The Oriental Pearl Tower, dominating the darkened Shanghai skyline, glowed blue, white and red in solidarity. <\/p>\n
By CHRIS BUCKLEY
\u200bNOVEMBER 16, 2015 6:24 AM<\/p>\n
The Oriental Pearl Tower, dominating the darkened Shanghai skyline, glowed blue, white and red<\/a> in solidarity. President Xi Jinping condemned the carnage as an \u201cact of barbarism.\u201d Bouquets \u2014 especially white chrysanthemums, the traditional flower of mourning \u2014 piled up at the French Embassy<\/a> in Beijing.<\/p>\n China joined the rest of the world over the weekend in outrage and sympathy over armed attacks on Friday night that killed at least 129 people<\/a> in Paris. But along with revulsion, Chinese leaders and many citizens also voiced a more complex mix of expectations and emotions, rooted in rival views of the country\u2019s own problems.<\/p>\n Echoing complaints from the Chinese government, some accused the West of a double standard in its response to terrorism, while others accused Chinese leaders of the same by offering more public sympathy to France than to victims of China\u2019s own disasters.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a traumatic time for the French people, and on behalf of the Chinese government and people, and in my own personal capacity, I condemn this barbarous action in the strongest possible terms,\u201d Mr. Xi said<\/a> on Saturday, shortly after the assaults.<\/p>\n Later, during meetings with other Group of 20 leaders gathering in Antalya, Turkey, Mr. Xi obliquely pressed the argument that other countries should back the Chinese government\u2019s policies on terrorism. These include the contentious position that increasinglydeadly conflict in Xinjiang<\/a>, an ethnically divided region of western China, is the work of separatist forces under the spell of religious extremism.<\/p>\n \u201cStep up cooperation in counterterrorism. Both symptoms and root causes must be addressed,\u201d Mr. Xi said on Sunday<\/a>. \u201cThere must not be double standards.\u201d<\/p>\n His foreign minister, Wang Yi, was more explicit. Foreign governments should make China\u2019s campaign against Uighur separatists a part of the international struggle against terrorism, Mr. Wang said<\/a> on Sunday. Chinese officials often assert that Uighur violence in Xinjiang is the work of a shadowy separatist movement, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. But many foreign experts say that group is defunct, barely exists or has no effective fighting force.<\/p>\n \u201cThere can be no double standards,\u201d Mr. Wang said. \u201cChina is also a victim of terrorism, and attacking the \u2018East Turkestan\u2019 terrorist forces represented by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement<\/a> should become an important part of international counterterrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n Xinjiang is divided between ethnic Han, many of them recent migrants, and Uighurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic people, and the region has undergone deepening convulsions of violence since 2009, reflecting heightening Uighur estrangement from Chinese policies.<\/p>\n While Chinese officials say a terrorist conspiracy is behind the violence there, many human rights groups and regional experts say the assaults, with cleavers and crude bombs, are almost always primitive and homegrown acts by young Uighurs who have embraced extremism out of despair.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that the Chinese government is mostly speaking to its domestic audience, to deliver the message that there might be violence in Xinjiang, but this is part of a larger problem,\u201d Nicholas Bequelin<\/a>, the regional director for East Asia at Amnesty International who has long studied developments in Xinjiang, said in a telephone interview. \u201cI think they\u2019re also trying to gain a bit of legitimacy in the eyes of the international community by saying, \u2018We\u2019re doing the same thing.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n But Western governments are unlikely to fall in line behind China\u2019s policies in Xinjiang, despite a recent visit<\/a> there by the British chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.<\/p>\n \u201cChina is not getting a lot of cooperation with any government on counterterrorism,\u201d Mr. Bequelin said, \u201cbecause they don\u2019t share and nobody really trusts China\u2019s determination of who is a separatist and what constitutes terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n Chinese security officials have already indicated that they will look for ways to enhance the already pervasive controls in Xinjiang. The government\u2019s leading policy group on counterterrorism met on Sunday and resolved to \u201cstrengthen security protection and intelligence and early warning,\u201d said a summary<\/a> issued by the Ministry of Public Security.<\/p>\n The government\u2019s positions in Xinjiang have widespread support among the Han, who make up the vast majority of China\u2019s population. And online denunciations of the killings in Paris were mixed with accusations that Western governments and the news media have responded coldly to victims of Uighur violence.<\/p>\n \u201cEach time our country has a disaster, how do they report on it, the Western countries distort the true facts,\u201d one commenter wrote on Weibo, a popular microblog service, responding to news that the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai was bathed in the colors of the French flag. \u201cWhen our countrymen are attacked, I don\u2019t see foreigners being so sympathetic,\u201d another said.<\/p>\n But not all the comments went the government\u2019s way. Some asked why Shanghai had lit up its night sky for people killed in Paris but had not done the same for Chinese citizens, including the 36 killed in a New Year\u2019s Eve stampede<\/a> near the Shanghai riverfront in the final hours of 2015, or indeed after deadly attacks in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n \u201cDid we turn on the lights when disaster struck Xinjiang or Tianjin?\u201d asked one commenter, apparently referring to thechemical warehouse explosions<\/a> in the northern Chinese city in August that killed 173 people.<\/p>\n