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China tiptoes around the 'T' word
The Washington Times December 21, 2001
BEIJING — China said this week that a spate of recent
bombings that killed seven persons around the country
were isolated criminal incidents, insisting that the
nation's security situation was not deteriorating.
Investigations were continuing into the explosion
Saturday night that killed two and injured 27 at a
McDonald's restaurant in Xian, the capital of north
China's Shaanxi province, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Zhang Qiyue said.
But so far, police consider it and another 23 blasts
over a three-day period last week to be unconnected
criminal incidents, she said.
The blast in Xian, one of China's most popular tourist
cities, followed Friday's near-simultaneous detonation
of 22 bombs in two cities in the southern province of
Guangdong, in an apparent grudge attack that killed
five persons and injured seven.
On Sunday, another bomb went off at the home of a
local official in Guiguang city, in Guangxi province,
also in the country's south.
"This explosion and the others were all isolated
criminal cases," Miss Zhang told reporters. "These
incidents by no means show that the general security
situation in China is degrading."
She refused to comment on why Beijing police had
stepped up security in the capital's diplomatic
quarter this week, but insisted China enjoyed social
stability.
Meanwhile in Taipei, a radical pro-independence party
denounced the Taiwan government for bowing to pressure
from Beijing by denying an entry visa to an exiled
Chinese Muslim leader.
The Taiwan Independence Party (TIP) had invited
Dilixat Raxit, spokesman for the East Turkestan
Information Center, a group of exiled Uighur Muslims
from China's northwestern Xinjiang province, to visit
the island, a TIP spokesman said. But the Democratic
Progressive Party government, considered
pro-independence, rejected his visa application.
"We have no idea why the government rejected the entry
visa of Mr. Dilixat Raxit while permitting visits by
Chinese democracy activist Wei Jinsheng," TIP
spokesman Huang Yu-yen said. Mr. Wei, who spent 18
years in Chinese prisons, was living in exile in the
United States.
Mr. Dilixat, who lives in Sweden, had hoped to attend
a conference in Taiwan on independence for China's
ethnic minorities.
"We felt the government's refusal to issue him the
entry visa was in deference to Beijing," said Tsai
Ting-lin, another TIP official.
Tensions between Taipei and Beijing rose after Chen
Shui-bian of the DPP swept to power last year, ending
the 51-year rule over the island by the Kuomintang
(Nationalist Party), which favors Taiwan's eventual
reunification with China.
The Uighur leader had planned to meet with Taiwan Vice
President Annette Lu and former President Lee Teng-hui
during the trip.
The McDonald's explosion on Saturday took place at the
base for millions of tourists who flock each year to
see the famous 2,000-year-old army of terra cotta
warriors near Xian.
The bomb went off at 6:30 p.m., when the eatery was
packed with diners, the official Xinhua news agency
reported.
One man, Xie Bin, 22, from central Hubei province, was
killed instantly and 28 persons were injured,
including one who later died from his injuries, media
reports said.
The state-run China Daily said the man killed
instantly was believed to be the bomber, but local
police contacted by Agence France-Presse declined to
confirm this and have released no information about
the identity of the bomber.
An employee of a newspaper in Xian told AFP, however,
that the paper had learned from police that neither of
the two dead was the perpetrator. "They haven't
arrested the bomber yet. They said the two people
killed were just customers," the employee said.
Xian police said Monday there was no indication the
blast was set off by Muslim separatists. "It's true [the
McDonald´s is] just [220 to 330 yards] from the mosque,"
a police official told AFP. "But there is probably no
connection."
Xian is home to about 60,000 Muslims belonging to the
Hui minority, descendants of Arab and Persian traders,
leading to speculation the blast could be linked to
Islamic extremists.
Muslim separatists among the Uighur ethnic minority
have been blamed by authorities for a series of
bombings in recent years, mainly in the western region
of Xinjiang.
"People in other countries frequently attack
McDonald's because it's an icon of Western popular
culture," said Lau Siu-kai, a sociologist at Chinese
University of Hong Kong.
The McDonald's opened two months ago and was the only
one in Xian and China's northwest.
The latest explosions add to a grim recent record of
bloody bomb attacks in China, blamed by some analysts
on crumbling social networks and growing inequality,
coupled with relatively easy access to explosives,
which are used widely in construction work.
Early this week, state media reported that China would
amend its criminal law to give the government more
power to crack down on terrorism.
The amendment was formulated "to deal more harshly
with criminal acts of terrorists, for the protection
of national security, social order and safeguard of
safety of people's lives and property," senior
lawmakers were told.
While backing the global anti-terrorism campaign,
Beijing has been criticized for using the
international climate as an excuse to try to crush
Muslim and ethnic separatists, especially those among
the Turkic-speaking Uighurs in western Xinjiang
province.
Less than five months ago, a Han Chinese policeman in
Kucha died after a hand-grenade attack said to have
been carried out by the East Turkestan Freedom
Fighters Organization, one of many underground groups
in Xinjiang that attacked police stations and public
facilities during the mid-1990s.
Armed Uighur bands are also active in former Soviet
republics west of Xinjiang, which comprises a
strategic region bordering Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan,
Tajikistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India,
as well as three other provinces of modern China:
Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet.
China's Manchu or Ch'ing dynasty — overthrown in 1912
after an uprising inspired by Sun Yat-sen, founder of
the Kuomintang — conquered the Uighur kingdom of
Eastern Turkestan in 1759 and dominated it until 1862,
according to a historical summary at an Internet site
maintained by Uighur exiles (www.taklemakan.org/uighur-l).
In 1863, the Uighurs expelled the Manchus, and created
an independent kingdom the following year that was
recognized by the Ottoman Empire, Tsarist Russia, and
Great Britain. But concern about Russian expansion
into the region led Britain to finance its reconquest
by Manchu China in 1876. The latter renamed the
territory Xinjiang ("New Dominion"), and it was
annexed to China in 1884.
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ETIC REPORT 2000 
