Chinese Sphere: Reactions to Mumbai Attacks
The Mumbai terrorist attacks figured prominently in the international sections of Chinese language newspapers. In the Southern Metropolis Daily, one of China’s leading commercial newspapers, Zhuang Liwei asserts that while outside groups may have aided the attackers, their primary motivation should be attributed to longstanding discrimination against Muslims in India’s predominantly Hindu society: “Before this Mumbai attack occurred, incidents of Muslim villages being burned, Muslims being murdered, and Muslims being evicted from their homes were occurring on a regular basis. Although the Indian government had made efforts to restrain Hindu radicals, they were of only limited effect because of Hindu’s political influence.
"Overall, Muslim radicals who found themselves disadvantaged had no choice but to resort to a strategy of bloody attacks in order to carry out a balanced resistance. At the same time, the intervention of external Islamic forces also enabled the Indian Muslims to obtain support and resources to continue their hardened resistance against the Hindu camp.” Zhuang goes on to forecast a round of revenge attacks and counterattacks between India’s Hindus and Muslims.
In the Liberty Times, one of Taiwan’s leading dailies, Lee Cheng-hong believes that India’s attribution of the attacks to external forces is a way of covering up its internal contradictions: “India may choose to take the more attractive American path and call the Mumbai attacks India’s 9-11 and put the finger on Pakistan as the mastermind. Thus, India’s next step would be to raise tensions with Pakistan and perhaps even engage in armed conflict. The logic for this course of action is simple and it would work towards sidestepping internal political crises and shift the focus outwards.” Lee also sees this as President-elect Obama's first major foreign policy test.
An editorial in Lianhe Zaobao, Singapore’s leading Chinese-language daily, interestingly blames India’s democracy for the attacks: “Many things about India tell us that oftentimes this ‘world’s largest democratic country’ is confounded by democracy itself. Even today it has still been unable to transform the benefits of democratic theory into reality for managing the nation and improving people’s lives. Instead, certain political forces and special interest groups force the nation’s political machinery to a standstill in pursuing their own interests. This renders the government unable to enact or execute policy, and the natural result in the end is that interests of the majority and all of society are harmed.
"With regards to the Mumbai incident, people cannot assign the entire blame to the lack of efficiency in India’s political system, but there is one point that cannot be denied: if a nation’s policymaking and execution functions are weak and powerless, or are constantly paralyzed, than it would naturally become an easy ‘soft target’ for terrorist organizations or other evil forces to attack. For India, this should be a lesson. For other countries, should this also not be a warning?”
