Schools spread the word in fight against terrorism

Police officers patrol the area around the railway station in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. Long Wei / for China Daily

Wu Enyuan, a research fellow at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the recent events require an effective response. "A nationwide awareness of terrorism and safety has become necessary because terrorists are behaving with unbearable insolence."

According to Wu, it's crucial that China should share a consensus with the rest of the world. "An international consensus on who we are fighting is more important than just passing related laws within a certain country or an area," he said.

He said there is no excuse for terrorist acts because the victims are usually innocent people and violence poses a deep threat to safety and social stability. "All terrorists are the object of universal condemnation," he said.

In July 2008, the Ministry of Public Security released more than 2.6 million copies of a handbook containing safety and awareness tips for citizens nationwide. The book is widely believed to have been used to improve awareness of public security during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. However, once the Olympics ended, the book was hardly seen or even mentioned again.

The Kunming attack and the tensions it aroused have focused attention on a plethora of books related to personal safety. One of the biggest sellers, The Citizen's Security Manual, written by a professor at the People's Public Security University of China, catalogues different types of terrorist activity, including bombings and kidnappings. It also provides methods of spotting potentially dangerous individuals and survival tips for a variety of scenarios.

Unlike the simple role-play method used in the country's schools, the program designed for university students and lecturers will include detailed discussions of terrorist motivation and countermeasures. The prevention of all types of violence, terrorist-related or not, is a massive task for universities given the much larger numbers of people involved, compared with primary or secondary schools.

"It's essential that universities with a large number of students from different ethnic groups improve communications for better understanding and introduce systematic education about resolving ideological conflicts," said Xiong Shuxin, president of Yunnan University of Finance and Economics.

Because Yunnan is home to 26 ethnic groups, the university has stepped up security on the campus and has improved communications between students from different cultural backgrounds.

Globalization is changing people's lives, bringing about developments in society but also triggering a number of social problems, according to Xiong.

"I'm considering running some lectures on traditional Chinese schools of thought such as Confucianism or Taoism, philosophies that emphasize tolerance and peace. Those ideas could encourage people to gain a deeper understanding of the world and different cultures and beliefs," he said.