Four American university professors stabbed in public park in China

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police have arrested a suspect in a stabbing attack on four Cornell College of Iowa instructors who taught at a Chinese university in the northeastern city of Jilin, they said Tuesday. those responsible.

Jilin city police said a 55-year-old man surnamed Cui was walking in a public park on Monday when he came across a stranger. He stabbed the foreigner and three other foreigners who accompanied him, as well as a Chinese man who had approached to try to intervene, police said.

The police statement gave no indication of the motive for the attack.

The Cornell College instructors taught at Beihua University, officials at the American school said.

The injured were rushed to hospital for treatment and none are in critical condition, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a press briefing on Tuesday. daily. He said police believed the attack in Jilin city's Beishan Park was an isolated incident, based on a preliminary assessment, and that the investigation was ongoing.

Cornell College President Jonathan Brand said in a statement that the instructors were attacked while in the park with a professor from Beihua, located in an outlying part of Jilin, an industrial city about 1 000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Beijing. Monday was a public holiday in China.

Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, posted on the social media site citizen of Iowa. “We are doing everything we can to help them and hope for their full and speedy recovery,” he wrote.

The attack came as Beijing and Washington seek to expand people-to-people exchanges to strengthen relations amid trade tensions and international issues such as Taiwan, the South China Sea and the war in Ukraine.

An Iowa state lawmaker posted a statement on Instagram saying his brother, David Zabner, was injured in a stabbing attack in Jilin. Rep. Adam Zabner described his brother as a doctoral student at Tufts University who was in China as part of the Cornell-Beihua relationship.

“I spoke to David a few minutes ago, he is recovering from his injuries and is doing well,” Adam Zabner wrote, adding that his brother was grateful for the care he received at the hospital.

News of the incident was suppressed in China, where the government maintains control of information on anything considered sensitive. The media didn't talk about it. Some social media accounts posted reports about the attack in foreign media, but a hashtag about it was blocked on a popular portal and photos and videos of the incident were quickly deleted.

Cornell spokeswoman Jen Visser said in an email that the college was still gathering information about what happened.

Visser said the private college in Mount Vernon, Iowa, partners with Beihua University. A college press release Starting in 2018, when the program began, Beihua funded Cornell professors to travel to China to teach portions of computer science, math, and physics courses over a two-week period.

According to a 2020 article on Beihua's website, the Chinese university uses American teaching methods and resources to give engineering students an international perspective and English proficiency.

About a third of the program's core courses use American textbooks and are taught by American professors, according to the newspaper. Students can apply to study two out of four years at Cornell College and receive degrees from both institutions.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has unveiled a plan to invite 50,000 young Americans to China over the next five years, although Chinese diplomats say a travel advisory issued by the US State Department has discouraged Americans from go to China.

Citing arbitrary detentions as well as exit bans that could prevent Americans from leaving the country, the State Department issued a Level 3 travel advisory — the second highest warning level — for mainland China. He urges Americans to “reconsider traveling” to China.

Some U.S. universities have suspended their programs in China due to the travel advisory.

Lin, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, said China had taken effective measures to protect the safety of foreigners. “We believe that this isolated incident will not disrupt normal cultural and human exchanges between the two countries,” he said.

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Tang reported from Washington, D.C. Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri, contributed to this report.