan, a Central Asian affairs expert with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

The SCO in 2004 launched the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) as its main functional department overseeing counterterrorism cooperation across the region. Under the structure, joint training and drills by riot police and cross-border raids on terrorist camps and even drug cartels were staged. In 2012, the SCO added Afghanistan as an observer.

The early close cooperation also included information exchanges about “three forces” activity in Xinjiang, according to Lu Xiang, a researcher with the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

“International intelligence sharing has greatly increased since 9/11, which improved our knowledge about the terrorist activities in Xinjiang,” Lu said.

“But in 2003, 2004, when the Americans thought they had achieved significant victory in their wars, the sharing became much more limited and reserved.”

Apart from giving information, US counterparts supplied many Chinese anti-terrorist operation protocols, contingency plans and even some terms and codes, added Li Lifan.

“Overall, the Americans had a positive influence on China’s anti-terrorism,” Li said.

What is going on in Xinjiang and who are the Uygur people?

In 2005, the PAP received its first armoured vehicle designed for anti-terrorism missions as well as a full range of weapons and military equipment. It upgraded hardware and training centres and invested in expanding its capacity.

China developed and adopted technological methods, with the controversial post-September 11 US Patriot Act among its references. Chinese investigators actively collected all information from suspects, such as biometric data, DNA samples, facial recognition data, CCTV trajectory tracking, bank information, communication and social network records, and even the GPS locations of people and vehicles, police reports revealed.

The US occupation of Afghanistan hit groups such as ETIM hard and anti-terrorism measures continued to apply high pressure. Visible attacks in China went relatively quiet for a time. A few prominent cases included failed attempts targeting the Beijing Olympics, prompting additions to a second list of wanted terrorists announced by the Chinese police.

“The incidence of violent terrorism declined and the overall security situation in Xinjiang improved, but the ideological struggle of anti-separation became increasingly severe,” wrote Ma Dazheng, a researcher from the China Institute of Frontier Studies at CASS. “For a long time the separatism in Xinjiang was not cleaned up – under the right conditions it would be resurrected.”

The resurgence was symbolised by attacks on July 5, 2009, in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, in which 197 people died and over 1,700 were wounded. From 2011 to 2014, the number of terrorist groups foiled in Xinjiang was reported to be between 100 and more than 200 each year.

This trend was against the background of a rise in global terrorism – as the United States partially withdrew from Afghanistan and cut its anti-terrorist front, the Arab spring and subsequent turmoil in the Middle East and the rise of Islamic State and its Islamist extremism.

This enabled the return of terrorist forces and enhanced infiltration from abroad into China, according to Jia Yu, former president of Northwest University of Political Science and Law and director of the Institute of Counterterrorism.

In a 2014 speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping described this time as a mixture of “active violent terrorist activities, intense anti-separatism struggles and [a] painful period of intervention and treatment”.

Since 2016 and under Xi’s presidency, drastic deradicalisation measures have been imposed on the region, including the infamous camps that reportedly enforced “re-education” for 1 million Uygurs. China reports that there have been no terrorist attacks in Xinjiang since 2017.

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“That could be the start of some new counterterror cooperation,” said Li Wei.