Many Chinese are indignant at the slow and reluctant response from the United States in condemning last Saturday's terrorist attack at the railway station in Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan province.

This despicable attack, carried out by East Turkistan terrorists, killed 29 innocent civilians and injured 143. There can be no doubt that such violent acts targeting innocent people are intended to create fear among the population. But while it has shocked the nation, it has also united it against terrorism.

However, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki lost her usual fluency when she said the US acknowledged that China has characterized the incident as an act of terror. The same confusion was also observed when some media organizations in the United States put quotation marks around the word "terrorists" when describing the eight uniformed knife-wielding attackers.

Such wording is perplexing. Does it mean that the US still cannot make a judgment of its own based on the gruesome pictures and widespread reporting, via both official and social media?

The US' reluctance to condemn the terrorists is obvious since neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of State John Kerry has spoken out and deplored the attack.

The US sought global support immediately following the Sept 11, 2001, attacks and the bombing of the Boston Marathon last year. When former president George W. Bush led the US war of unprecedented scale on terror and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, in every global and bilateral meeting, fighting terrorism became an essential theme, even at International Monetary Fund and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, where the economy is supposed to be top of the agenda.

China has been quick to condemn terrorist attacks, both in the US and elsewhere. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China has also provided much-needed anti-terrorism cooperation to the US on the global stage.

But when China needs the same support, the US always looks the other way.

The US government has failed to condemn any violence against innocent civilians conducted by members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and other terrorist or extremist forces.

In a violent attack on June 26 last year, terrorists wielding knives in Lukqun township, Shanshan county of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, killed 22 civilians and two policemen. The US did not condemn the attack. In October a terrorist crashed his jeep into a crowd at Tian'anmen Square, killing five people, including his wife who was with him in the car, and injuring another 40. Police later confirmed the attack was planned by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and arrested five suspects. The US did not condemn that attack, either. There have also been a string of terrorist attacks on local police stations, including one on Dec 30 in Yarkan, a county in Kashgar prefecture, in which nine terrorists attacked a police station by throwing explosives and setting fire to police cars. Again the US did not condemn the attack.

Chinese journalists have repeatedly asked in the past months why the US does not call these people terrorists. The State Department spokespersons reply that the US is still investigating the attacks.

Even when the former State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf called on Uygurs not to resort to violence, she urged the Chinese government to permit its citizens to express their grievances freely, publicly, peacefully and without fear of retribution and she called on Chinese security forces to exercise restraint. Such a comment was not only wrongheaded, it was also badly timed.

Would the US have been happy back in 2001 if China had said the US would first have to change its foreign policy before China could condemn the al-Qaida attacks?

The author, based in Washington, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

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