[Pen-l] Beijing stabber motivated by economic despair

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, August 11, 2008
A Stabbing Rooted in Loss and Despair
By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — Tang Yongming was like countless other middle-aged, marginally 
skilled men struggling to find their way in the new China. Laid off from 
a meter factory in the central city of Hangzhou, Mr. Tang, 47, found 
himself idle, broke and living alone in a rented room with no furniture 
and no future.

Friends and former co-workers said he had become angry and unmoored as 
he watched China’s surging economy roar ahead without him.

But even though Mr. Tang had moments of despair and frustration, those 
who knew him were at a loss to explain why he attacked a couple of 
American tourists and their Chinese guide on Saturday, fatally stabbing 
a 62-year-old man and slashing the others before leaping to his death 
from the balcony of the Drum Tower, one of Beijing’s best-known historic 
monuments.

Todd Bachman, a Minnesota businessman whose son-in-law coaches the men’s 
volleyball team, was killed. His wife, Barbara, 62, was critically 
wounded, as was the guide, whose name has not been released.

The attack, on the first day of the Olympic Games, punctured the 
feel-good bubble that had enveloped Beijing since the opening ceremonies 
on Friday night. Although the episode received modest coverage in the 
Chinese media, it has been widely discussed among local residents and 
foreign visitors, many of whom said they were stunned that such an act 
of brutality could have occurred amid the city’s thick blanket of security.

President Hu Jintao, meeting Sunday with President Bush, expressed 
condolences to the victims and their families and said the police would 
fully investigate. “The Chinese side takes this unfortunate incident 
very seriously,” he said.

The killing has provoked hand-wringing and debate on the Internet. Some 
people fretted that it could tarnish China’s moment of Olympic glory, 
while others used Mr. Tang’s murderous outburst to rail against a 
variety of unattended social ills: mental illness, chronic unemployment 
among laid-off state workers and the rise of xenophobic nationalism.

One widely circulated posting, written anonymously on a popular Web 
site, seemed to capture the prevailing worry that Mr. Tang’s crime would 
harm China’s image: “Your actions have hurt not just two Americans, but 
they have hurt the way Americans will view China during the Games, the 
way all the people of the world will view China. The bright dream of 
these momentous Olympics has been darkened by you.”

Much of the debate and the supposition about his motives have been 
swirling in a vacuum of substantial information. Mr. Tang was unemployed 
and arrived in Beijing on Aug. 1 for reasons that remain unclear. The 
only thing he left behind, investigators said, was the government-issued 
identification card in his pocket.

The Chinese police have painted him as a man turned desperate by 
personal shortcomings. “He had lost all hope after a series of failures 
in his life and took his anger out on society,” the police said, 
according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

Mr. Tang had no criminal record, investigators said, nor was he among 
the crowds of aggrieved citizens, so-called petitioners, who flock to 
the capital to file official appeals to the central government.

On the outskirts of Hangzhou, where Mr. Tang spent most of his life, 
neighbors and former co-workers said he was often disgruntled and prone 
to argument. “He grumbled a great deal, very cynical,” Zhang Liping, a 
former colleague, said. “He had an unyielding mouth.”

They agreed that Mr. Tang typified the many working men cast aside by 
ailing state-run industries. He was angry at being left behind by 
China’s headlong rush into an economy that lacked the succors of the 
Socialist past. “He had a quick temper and was always complaining about 
society,” said a former co-worker, who would only give his nickname, Aqing.

Mr. Tang worked as a metal presser at the Hangzhou Meter Factory for 
more than two decades. When a private company bought the plant five or 
six years ago, his job was transferred elsewhere and Mr. Tang was 
demoted to guard at the factory gate. In 2004, colleagues said, he lost 
that job for reasons that were not clear.

In 2006, his wife, who also worked at the meter factory, divorced him. 
Mr. Tang sold his house and rented a room nearby in Hengjie, a 
once-rural town that has become absorbed into Hangzhou’s industrial 
sprawl. Xinhua, quoting the police, said Mr. Tang’s 21-year-old son 
spent the money from the sale of the home. Last year the son was 
arrested for fraud and later received a six-month sentence for burglary.

Jiang Beigen, his landlord, said Mr. Tang paid $53 a month for an 
unfurnished room. According to Mr. Jiang and other tenants, Mr. Tang 
seemed to own only one shirt and a single pair of pants, both of which 
he washed by hand at night. He had no job, they said, and often slept 
late into the day.

Last week, Mr. Tang announced he was leaving town. According to the 
police, he called his son that evening and told him he would not be 
returning until he found success.

Reporting was contributed by Steven Lee Myers, and research by Dado 
Derviskadic, Fan Wenxin and Zhan Yingying.

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