On March 1, 2014, at a train station in the Chinese city of Kunming, eight knife-wielding terrorists attacked the public at random and left 29 dead and more than 130 wounded. The Chinese media are calling the attack “China’s 9/11.” Yet while officials investigated the motivation behind the attack, Chinese media focused its criticism on the U.S.’s delay in using the word “terrorism” to describe the attack.
Several days after the attack, Yunnan Communist Party chief Qin Guangrong said the motivation for the attack likely came from the assailants’ desire to join a global jihad overseas. This was verified by the confession of one captured female suspect who stated that since the group of eight was prevented from leaving the country, the terrorists plotted to launch jihad at transport terminals in either Kunming or Honghe.
Chinese officials quickly identified the attack as one of terrorism. China’s definition of terrorism is not that far off from the U.S. China’s anti-terrorism legislation defines “terrorists” as “those who organize, plot, and conduct terrorist acts as well as those who are members of terrorist groups,” and terrorist acts as “those acts which are intended to induce public fear or to coerce state organs or international organizations by means of violence, sabotage, threats or other attacks.” In the U.S., 18 U.S.C. §2331 defines “domestic terrorism” as activities in the territorial U.S. that are illegal acts dangerous to human life, and appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government, or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. Surely, under either country’s definition of “terrorism,” the incident on March 1 was a terrorist attack.
However, immediately following the attack, U.S. formal condolences to the Chinese government were noticeably absent. This led to a Chinese media-frenzy when the U.S. delayed acknowledging the attack as a “terrorist” attack. On March 3, State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki acknowledged the incident “appears to be an act of terrorism.” Spokeswoman Psaki’s response was not sufficient for some members of the Chinese media who followed up with a series of questions:
“So when the Boston bombing took place in U.S. last year, you described it as coward act of terrorism. And then there was this attack in Russia last year, you also condemned it as terrorist attack. So this time, when it comes to China, 29 innocent people died. Why, at the first time, the first day, you didn’t – the statement of U.S. Embassy in China, they didn’t describe this as a terror attack?”
Spokeswoman Spaki had little more to add, other than that in making a decision to identify an incident as an act of terrorism “we look at every situation separately, and depending on information available.”
The questions from the Chinese media identified the perceived double standard of Americans’ use of the word terrorism. Since 9/11, the U.S. government has used the umbrella term of “terrorism” to justify its acts of anticipatory self-defense abroad and monitoring of suspects linked to terrorist organizations domestically. In contrast, when China uses the term “terrorist act” to describe violence in their own country, the U.S. is hesitant to agree. However, the reluctance is likely attributed to the questionable accuracy and bias of China’s state-run media reports, and the concern about potential government crackdowns and continued human rights violations against the Uighur community in Xinjiang (the attackers’ believed ethnic group).
China continues to have domestic incidents of mass killings, yet not all are labeled as “terrorist attacks.” Whenever there is any domestic violence or attack committed by members of one of China’s ethnic minorities, such as the Uighurs, however, it is quickly labeled as a “terrorist attack.” Therefore, the U.S. government is understandably hesitant in quickly aligning with the Chinese government in its alleged “fight against terrorism.” While the American public surely empathizes with suffering associated with the senseless loss of life, the administration was wise in pausing to assess the situation before using such a loaded term like “terrorism.”
Posted April 3, 2014