China Grapples with Its Own 9/11

In China, to interfere with rail is to disrupt the lifestyles and economies that have grown up around an increasingly mobile Chinese society. And to attack the people who ride those rails -- as happened Saturday night, in a horrific terror strike whereby a group of masked, knife-wielding terrorists killed 29 and injured more than 140 in Kunming’s main railway station -- is to leave most Chinese feeling much less secure, much as Americans might feel after an attack on a McDonald’s, a movie theater or an airport. The parallel, at least for some Chinese political commentators, is obvious. “It was a typical terrorist attack and also a severe crime against the humanity,” wrote Gui Tao, a writer with the state-owned newswire Xinhua, in an English-language commentary on Sunday. “It was China's ‘9-11.’”