Chinese media reacts to Virginia Tech shootings

Reports and discussion about Monday’s shootings at Virginia Tech filled the Chinese media and online forums today.

News was gleaned from reports from the American press and from Chinese journalists stationed in the US. There was some analysis – background on other school shootings, discussions about the gun ownership, open campuses, and the “culture of violence,” and speculations on whether Asians will face discrimination as a result of the incident (verdict: probably not).

Online, the incident was a popular topic on the forums; Netease has two threads that currently have more than 10,000 comments apiece, and it seems the vast majority of BBS posts expressed shock and sympathy. An anonymous post to Sina’s forums assessed reactions both online and in the mainstream media. An excerpt:

If it were put into a political textbook more than a decade ago, this incident would probably have been used as evidence of the decay of the capitalist world. I had assumed that people today would have a different understanding from that, but among netizens there were still a good number who commented, “American hegemony gets its just reward,” “A so-called free, civilized country; the sorrow of a country overflowing with guns,” (these and others from Sina’s forums). I really want to ask them if they ever considered the following when they wrote these remarks: is this a problem unique to the US? Do they not remember Jin Ruchao and the Shijiazhuang bombing, or Ma Jiajue, the architect of the bloody case at Yunnan University? What’s more, using this incident for mockery, to gloat, “one killing 32 – that’s really something!” “America, the land of heroes! Hail to the hero!” So cold toward life, I genuinely do not know whether they possess a human conscience at all!

Fortunately, many netizens were not like that. When people saw the news, the first reaction was shock and sympathy. “A moment of silence for the departed! Systems may be different, but people’s lives are the same! I condemn all terrorist activity!” “Those loathsome terrorists, always creating tragedy for humanity. A moment of silence for the departed!” Shock arises from the sorrow of fellow humans, and sympathy comes out of human affection; in the words of one netizen, “Love knows no national borders.” Some netizens then proceeded to soberly reflect on issues sucha as the legal system, education, and human nature. “No matter the country, there are always people dissatisfied with society; only the numbers are different,” “A harmonious world is what everyone needs.” And this too came out of concern and consideration for the fate of all humanity.

What was the attitude of the domestic mainstream media to this? I did not catch the CCTV news, so I went to the CCTV website. This incident was the top story on the website, with the headline, “Worst shooting ever occurs at American university, 33 dead.” Listed under the headline were several news items: “Shooting occured at Virginia Tech,” “The shooter was Asian,” “The killer shot himself,” “No known Chinese deaths at present.” It must be said that this kind of report exhibits the two fundamental elements of news: it is objective and factual. In the later in-depth reports, we see CCTV ask experts and scholars for their opinions on the incident, and according to what has been experienced in this sort of thing in the past, the majority of the commentators will present objective commentary from a professional perspective that is not lacking in concern.

The shooter has now been identified as a South Korea student residing in the US. Earlier today, however, rumors were circulating that the killer was a 24-year-old Chinese man who had come to the US last year and who was not a VT student.

A journalist with a CCTV news program wrote on her blog that this possibility ultimately caused their report to be scrapped. She comments:

Instinct at the time was: not doing it would be unacceptable and a dereliction of duty. However, to do it might run into temporary restrictions, and it might even be killed before being born. Regardless, the first thing is to get going on it. This was the opinion of the editor in chief, and also that of us workers….Originally, the thought was to come up with a plan as quickly as possible and let the leaders pass a verdict on it, but something unexpected came up: the leaders quickly “became aware of the serious nature of the issue” and “stopped up a hole that could be problematic for propaganda.”

The journalist writes that the story was replaced with a piece on the kidnapping of a BBC reporter and another on the Darfur issue, for which the leaders had another set of restricted guidelines.

In online forums, some commenters said that the shooter could not possibly be Chinese, because a 24-year-old would have to have been in the army to learn how to shoot like that, and those people don’t go overseas for college.

The current situation has most major media saying that the killer was Chinese. This has been basically denied by overseas students.

According to the survivors, the killer was skilled at reloading. He wore a baseball cap and a black leather jacket.

Most importantly, the killer wore a bullet-proof vest.

The situation ended when the police discovered a dead Asian male with a gun in his hand. But many questions remain.

That person had killed himself by shooting himself in the back of the head. This is not logical. This configuration is awkward. His facial features are destroyed so he is unrecognizable. Would a gun-savvy person wearing body armor ultimately kill himself to end things? Most VT students believe that the killer mixed in among the students and escaped.

Other comments (on Sina, since deleted) extended this line of logic into a conspiracy theory, postulating that a Chinese international student had been used as a pawn by the real killers.