Summary
Coming only a week after an incident near Tiananmen Square and in a region typically removed from ethnic violence, the purported bombings Nov. 6 in Shanxi province paint a potentially troubling picture about social tensions in China.
Analysis
At approximately 7:40 a.m. local time, seven bomb blasts were heard near the headquarters of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party on Yingze Street, a major thoroughfare in Taiyuan, Shanxi's provincial capital. Eight people were injured and one was killed in the explosions, which, according to witnesses in state news media, were likely caused by homemade bombs hidden in roadside flowerbeds.
State media outlets reported that ball bearings or "steel beads" -- and perhaps even nails, according to one report -- were found at the scene and that at least 20 nearby vehicles were damaged. Xinhua also cited eyewitnesses who saw a minivan "blasted with heavy smoke and spread with a lot of debris." Meanwhile, China Central Television reported that the blasts shattered office building windows and flattened the tires of cars within 100 meters (330 feet) of the blast. In a mining area such as Taiyuan, explosives are normally plentiful, so the bomb may have been made with more powerful commercial blasting explosives rather than low explosive powders from fireworks. Police are investigating the explosions but have so far refrained from labeling them a terrorist attack.
Coming a week after a family of ethnic Uighurs drove their SUV onto the sidewalk under the famous Mao Zedong portrait across the street from Tiananmen Square, and just days before the Communist Party Plenum, the incident instantly raises questions of whether there is some coordination or relationship. If the initial reports of ball bearings in the Taiyuan blasts are accurate, it already shows a significant difference between the two cases. In Beijing, there appears to have been an overall intent by the perpetrators to limit additional casualties -- they reportedly blasted their horn as they drove down the sidewalk, and the three occupants remained in the car after the crash and before the fire rather than getting out to attack bystanders. In contrast, in the case of Taiyuan, ball bearings and nails suggest the bombs were intended to yield maximum casualties.
A Boomtown Busts: Crisis in China's Coal CountiesThe current information does not provide enough clues to suggest the likely perpetrator in the Taiyuan blasts. Explosives are commonly used to express frustration over political and social grievances (for example, in November 2011 a suicide bomber targeted a primary school in Anze county in southern Shanxi province), though rarely with the addition of shrapnel. Organized crime and business disputants, family arguments, disgruntled farmers and those kicked out of their houses due to development have all been known to use explosives, as have various ethnic separatist and terrorist organizations. In addition, the Shanxi Provincial Committee may not have even been the target, given the significance of the road in that area.
Shanxi, with its comparative geographic isolation and location at the heart of China's Han core, is not a province normally prone to ethnic tensions. Far from a major destination of immigration by Han Chinese or other ethnic groups, Shanxi has historically been seen by many residents as a place from which to depart. It is a largely rural province whose economy is grounded in natural resource extraction, in particular coal mining, though in the past decade it has developed growing speculative markets tied to the coal and real estate sectors.
Shanxi belongs to the core interior regions that China's economic reforms aim to benefit in the coming years, primarily through increased urbanization and investment into transport and housing infrastructure. Social tensions over economic disparities have been simmering under the surface, but for the most part they have been held in check through promises and some policy adjustments. This incident, like a string of bombings targeting local government offices in Fuzhou and Tianjin in 2011, may suggest that tensions are much higher than previously thought. The challenge is to understand whether these tensions represent normal and manageable stresses -- that is, stresses that do not threaten to undermine wider social and political stability -- or if they are symptomatic of deeper fissures.
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