IS releases song in Chinese

The Islamic State (IS) has published a song in Mandarin calling China's Muslims to take up arms, a media report said on Tuesday.

Analysts on Monday said the song, released on Sunday by the IS propaganda website "Jihadology", attempted to strengthen its presence in China, the Global Times reported.

The four-minute song, titled 'We are Mujahid', contains lyrics such as "It's our dream to die fighting on the battlefield", "No power could stop us from moving forward", "Pick up your weapons to revolt" and "The shameless enemy would panic".

Jihadology describes itself as an "academic website that curates new primary source material from global jihadis" on its Twitter account.

"This is the first time that the IS has released a Chinese song to recruit members or inspire its followers," Zhu Yongbiao, assistant director of the Institute of Central Asia Studies at Lanzhou University, told the Global Times on Monday.

"Some terrorists in the Xinjiang Uygur region have travelled via Turkey to Syria and Iraq to join the IS and some of them will return to launch terrorist activities in China," an expert from the Institute of American Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.