Recently, something horrible happened in Tiananmen Square in
Beijing and there is an analysis article about that event from CNN attacked by
people in China. So I went to the website of CNN read the article this week.
The claim of this article is that the car crash is a cry of
desperation from the Uyghurs in China instead of a terrorist attack.
The first paragraph is the introduction of this article
which introduces the news that a car crash on Tiananmen Square resulted in the
death of five people and the injury of dozens. And then he also raised the
opposite argument that according to Chinese security organ, this is a
“carefully planned organized and premeditated” terrorist attack carried out by
a group of Uyghur Islamic extremists from Xinjiang Province.
To refute the opinion from Chinese security organ, he
divided the article into three parts as his three evidences. The first part is
under the subtitle called “Beijing car crash ‘a terrorist attack’”. In this
part, he discusses the some details of the events, for example, the attackers
didn’t use guns or dynamite and they only use gasoline, knives, iron rods and
an SUV, which mean they were not highly organized and well-armed. He is not
very convincible in this part because he didn’t use warrant when he gave the
ground. I think he should explain why terrorist attack needs to be armed and
well organized.
The second part is “who are the Uyghurs”. In this part, he
doesn’t really explain who the Uyghurs are; instead, he talks about the
conflictions between Uyghurs and Han Chinese. For this part, I don’t think what
he says are all real. For example, he says that Chinese government employing
Uyghur citizens to repressing Uyghurs’ political voices. But as I know this
policy is not only limited in Xinjiang Province. All provinces which have a
large percentage of minorities’ people hire minorities’ people to work for
government. It is not to repress them but to let their voice be heard.
The last part is “Xinjiang calm on anniversary of deadly
riots”. The author argues that Han Chinese migrants and are uprooting Uyghur
communities and displacing them from traditional lands. Also, he thinks Han Chinese
are trying to destroy Uyghurs’ culture. China is funding enormous development
projects in Xinjiang is true but he analyzes the impact of this development is
the traditional lands would be taken from Uyghurs by Han which I think is not
very reasonable. He is not very objective when he argues about this problem.
Development of projects promotes local economic development and this is the
real purpose. Uyghurs learn mandarin just for communication with others more
easily. Government did not forbid them to learn their own language and,
oppositely, Chinese made a lot of effort to protect cultural diversity and
learning their own language is encouraged.
In the conclusion part, he restates that the claim of a
Uyghur terrorist threat is not true and this is a desperate act. I think he has
a regular conclusion and this is good.
Basically, this article has a good structure but doesn’t
make good use of the Toulmin Model.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/opinion/china-tiananmen-uyghurs/index.html?iref=allsearch
