SUMMARY

China has a long and diversified history that can be traced back about 3500 years. Today, China is not only one of the largest countries on the globe when it comes to its extent; it also has the largest population in the world with well over 1 billion people. The vast majority of the population belongs to the Han Chinese ethnic group, and less than 10 percent of the population belongs to other ethnic groups. The Chinese government has suppressed several of these minority groups, such as the Tibetans in the southwest and the Uighurs in the northwest, which has increased tensions that in some cases have resulted in armed violence.

The East Turkistan Islamic Movement, also called ETIM, has its origins in the Muslim Uighur ethnic group. The group have been fighting for an independent territory named East Turkestan that would roughly correspond to the area of the northwestern Xinjiang province. The conflict between the Government of China and ETIM has been inactive during long periods, but has restarted on several occasions. In general, however, there has been a lack of reliable information regarding the perpetrators in a quite large number of attacks against both civilians and the government, specifically in the Xinjiang province. Therefore, it is possible that ETIM has been active to a greater extent than what is reported in the UCDP data or that other groups have been active in the area.

Ethnic tensions in China has on rare occasions led to clashes between the Han Chinese and the Uighur ethnic groups. The population in the Xinjiang province has historically mostly been Uighur, however, a large influx of Han Chinese has taken place and by the early 2000s, the Han Chinese made up almost 40 percent of the population. Structural and economical inequalities between the two groups added to the antagonism, this lead to demonstrations that deteriorated into deadly clashes in 2009.

The Government of China has consistently upheld its authoritarian rule of the Communist party by suppressing the opposition and limiting the freedoms of speech and assembly for the population and the media. The government has repeatedly tried to quell protests by using one-sided violence against its own population. One of the most well known examples was the crackdown on the peaceful protesters on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989. More recent examples of this type of violence has been the killing of protesting monks and local people in the southwestern province of Tibet in the 2000s.

China’s relationship to its neighboring countries and the international community has seen great variation over time. Separate conflicts have been fought against India, Burma, and the Soviet Union in the 1960s and against Vietnam in the 1970s and 1980s. China was also active as a secondary warring party on the side of North Korea against South Korea in 1950–53. However, the relationships to these countries have since then been largely normalized.

In 2020, a border conflict with India reignited and escalated to the level of active interstate conflict. UCDP recorded 25 fatalities in 2020, the highest since the conflict between India and China in 1967. After nine rounds of talks, India and China agreed to withdraw their military forces from the Pangong Lake area on 11 February 2021.

There has been some spillover into the south of China from the conflict in the north of Myanmar (Burma) between its government and the MNDAA. Not only has this fighting led to refugees crossing the border into China, but also that stray bullets or actual fighting have found their way into Chinese territory. This has once again put strains on the relationship between the two countries.

Political tensions remain between mainland China and Taiwan, originating in the aftermath of the Second World War. Intrastate conflict resumed in China in 1946 and lasted until the Kuomintang government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, was forced to withdraw to the island of Taiwan by the Chinese communist party led by Mao Zedong, in 1949. This, in effect, separated that territory from the Beijing-ruled mainland. It is still not possible for any country to have diplomatic relations with China and Taiwan at the same time, since neither of the countries will accept this and immediately will end such ties with that country.

Sine 2015 China has been expanding its involvement in the UN peacekeeping forces both through sending troops and by boosting its financial support to the same. China has had its troops deployed in several countries, including Mali and South Sudan.

Since 1946 China has experienced the interstate, intrastate, and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.