Violent Murder: Two Pespectives

Recently, off campus two foreign exchange graduate students from China at USC were murdered. First of all, my condolences go out to the family and friends who have been affected by this news. This tragedy has created an interesting dynamic in how it is being perceived by American and Chinese news agencies.  Nevertheless, the situation may or may not strain Sino-US relations especially taking to account that a murder of another countries citizens will undoubtedly bring about foreign intervention.

In my opinion this situation is grave in Sino-US relations because the Chinese invest a lot of money and resources sending their brightest students to the US. This situation is very serious for USC has a large foreign exchange student population and a third of them are Chinese. Consequently, this event is going to damage USC’s image in China as a unsafe destination for prospective students.

However, interestingly enough the Chinese government is using this event as a political tool for propaganda. For those of you who can read Chinese, while I was surfing the web I stumbled upon this article.  It discusses that the Chinese government is using this event to spin off another secret agenda of theirs: control the masses. Rather than defending the students who were murdered, the Chinese government somehow places blame upon them for getting murdered (if I’m interpreting this correctly). The Chinese government is reminding its citizens that the lesson learned form this horrible event is that when you’re abroad you can’t be capitalist and showing off your money. News agencies in the mainland have been putting too much focus on the vehicle the students were in.  

Oddly enough in recent times China is having an increasing problem with eliteness. Those who have wealth differentiate themselves by driving luxury brand cars. As a result, many of those who drive luxury brand cars are being stigmatized by society. The association to those who can afford to drive these cars for the majority of society do not have positive connotation. They are often those who feel entitled and privilege. In response to these negative associations the Chinese media has taken it to another extreme by arguably condemning the students who were unfortunately murdered as somewhat contributing to it. This version is very twisted.

American news agencies have also contributed to this warped perception of what happened in reality. They have all been contradicting themselves. At first they introduced that the vehicle was new. Then changed their story to say it was a recently pre-owned vehicle. New versus pre-owned vehicle makes a huge difference. Regardless, excuse my French, the fuck up had already been made.

Anyways, the alternative response from the Chinese government is to call for more liability and security reassurance for their citizens from public and private institutions. Or the other, other alternative will be for China to send their own private army to protect their citizens. And in reality no country will allow that to happen because it undermines their sovereignty.  

Nevertheless, as for now at the expense of the two innocent students Chinese society is learning an important lesson: When you leave China, do not be a capitalist pig.