U.S. ‘Dissatisfied’ With China’s Disclosures About Stabbings
The incident passed in moments: Two American instructors from a college in Iowa were each stabbed in the back on June 10 in northeast China. Two of their colleagues were then slashed on their left arms as they turned to face the assailant. A Chinese national who tried to intervene was knifed in the abdomen.
Nearly two months later, the attack in Jilin City is becoming the latest in a series of diplomatic frictions between the United States and China. R. Nicholas Burns, the United States ambassador to China, criticized Beijing’s limited divulgence of specifics about the episode and said that he was actively pressing for more disclosure.
Chinese government “authorities have not provided additional details on the motives of the assailant,” he said in a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday. “We remain dissatisfied about the lack of transparency and have made our concerns abundantly clear to the” government in Beijing.
In response, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly defended how the stabbings were handled. A statement to The Times on Wednesday, repeating what the Jilin police said shortly after the stabbings, said that the episode began when the assailant, 55, collided on a crowded path with one of the instructors. The statement, released by the ministry’s office of the spokesperson, added that the assailant had been having trouble walking before the collision, but did not elaborate.
“This case was an isolated incident caused by a physical collision and quarrel between the two parties,” the statement said. “It was not targeted at a specific country or person, nor against U.S. personnel in China. Such matters could happen in any country.”
In an interview on Thursday, another U.S. government official, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, expressed further dissatisfaction with China’s stance.
The American official said that the United States Consulate in Shenyang, which handles issues in northeast China, had been notified on Wednesday by a local prosecutor in Jilin City that the suspect would be charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” The charge is often used against activists or people involved in small neighborhood disputes. The official said the United States government does not think the charge is commensurate with the crime.
In other cases of multiple stabbings in China, the charge has sometimes been “intentional homicide” even if victims survived, according to the official.
China’s foreign ministry said in response to the American official’s claim about the severity of the charge that the United States “has no right to interfere in China’s legal proceedings, nor should it make irresponsible statements.”
The authorities have also said little publicly about the suspect in another attack on foreigners that followed the one in Jilin. On June 24, a Chinese man in Suzhou, a city in east-central China, stabbed and injured a Japanese mother and child at a school bus stop.
But a Chinese woman, Hu Youping, prevented the assailant from boarding the bus, which had Japanese children aboard. Ms. Hu, 55, was stabbed repeatedly and later died at a nearby hospital.
The Suzhou attack triggered discussion online in China. Many internet users hailed her as heroic, but some Chinese nationalists initially defended the assailant and mentioned atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in China before and during World War II.
Several days after the episode, the Suzhou government issued a statement describing Ms. Hu’s actions as “righteous,” and the Japanese Embassy in Beijing flew its flag at half-staff for a day in her honor. The police have said they have detained a suspect for criminal investigation.
In the Jilin attack, officials have not identified the Chinese citizen who intervened to protect the four instructors, who were from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and had been teaching summer courses at Beihua University in Jilin.
The foreign ministry said that the individual acted “bravely” — the first official comment praising the individual who intervened — and suggested the individual wanted to remain anonymous.
“Regarding contact with those who act bravely, it is important to comply with Chinese law and respect the wishes of the person concerned,” the statement said.
The Chinese statement also attacked the United States’ record on violence.
“It should be pointed out that anti-China, anti-Asian sentiment and discriminatory behavior in the United States have posed a real threat to the personal safety of Chinese citizens in the United States,” the statement said.
In interviews last week, more than a dozen Jilin residents said that violent crime, and particularly multiple stabbings, were rare in the city. Outdoor surveillance cameras are ubiquitous in Jilin, as is common in China.
One of the Jilin victims, David Zabner, who was slashed on his arm, said in a telephone interview that he and the other instructors had been taken by ambulances to what was described to him as Jilin’s best hospital. He said he was told that the Chinese citizen who intervened had walked from the park where the attack happened to a neighborhood hospital for treatment.
Mr. Zabner said that the assailant used a knife with a blade that was about four inches long.
All four instructors — the two American citizens stabbed in the back as well as an American citizen and an Indian citizen who lives in the United States as a permanent resident — have returned to the United States after medical treatment in China and, in one case, further treatment in Thailand.
Videos have circulated on social media of the stabbing victims lying on a wide pedestrian path that runs down through Jilin’s Beishan Park from the recently restored Jade Emperor Temple at the top of a hill. The American official who spoke on Thursday complained that the Chinese authorities had refused to release any video from the attack itself.
It is possible, however, that the actual attack was not filmed, as drooping tree branches appear to block any view of the site from nearby surveillance cameras.
Li You and Siyi Zhao contributed research.
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