Almost a year after September 11th, I returned from high school in Massachusetts to spend two months in Beijing, as the guest of family friends. My hosts, retired office workers, were genial people, and generally incurious about my life in America; the only acknowledgement that I had spent many years abroad was an oblique apology for the absence of hamburgers on the dinner table. But they had less oblique questions about my brush with terrorism in America. <\/p>\n
May 31, 2014
Posted by Jiayang Fan<\/p>\n
Almost a year after September 11th, I returned from high school in Massachusetts to spend two months in Beijing, as the guest of family friends. My hosts, retired office workers, were genial people, and generally incurious about my life in America; the only acknowledgement that I had spent many years abroad was an oblique apology for the absence of hamburgers on the dinner table. But they had less oblique questions about my brush with terrorism in America. Had I had seen the planes? I hadn\u2019t. Did I still feel unsafe in public places? Did I now suspect that certain people I saw walking down the street might be terrorists? And wasn\u2019t that the trouble with the U.S. these days\u2014that it had become a country overrun with terrorists?<\/p>\n
After the attack<\/a> that took place last week in Urumqi, in the Chinese state of Xinjiang, it has become clear that terrorism is no longer a foreign phenomenon. At an outdoor vegetable market on Wednesday morning, two sport-utility vehicles loaded with explosives plowed through a crowd of shoppers, killing forty-three people and wounding more than ninety. Although no public claim of responsibility has been made, the five suspected assailants\u2014four of whom were killed during the attack\u2014have been named as members of a \u201cUighur terrorist gang,\u201d according to police reports.<\/p>\n It was the deadliest massacre in recent memory, and the fourth in the past month\u2014another sign of the increasingly volatile relations between Uighurs, the culturally distinct minority native to northwest China, and the Han majority, who constitute ninety-five per cent of the country\u2019s population. Unlike many of the previous attacks, which took aim at state entities like police stations or security offices, the Urumqi bombing deliberately targeted civilians. If the assailants intended to maximize casualties, generate publicity, and radicalize Uighurs and Hans who had previously been ambivalent about this conflict, they succeeded spectacularly.<\/p>\n China\u2019s state-run media has long condemned these killings as acts of terrorism\u2014against the \u201ccountry, society and humanity.\u201d Foreign media outlets have been more wary of the word \u201cterrorism,\u201d sidestepping a term unavoidably freighted with political significance. In March, when the U.S. Embassy referred to a co\u00f6rdinated slaughter in a Kunming train station that left dozens dead as a \u201csenseless act of violence,\u201d thousands of indignant Chinese micro-bloggers accused Americans of applying a double standard. Some asked if we would ever refer to the fall of the Twin Towers as a \u201cregrettable traffic incident<\/a>,\u201d or to the Boston Marathon bombing as a \u201cfireworks and burning problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirteen years ago, terrorism seemed almost exotic to the Chinese, entirely confined to a world outside their borders. Today, citizens are clamoring for recognition of its grave implications in their own nation. Yet the inherently political nature of the crime\u2014particularly when it is framed as a violent protest against state injustice\u2014makes its handling problematic. Especially in a country known for its imperious style of one-party rule, and censorship of opinions that run contrary to the official script.<\/p>\n