Revealed: US War Game Planned to Exploit Chinese Uyghurs

By PIPR

3 July, 2025

Key points: A US war game ending this year openly talks about exploiting China’s ethnic divisions.

STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE

Xinjiang Province is home to the majority of China’s Uyghurs. A US Congressional Research Archive report says that, not only does “Xinjiang have considerable energy resources in terms of gas and oil … but also Xinjiang is the gateway to Central Asian energy resources.”ⁱ Destabilising the region can damage China’s economy and geopolitical ascendancy and thus keep the USA on top.

A US Navy study notes that Xinjiang is “of significant importance for economic, political, and security reasons.” It is “China’s largest province, has the highest per capita gross domestic product … of any province outside the eastern provinces, and holds the country’s principal oil reserves. In addition to oil,” the report continues, the region “also holds significant amounts of natural gas, gold, and uranium.”ⁱⁱ

UYGHURS

“Turkic” is a generic description for wide-ranging ethnic groups that inhabit numerous countries, including, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Turkey (as the name suggests).ⁱⁱⁱ Most countries with significant Turkic populations are located in Central Asia, such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and (as the name implies) Turkmenistan. The Uyghurs are a Turkic-Caucasian-East Asian people.^iv In terms of geopolitical significance, Xinjiang is bordered by eight countries: Afghanistan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

As far as weaponising human rights, the Navy study concludes that nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) “can produce flawed research and reports due to their dependence on testimonials by Uyghur dissidents, who can portray events in ways to favor their cause.”^v

Since the 1800s, there have been half a dozen Uyghur rebellions against Chinese dynasties and governments. The most recent ended in 1998.^vi Today, there are an estimated 12 million Uyghurs (also spelled Uighurs) in China, the majority of whom are Muslim and reside in the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Successive US administrations have exploited the Uyghur people. When the Chinese political elites brutally crack down on innocent Uyghur civilians as part of counterrevolutionary activities, the Western propaganda system highlights the violence to criticise the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Starting in 1978 and continuing throughout the 1980s, the US and Britain secretly armed, funded, organised, and trained tens of thousands of jihadis across the Central and East Asia and the Middle East to act as anti-Soviet proxy militias in Afghanistan. Untold thousands of were Uyghur. This created blowback for the CCP when certain Uyghur militia used their arms and training against the Chinese regime. A report published by the US Army War College says that “[d]uring Deng Xiaoping’s first decade (1978-1988), Xinjiang was relatively peaceful and stable with no major incidents of unrest or clashes with the Uyghurs.” All that changed with the end of the war. “[T]he CCP, fearing the annexation or independence of Xinjiang with Soviet assistance, supported the Afghan Jihad with weapons, ammunition, and equipment.”^vii

WAR GAME: DIVIDE AND RULE

In June 1998, the DC-based National Defense University hosted a war-game imagining covert US military operations ending this year (2025).

Prepared by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the game envisaged proxy attacks against China.^viii

First, ways to sow discontent:

“Economic disparities (either real or perceived) within China could be exploited to place Beijing squarely upon the homs of a dilemma: buying off disadvantaged groups clamoring for more assistance, or their ‘fair share,’ while simultaneously appeasing demands from prosperous regions for increased autonomy and economic freedom. To bring about this situation, one option would be to nurture the pro-Western, free market segment of the Chinese economy by aggressively promoting (even subsidizing) trade.”

Second, it talks about using IT:

“emerging information technologies (e.g. PCS, the Internet) could also be employed to increase the ‘have nots’’ awareness of their relative deprivation, as well as to increase the political clout of ‘the haves’ by enabling them to better organize and coordinate their activities across China.”

Third, it discusses the uses and abuses of dividing to conquer:

“Ethnic divisions within China could also be leveraged as part of cost-inducing competitive strategy. U.S. involvement might range from verbal and diplomatic support or internal movements espousing improved human rights and self-detemnination, to covert financial contributions to dissident groups, and, at the extreme, to various levels of direct support for insurgents involved in armed rebellions or proxy wars.”

It continues:

“One opportunity specifically mentioned during the game was providing covert support to the Uighur separatist movement in Xinjiang province. Other possibilities might involve providing assistance to rebel movements in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, both of which are on-going sources of unrest and instability within China.”

Fourth, it casually notes that the consequences could include greater crackdowns on the public, but that this would be a convenient way to make the ruling authorities waste money and foment further resentment:

“As a practical matter, this strategy would be difficult to implement (especially in a covert manner) and would be fraught with escalatory risk. In a strategic sense, however, this course of action could prove particularly beneficial by compelling the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] to maintain a manpower-intensive internal security force which would consume a progressively larger portion of the Chinese defense budget over time as personnel costs inevitably rise.”

CONCLUSION

The documents prove once again that people in power care nothing for human rights—except when the concept can be exploited. Like their British colonial predecessors, they consider the world to be a giant chessboard in which humans are mere pawns.

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