On today's episode of Crossfire we tell you about a chilling new warning from Syria's Uygur Muslims. The group who had a lot to do with the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime has bow vowed to come after China.

A top Chinese envoy has warned Damascus's new government not to support terrorism as a Syria-based Islamic militant group sent messages to Muslims in China's Xinjiang region, urging them to wage attacks.

Bashar al-Assad was an ally of both Iran and Russia, Beijing's key partners. Here is how his fall is being seen in China.

There is too much power in the hands of the US and regional actors like Turkey for China to play a key role After Russia and Iran's regional power projection, China's diplomacy is the most visible victim of the fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad at the hands of a coalition of rebel forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

"The future of Syria should be decided by the Syrian people," Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told Newsweek.

China’s leadership is not happy about the fall of Assad. But compared to Russia and Iran, Beijing had far less at stake.

Facing the loss of its sole Arab ally and much of its sphere of influence, Tehran might seek to capitalize on the opening initiated by China to mend ties with the Arab states.

However, with the downfall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and the catastrophic loss of Hamas and Hezbollah during its war against Israel, Tehran faces mounting geopolitical threats with splintered regional proxies.

The TIP has been based in Syria for more than a decade, with its members fleeing to the Middle East to escape China’s severe oppression of the Uyghurs, a largely Muslim minority group. Its fighters joined Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that led the rebel offensive, in a thrust out of the north-west of Syria.

With a new administration in Damascus, China is revaluating its relationship with Syria and increasingly focused on rise of Islamists' threats.

While Assad's regional policies were in semblance with China’s when it came to supporting the Palestinians, defying US policy and shoring up ties with Iran, it was Bashar’s cronyism, his mishandling of the war and the economy that made him less of a strategic asset for Beijing.

Syria had not been not a central pillar of China's Middle East strategy, Jesse Marks, a non-resident fellow with the Stimson Centre's China programme and a former US defence adviser, said ...