Despite his anti-China rhetoric, Beijing may prefer U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for his promised anti-terror campaign against the Islamic State, which is reportedly attracting militant groups from its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, state media reported on Wednesday.

“Trump’s foreign policy, which centres around fighting what he calls ‘radical Islamic terrorism’, will to some extent ease the current sour China-U.S. ties,” Liu Weidong, a researcher at the Institute of American Studies of the China Academy of Social Sciences, told state-run Global Times.

“China and the U.S. share a lot in common on fighting terrorism and Trump’s policy seems to shift from the present focus on competition between major powers, which mainly targets China to anti-terrorism,” said Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Centre for U.S. Studies at Fudan University.

China regards East Turkistan Islamic Movement, which is active among Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang bordering Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Afghanistan as main threat to the stability of the province.

Mr. Trump said on Monday that he would “aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut off their funding, expand intelligence sharing and use cyber warfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting.”

[Source: The Hindu]