China is stepping up its efforts to convince the outside world that there is a direct link between the US-led war on terror and its own fight against Muslim separatists. But many remain unconvinced by Beijing’s latest claims against those accused of carrying out a series of bombings and assassinations in its biggest and most politically restive region. In the past, China revealed as little as possible about the sensitive issue of separatist violence in the huge and remote western region of Xinjiang. Apart from anything else, it was highly embarrassed by the claims of local Muslim Uighurs that they were being oppressed and overwhelmed by outsiders in their own land. “Beijing was initially very shy about the whole problem,” said MJ Gohel, a terrorism specialist at the Asia Pacific Foundation, an independent intelligence think tank based in London. Full Story