March 1, 2014, was China's 9/11. That was the day Islamic Uighur terrorists slashed their way into the collective consciousness of the country's ethnic Han majority.

That fateful day, a group of eight militants launched an attack at the main railway station in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Armed with long-bladed knives, they killed 29 people and wounded 143; four of the assailants were killed while the same number were arrested. The savage assault was attributed to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a Uighur group that supports the establishment of an East Turkestan state and has alleged ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. East Turkestan is the name many Uighurs prefer to use for their home province of Xinjiang referring to a short-lived state that existed in the 1940s before being incorporated by China in 1949.

In the aftermath of the Kunming massacre, Beijing ramped up its "war on terror" by escalating the same repressive policies that have been largely ineffective before the assault. Since then, there have been further deadly attacks in Xinjiang. Recent reports suggest the violence is spreading, not abating, and the Chinese government asserts that hundreds of Uighurs have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (though experts believe the numbers are inflated).