The “[Chinese] military is willing to participate in some way alongside the Syrian army that is fighting the terrorists in Idlib and in any other part of Syria,” the ambassador said in an interview with the pro-government daily newspaper Al-Watan, subsequently translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Substantial rumors from pro-Damascus sources of a major Syrian-Russian led offensive to take back Idlib, held since 2015 by a Nusra Front dominated coalition (since rebranding itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/HTS), have been swirling since the now successful Assad campaign to take back the whole of the south was initiated, and these sources indicate the battle could begin as early as September.

But crucially, Idlib province is now the ground zero gathering point of nearly all jihadist and ISIS factions remaining in Syria, including foreign fighters. According to some estimates there are upwards of 40,000 armed jihadists within the main anti-Assad factions in Idlib, embedded within a population of about 2 million civilians and internally displaced persons (IDP’s). Thus the coming battle for Idlib is expected to be among the most bloody and grinding of the entire seven years of war, similar to Aleppo in 2016.

China is chiefly interested in allying with Syrian government forces to root out the significant component of Chinese Muslim foreign fighters operating in Idlib. The hardline Islamist Uyghur militants have entered Syria in the thousands over the past few years from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, where the minority ethno-religious group has found itself under increased persecution and oversight by the state.

In 2017 the Syrian government estimated their numbers at around 5,000.

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