Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
An explosion in Taiyuan, China killed one and injures eight others this morning. The attack was right outside the Communist Party office for the Shanxi province.
This is the second political terrorist incident reported in the news. The previous was cited as an unsuccessful plot in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, last week. The vehicle drove over a crowd of people and crashed into a railing, then going ablaze. That killed five people and wounded 40 others. Was this terrorism or something else?
With China, government conspiracy theories are not always just ‘theories.’ Throughout the CCP’s history they have been responsible for attacking their own for the ‘greater good’ of the Party. Simply ‘allowing’ a known attack at here and there is quite possible if it serves a renewed public support and increase in national security. At the most extreme, the attacks were instigated by hardliners of the CCP who seek to increase their power base and military voice.
Speculation aside, the narrative, is that China is experiencing an increase of political resistance from militant elements as evidence of these last two. The story goes: ‘we are too weak to protect our people. New measures will need to be put in place. Greater security resources will be needed, etc.’
The problem with the state’s position is that it is patently false. Conspiracy aside, these militants are not targeting the people, they are striking at the Party and the government more directly and effectively. This means that CCP is in danger, which of course means that the people are in danger.
The CCP has demonstrated an amazing ability for agility to disperse and disrupt internal threats and popular movements. For the Party, it is all about socio-political control. They will first seek to control the narrative, as they already have control of the media. They will then pursue a rally around the flag nationalist campaign which is likely to get well out of hand but one that has been argued by hardliners as necessary for the survival of China [the Party].
It is very likely that a violent Islamic extremist group is behind the attacks and emerging from the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province. The Chines hold that it was “carefully planned, organized, and premeditated.” If this is the case, the problem with state run media is that there is lacking the independent sources for greater verification. They are shooting themselves in the foot with their institutional make-up. What if these are unemployed dissidents whose parents died in an overcrowded hospital waiting room and whose uncle is now in the hospital for lung related diseases? Can anyone trust the state media?
They suppress the attacks carried out by angry workers and Han Chinese. These are rooted out by daring Western journalists that cover and expose it- a task becoming more and more difficult in China. Last year, the BBC covered a story of a suicide bombing carried out by a disabled man that did not get any benefits. There had been knife attacks on planes and so forth. The overall discontentment is rising.
Since the Sumer of 2009, Han Chinese and Uyghurs have engaged in a heightened ethnic violence in Xinjiang. They have taken many steps farther than Israel, instigating a large Han Chinese settlement in a predominantly Muslim mixed-ethnic minority zone. There, there exists a police state, high surveillance, repression and interference with education and religious practices. Any independence movement, like that of Tibet, sees a crackdown of force. While all terrorism is wrong, the state is not shy to engage in state terror in that part. Uyghur groups claim that the CCP uses exaggerated terrorism to justify repression in the region.
If one or both of these attacks represent a growing case of religious extremism raging from Uyghur extremists, the attacks have the potential to inspire a growing discontent nation-wide with the CCP’s political corruption, high pollution and unemployment. As more people die or become harmed by Party policies, more violence is the natural result by a populace beyond ethnic or religious minorities.
Presently, there is no way to peacefully seek justice and no alternative parties to elect as a replacement for socio-political changes. The CCP stay of power is less a matter of skill in the larger scheme and more of one upheld by a single-point juncture promise that says, ‘We will take care of you the people.’ One, this does not apply to ‘troubled’ areas. Two, if they fail at this for the broader Han Chinese majority, the whole thing falls apart. No bread in stomach, no clear skies, no clean water, no gasoline equals no CCP. Reportedly slowing growth is a bad sign.
In the past, the Party pushed economics over all else. Now they are trying to turn their country into a single party pseudo-communist USA superpower. This requires the national pension plans, the health care, the unemployment funding, the rule of law and the environmental concerns. It’s too much all at once and they have let it go too far for too long while boosting their coffers. Now they are the second wealthy state in the world living in a smog ridden dream and their food and water supply are in jeopardy.
The CCP could pull a Socialist Mexican PRE and eventually gain reelection in a decade or so, but at least they would survive. Their fate on their present course is less certain. If they don’t change politically with a multiparty system, they must eventually rally the people again behind an [ethno] nationalist ideology successfully or they will experience an implosive defeat.
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