Ethnic Identity, Cognitive Warfare, the Battle for Control of Eurasian Networks, and the 2026 Chinese Law on Promoting the Unity and Progress of Nationalities
What if China’s new law on the unity of nationalities were not only about assimilation, but also about preventing the risk that identity itself might become a strategic weapon?
This question leads in a very different direction from the conventional debate surrounding Beijing’s new Law on Promoting National Unity and Progress.
Since its adoption in March 2026, the law has understandably drawn attention for its implications for China’s ethnic minorities.
Its provisions reinforce the concept of a shared Chinese national identity, place greater emphasis on a common language and culture, regulate the social and institutional integration of ethnic communities, address online activities, and explicitly reject external interference carried out under the pretext of ethnicity, religion, or human rights.
Even more significantly, the law also establishes legal liability for organizations and individuals outside China that engage in activities Beijing considers detrimental to national unity or conducive to ethnic division. (HPPC).
The most immediate interpretation is therefore the familiar one: assimilation, centralization, greater control over ethnic minorities, and a further reduction in the autonomy once associated with China’s more pluralistic approach to managing ethnic issues. This interpretation should not be dismissed. But it may not be sufficient.
The deeper strategic issue is not simply that Beijing wants to strengthen a common national identity. It is what Beijing believes might happen when an internal identity connects with an external network – and this is because, in the 21st century, states are no longer vulnerable only through their borders but also through their connections.
Information crosses borders. Capital crosses borders. Religious movements cross borders. Diasporas cross borders. Armed groups cross borders. Political narratives cross borders. Digital platforms bridge geographical distances.
A local identity can acquire external resources, legitimacy, organizational capacity, military expertise, or political protection without ever physically leaving the country where it originated.
And that is when identity ceases to be merely an internal social category. It becomes a strategic interface, which is why the new Chinese law becomes much more interesting.
Traditional national security begins with the territory. The state protects its borders, its infrastructure, its military forces, and its strategic resources. Threats are generally conceived as something that comes from the outside and attempts to penetrate national space. But network-based competition has changed the geometry of power.
A state can be territorially secure yet strategically vulnerable. Vulnerability may lie within the population itself – not because a particular ethnic or religious community is inherently dangerous, but because any social difference can become politically significant when linked to external networks capable of amplifying it.
The strategic problem, therefore, is not diversity itself. The problem is unchecked connectivity. Resentment can become a narrative. A narrative can become an identity. An identity can become a political constituency.
A constituency can connect to an organization. An organization can acquire external funding, legitimacy, training, information, or protection. And ultimately, what began as a domestic political issue can become a transnational security issue.
This transformation can occur gradually, almost invisibly, which is why Chinese law should be interpreted not only as a tool of ethnic governance but also, potentially, as an attempt to reduce what we might call the state’s internal attack surface.
The expression is deliberately borrowed from the language of cybersecurity. Every connection creates an opportunity. Every interface creates a vulnerability. Every node connected to an external system creates the possibility that information, influence, resources, or political organization might cross the border.
From this perspective, the goal is not necessarily to eliminate difference. It is to prevent difference from becoming an autonomous strategic network. This is a very different proposition.
The term “cognitive warfare” is often associated with propaganda, disinformation, psychological operations, influence campaigns, and the manipulation of public perception.
But the concept can be understood in a broader sense. Modern strategic competition increasingly concerns the environment in which individuals and societies form perceptions, identities, loyalties, narratives, and political preferences.
The battlefield, therefore, is not simply the information environment. It is the cognitive and social architecture through which information acquires meaning. This distinction is important because a state does not necessarily have to convince its own population that an external narrative is true.
Instead, it can seek to ensure that the social conditions necessary for that narrative to become politically powerful do not develop in the first place.
This is where the Chinese law can be interpreted as a form of structural cognitive defense.
The law does not merely regulate what people can think. It seeks to shape the institutional environment in which identities are formed and connected. It promotes a shared national identity.
It places ethnic relations within a broader national framework. It reinforces the role of the common Chinese language. It seeks greater social integration. It regulates the digital environment. And it explicitly addresses external interference.
The point is not that Chinese policymakers necessarily describe this framework as “cognitive warfare.” It is not necessary to attribute this terminology to them. The argument is analytical.
The architecture itself is consistent with a conception of national security in which the state must defend not only its territory and institutions, but also its internal cognitive and identity-related environment so that it does not become a strategic vulnerability.
In other words, Beijing appears increasingly concerned with what happens before an identity becomes a political network, and this may be the most important aspect of the entire law.
The experience of Uyghur fighters in Syria offers a particularly revealing illustration of the problem.
During the Syrian Civil War, Uyghur militants associated with the Turkistan Islamic Party settled in northwestern Syria. Over time, this created a transnational group with military experience, organizational structures, ideological connections, and relationships extending far beyond China.
In June 2025, Reuters reported that the United States had conditionally supported a Syrian plan to integrate approximately 3,500 former foreign jihadist fighters – many of whom were Uyghurs from China and neighboring countries – into a new division of the Syrian army.
The strategic rationale was revealing in itself: bringing these fighters into a state structure was considered preferable to allowing them to remain outside the state and potentially align with organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. (Reuters) The significance of this episode, however, extends beyond the individual fighters involved.
It demonstrates how an identity-based conflict can shift strategic categories. An identity originating in one state can gain military experience in another. It can develop new organizational relationships.
It can acquire a different form of political legitimacy. It can be incorporated into another state’s security architecture. And once that happens, the state of origin no longer controls the environment in which that identity evolves.
This is the crucial transformation:
internal identity → transnational network → external capability → strategic interface.
It would be an overstatement to claim that the 2026 Chinese law was written specifically because of the Uyghur fighters in Syria. The evidence does not support such a causal conclusion.
But the Syrian experience demonstrates precisely the kind of strategic evolution that a state intent on reducing the external exploitation of internal identities would have an incentive to prevent.
This is why Syria is important for interpreting the Chinese law. Not because Syria explains the law. But because Syria helps explain the problem that the law can be interpreted as an attempt to resolve.
This leads to a broader transformation in the meaning of sovereignty.
The 20th-century state primarily conceived of sovereignty in territorial terms. The 21st-century state must also increasingly defend its identity networks. This does not render borders irrelevant. On the contrary.
It means that borders have acquired a second dimension:
- the physical border determines who and what enters the territory;
- the cognitive and network-based border determines which narratives, loyalties, identities, resources, and organizational relationships can enter the political system.
The first can be monitored through customs, border guards, intelligence services, and military forces. The second is much more difficult. A message can cross it instantly.
A religious network can operate invisibly within it. A diaspora organization can operate thousands of kilometers away. A combatant can gain experience on the battlefield in a foreign war and return with a completely different strategic profile.
A digital community can foster a sense of political identity without ever physically occupying a territory.
This is why contemporary sovereignty cannot be understood solely through geography. It must also be understood through connectivity. And that is precisely what networks provide.
This is where Chinese law ties into a much broader geopolitical transformation. The emerging Eurasian order is increasingly difficult to describe using the old language of rigid blocs. China, the United States, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, India, and the Central Asian states do not fit neatly into a simple binary framework.
They overlap. They cooperate in one area and compete in another. They may be military partners in one context, economic competitors in another, and political interlocutors in a third.
The most useful unit of analysis, therefore, is increasingly not the bloc. It is the network. Pakistan offers a particularly revealing example. Its strategic relationship with China remains fundamental.
CPEC 2.0 continues to expand cooperation in infrastructure, energy, industry, mining, digital technologies, and regional connectivity. But Pakistan is simultaneously part of an emerging security framework with Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
In August 2026, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan signed the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, establishing a mutual defense framework in which an attack against one of the countries is to be considered an attack against all. The agreement was presented as defensive – and what isn’t, in words, these days? – and does not replace the participants’ existing alliances and partnerships. (Reuters) This is precisely what makes it strategically interesting.
Pakistan does not have to choose a single network. It can participate in multiple networks. And this could be one of the defining characteristics of the emerging Eurasian order.
A state’s strategic value derives increasingly not only from its military power or economic size, but from its position within multiple overlapping systems.
Pakistan, therefore, is best understood as a pivotal state rather than as a mere ally of a single great power. Turkey operates in a similar environment. So does Saudi Arabia. So does Central Asia. And this changes the geography of power.
On a conventional map, borders dominate. On a network map, nodes dominate.
Pakistan is a key issue. Turkey is a sticking point. Saudi Arabia is a hub. Central Asia is a corridor. Xinjiang is an interface. Syria could become a hub. The Gulf is a hub.
The significance of each of these elements is determined not only by what exists within its territory, but by what can pass through it.
That is why ports are important. That’s why energy corridors are important. That’s why railroads are important. That is why digital infrastructure is important. That is why military interoperability is important.
Because artificial intelligence and electronic warfare are increasingly appearing alongside traditional defense cooperation. And why identity is just as important.
Whoever controls the infrastructure can influence the movement of goods. Those who shape networks can influence the flow of information, capital, technology, security, and legitimacy.
Those who shape identities can influence where political loyalty ultimately lies. These are no longer separate strategic domains. They increasingly overlap.
This leads to the central metaphor of the argument. China is building a fortress. But the fortress is not merely territorial. It is institutional, social, cognitive, and increasingly legal. Its purpose is not merely to prevent physical penetration. It is to prevent internal differences from becoming a lever for external strategy.
The network represents the opposite logic. It does not necessarily seek to conquer territories. It seeks access. It seeks nodes. It seeks connectivity. It seeks interoperability. It seeks strategic depth. And it becomes powerful precisely because no single node needs to control the entire system. This is what makes the power of networks so difficult to counter.
A traditional state can identify an adversary. A network can change its form. It can reorient itself. It can create alternative connections. It can survive the loss of a single node. The network therefore seeks to ensure that no single node becomes indispensable to the functioning of the entire system.
The fortress, on the other hand, seeks the opposite outcome internally. It seeks to make the national system more cohesive, more centralized, more resistant to fragmentation, and less vulnerable to external penetration.
Strategic competition, therefore, is not simply between China and the United States. It is between two different ways of organizing resilience. One emphasizes cohesion. The other emphasizes connectivity. One seeks to reduce the number of exploitable interfaces.
The other gains power by multiplying them. Neither model is complete. A fortress that becomes too rigid can become isolated. A network that becomes too open can become vulnerable to fragmentation, infiltration, or strategic dependence. And this is where the future of Eurasia becomes particularly important.
The decisive strategic competition is taking place at the intersections of networks and identities. It is there that an ethnic identity can become a political movement. Where a political movement can become an armed organization. Where an armed organization can become part of a foreign security architecture.
Where a diaspora can become a source of political influence. Where a religious network can become a geopolitical channel. Where digital connectivity can become a tool for cognitive influence. And where a local conflict can have strategic consequences thousands of kilometers away.
This is also why the new Chinese law should not be reduced to the question of whether it is assimilationist.
It probably is, in important respects. But this description tells us what the law does internally. It does not necessarily tell us what strategic problem the law is designed to address.
The most interesting interpretation is that Beijing is seeking to ensure that identity remains embedded within the national system rather than becoming an autonomous source of transnational strategic leverage.
Article 10 explicitly states that work related to national unity is not subject to external interference and rejects actions taken against China under the pretext of ethnicity, religion, or human rights.
Article 63 goes further, addressing organizations and individuals outside China whose actions are deemed detrimental to national unity or capable of creating ethnic divisions. (HPPC)
These provisions are important because they reveal something about how the boundaries of national security are drawn. The boundary is no longer merely geographical.
It is based on networks. The state is not only concerned with what happens within China, but also with what happens to Chinese identities once they come into contact with actors outside China. This is the law’s deepest strategic significance.
The temptation in contemporary geopolitics is to return to a familiar question: Who is winning? China or the United States? East or West? Authoritarianism or liberalism? One bloc or the other?
But Eurasia is becoming too interconnected for such a framework to explain the entire phenomenon. The key players may increasingly be those capable of operating simultaneously across different systems.
The decisive states could be those capable of functioning as hinges. The decisive infrastructure could be that which connects otherwise separate strategic spaces. The decisive military capability might be interoperability. And the decisive vulnerability might be the interface between an internal identity and an external network.
That is why Pakistan matters. That is why Turkey matters. That is why Saudi Arabia matters. That’s why Syria matters. That’s why Xinjiang matters.
And because China’s Law on the Unity of Nationalities matters far beyond the administrative boundaries of Chinese ethnic policy.
These are different manifestations of the same underlying transformation. The world is becoming increasingly interconnected just as states are becoming – or should be becoming – increasingly concerned about the security of the identities within their borders. The paradox is inevitable.
The more Eurasia becomes connected, the more connectivity becomes a valuable strategic resource. But the more valuable connectivity becomes, the more uncontrolled connectivity can become dangerous for states whose internal cohesion depends on limiting external influence. This is the problem the fortress is trying to solve. And this is the opportunity that the network creates.
Future competition across Eurasia may therefore not resemble the Cold War. The Cold War was largely a struggle between blocs. The emerging Eurasian competition is a struggle for connections. It is a competition to determine who can connect whom, through which corridors, according to which rules, with which technologies, and toward which strategic objectives. It is a competition to determine whether infrastructure will be merely commercial or strategically transformative.
Whether security partnerships will remain bilateral or evolve into interoperable networks. Whether identities will remain domestic or become transnational political resources.
Whether states will be able to preserve internal cohesion without becoming strategically isolated. And whether networks will be able to expand without becoming vulnerable to the very fragmentation they are designed to overcome.
China’s new Law on the Unity of Nationalities should therefore be viewed as more than just another chapter in the long history of Chinese ethnic policy. It can also be seen as a window into a broader transformation of the meaning of sovereignty.
The 20th century saw the state primarily defending its own territory. The 21st-century state must increasingly defend the connections through which its society is interpreted, organized, and mobilized. That is why the most important strategic frontier may no longer be the border. It might be the interface.
The interface between identity and the network. Between internal cohesion and external connectivity. Between the fortress and the world outside it. And, ultimately, between two competing visions of Eurasian power. One seeks resilience through cohesion.
The other seeks resilience through connection. The struggle between them will not necessarily be decided by whoever controls the largest army, the largest economy, or the vastest territory. It may be decided by whoever best understands the architecture that connects all three.
Because the central question of the Eurasian competition in the coming years is no longer simply who will control Eurasia. It is who will shape the conditions under which Eurasia will be connected. And that is why China’s new fortress matters.
Not the war to conquer Eurasia. The war to decide how Eurasia will be connected.
And that is why I strongly encourage anyone who would like to explore the topics briefly outlined here in greater depth to read the essay attached below, titled “The Fortress and the Network – Cognitive Warfare for Eurasia and China’s New Law on Promoting the Unity and Progress of Nationalities” and the text of the mentioned Chinese law.
Attachments
Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress
