China has set up a new county in Xinjiang near the borders with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Afghanistan, drawing attention to a sensitive frontier zone close to the Wakhan Corridor.
The new county, Cenling, lies near the Karakoram range and sits close to the border areas linking Xinjiang with PoK and Afghanistan. It is the third such county created in the region in a little over a year.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region government announced Cenling on March 26. It will be placed under Kashgar prefecture, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. The exact administrative boundaries have not been made public.
India last year protested to China over the creation of Hean and Hekang counties, saying parts of their jurisdiction fall within Indian territory in Ladakh. Hean includes areas of Aksai Chin, which India claims but is controlled by China.
Kashgar, where Cenling will be administered from, sits along historic Silk Road routes and is also linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which passes through PoK and has been opposed by India.
Security concerns around Xinjiang’s western border and Afghanistan also sit in the background of this move.
China has previously raised concerns about militants linked to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) using the Wakhan Corridor to move into Xinjiang.
Lin Minwang, a professor at the Institute of International Studies in Shanghai-based Fudan University, said the move "reflects China's deeper recognition of the strategic importance of this region".
He said: "At a broader level, the decision signals China’s emphasis on its borderlands,” Lin was quoted as saying by the Post.
He noted the region’s link to Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor, a narrow 74-km strip between Tajikistan and PoK that meets Xinjiang.
Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said the new county represented a drive towards a “stronger grass-roots level government structure for effective governance and control”.
“It helps to strengthen the stabilisation efforts by the government in the frontier region, which is traditionally more subject to ethnic turbulence and potential infiltration of foreign militants from Central Asia,” she said.
