4 US university professors stabbed in China, suspect arrested: NPR

Four American instructors at an Iowa college were stabbed in China, Chinese authorities said.

Police in China's northeastern province of Jilin said Tuesday that the four victims were receiving medical treatment for non-life-threatening injuries and that they had arrested a man in connection with the knife attack.

The man arrested by police, a 55-year-old Jilin resident surnamed Cui, is suspected of stabbing the four American instructors in the city's Beishan Park on Monday, a police statement said. The statement said the suspect hit one of the Americans while walking in the park and then stabbed the instructor and three other American instructors, as well as a Chinese bystander who tried to intervene.

Violent attacks are relatively rare in China and Beishan Park is a tourist destination full of temples, water features and landscaped trails.

The four instructors were visiting China from Cornell College, a small private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, which has had an academic partnership with Beihua University in Jilin since 2018.

Iowa state officials say they have been in contact with both the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the victims' families. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote on social media that the US was “deeply concerned” by the incident.

China has been trying to attract more foreign visitors and businesses since lifting its pandemic-era travel restrictions almost two years ago. The country has expanded visa-free travel to 11 European countries and Malaysia, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said he wants 50,000 young U.S. citizens to come to China on exchange and education programs. study abroad over the next five years.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a regular news briefing on Tuesday that the attack appeared to be an isolated incident.

But analysts say anti-Western sentiment in China, bolstered by growing nationalism and COVID-era restrictions, has grown in recent years.

Lin said the attack “would not affect normal exchanges between the people of the United States and China.”