Moderation trumps prejudice

Amid the shock and anger arising from the Kunming terrorist attack was a new voice of rationality, a grassroots effort to separate the terrorists from the masses who reside in Xinjiang

Every cloud has a silver lining. If the terrorist attack at Kunming Railway Station on March 1 was a dense, ominous cloud, the subsequent outpouring of rational comment can be seen as the silver lining that will help dispel the gloom.

Other than expressions of grief, I noticed on my micro blog a repeated warning not to equate what the terrorists did with race, religion or geography. Han Han, an influential writer, posted a typical remark: "There is no room for compromises when dealing with terrorism that targets ordinary citizens. It must be rooted out. But we should not place hatred on race or religion. Do good, not evil."

A blogger with the handle "As if in New York" wrote: "Do not develop your hatred for the terrorists into fear and loathing for a whole ethnicity. You'd be playing into the hands of the terrorists. Do no twist your effort to counter violence into discrimination and hostility for a whole race. This is exactly what the terrorists wanted."

I was quite relieved that, in the heat of the moment, so many voices of reason emerged and placed the horror in context. Li Duoyu, an acquaintance of mine who is editor-in-chief of Mtime.com, China's largest movie portal, was the first on my list to suggest that Xinjiang not be used as an identifier for the attackers. "To call them Xinjiang terrorists would be unfair to all those who reside there," she wrote. Li could be one of many who made that suggestion, which was echoed by a government blog from Kashgar, a Xinjiang city: "Most people in Xinjiang have nothing to do with those who resort to violence. Please do not denigrate the word Xinjiang."

I cannot gauge the scale of the triumph of the moderates. Those I subscribe to on my micro blog and those they retweeted may or may not be a representative sample of the whole nation. But in the very least there are so many opinion leaders calling for calm and sounding alarms against a racial divide. I consider this a giant leap forward from the old days when an egregious crime invariably begot the massive response that "People in that province are like that".

The top victim for this kind of geographically oriented stigma could be Henan, a central province with a population of almost 100 million and a relatively low level of economic development. Locals often leave their home province to seek better jobs, and gradually there developed a negative public perception about the Henanese. About a decade ago, the stereotype was exacerbated by a couple of killings by a lone psychotic type in that jurisdiction.

The biggest negative stereotype for people from Xinjiang is not violence, but petty stealing. This was borne out by a map floating in cyberspace a few years ago. In it, every province or province-level jurisdiction was filled out with a few descriptions supposedly culled from polling.

This form of bigotry, disguised as humor, is often based on a few samples of news stories or gossip that have little statistical backup. But it is in human nature to grasp something big by digesting what you've seen or heard into manageable tips or factoids that can be a guide.

Let's imagine a Chinese farmer living in the landlocked interior. One day, a Caucasian backpacker wandered by and sought accommodation from him. The farmer played host and they communicated for a few days. That tourist, willy-nilly, was actually serving as the representative of all non-Chinese in the world. Nobody elected him for this function, and he might not even be aware of this role. But to this particular Chinese farmer, whatever virtues or foibles that young foreign man exhibited were extrapolated to billions of other people the farmer had never met.

Ignorance is the breeding ground for stereotypes, good or bad. By the time that Chinese farmer encounters 1,000 foreigners, (Let's imagine his hometown later morphed into a tourist hotspot) there's no way he would see every one of them as a chip from the same block. He would have realized that each of them has his or her unique personality and way of doing things. He may be comfortable with some of them, but not with others, most possibly not along national or geographic lines.

Years ago, I spent a few days in Urumqi. I talked to taxi drivers and business owners, among others. It was by no means a scientific survey. But one thing struck me: those who spoke ill of other ethnicities tended to be new arrivals in the city, from the rest of Xinjiang or the rest of the country. Those who had lived in the city for many years almost unfailingly defended other ethnicities, often speaking in a mildly complaining tone about the pervasive ignorance.

The inevitable backlash in the aftermath of the Kunming incident has been met with a sweeping grassroots campaign to inject common sense into self-righteous bigots. The first story that popped up on my weibo account was about a Uyghur youth in Dali, a tourist town in Yunnan. As soon as someone said his landlord was evicting him and his restaurant was being shut down, many jumped to his rescue, including several minor celebrities. Later, it was clarified that there were no systematic evictions and some people called on the public to patronize Uyghur-owned businesses to let them know we are all in the same boat and that terrorists are our common enemy.

Yu Minhong, a prominent business leader, posted a tweet on March 4: "After the bloody incident in Kunming, some places started to drive away Uyghur compatriots. I'm making an appeal here that most Uyghur people are law-abiding citizens who work diligently for their lives. I have many Uyghur friends and my company employs some as well. They all work hard to maintain racial teamwork. We must not resort to mutual hatred and repulsion because of the monstrosity of the terrorists. We must work together to win back racial harmony."

Among the thousands of responses, most understand the logic that there are bad apples in every ethnic or geographic group and most people anywhere and everywhere are kind and decent. But understandably, there are also voices on both extremes, either condemning the whole region or ethnicity or justifying the attackers with a broader take on race relations. For the time being, the most pressing issue is to prevent further terrorism and to separate the evildoers from the majority of good people who share their race, religion or hometown.

For those who bad-mouth a whole ethnic or geographic group, the sharpest retort I've seen was: "How many Xinjiang or Uyghur people do you know?" It's quite possible those people who spread hate have not met in person a single one from the group they are demonizing. A hashtag on a micro blog called "I'm a Xinjiang person" has attracted tens of thousands of participants, each recounting his or her perspective as a resident of that region. Anyone who cares to scroll through those statements, often with photos, will get a better picture of this beautiful place and its wonderful people and will think twice before making sweeping generalizations.

The writer is editor-at-large of China Daily. Contact him at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 03/07/2014 page30)