With its long history of aversion to international conflicts, China has finally expressed support for the international anti-ISIL (Islamic State of Syria and the Levant) coalition that U.S. President Barack Obama vows will defeat the extremist fighters in the Middle East.

The United States will lead a broad international military campaign to address the Islamic State threat, President Obama said in his prime-time speech on Wednesday.

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The U.S. president seeks to accomplish this by enlisting its international allies to provide financial and military resources to Syrian, Kurds and Iraqi troops fighting the extremists that have established Islamic caliphate in Syria and northern Iraq.

On Thursday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chinying confirmed Beijing's position on the ISIL terrorism that threatens to expand beyond the Middle East.

China is willing to cooperate with the international community to ensure international security, CNN reported Chinying as saying. Chinying added that China hopes the United States' allies, through joint efforts and international cooperation, will restore peace and development in the region.

According to CNN, Beijing has grown uneasy with its own share of domestic Islamic terrorism and has become likely to support President Obama's broad coalition to curb the ISIL threat.  

ISIL has openly declared jihad against China in August following President Xi Jinping's aggressive campaign against the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in the Xianjiang region. The crackdown led to the arrest and imprisonment of about 800 Uighurs.

Earlier this month, Iraqi officials have circulated the photo of what they said was a captured Chinese ISIL fighter. China's foreign ministry has yet to confirm if the Chinese national is an Uyghur, but domestic security analysts and observers find it disconcerting.

If the ISIL have cells in Xianjiang and if the group is recruiting ISIL fighters from China, then Beijing will have to secure measures that will keep the Islamic State group's threat at bay, Xie Tao, a professor of political science at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told CNN.

TagsChinese Uyghur minority, Chinese ISIL fighter, ISIL, Islamic State group, ISIS