There’s nothing new about the use of hypodermic needles to threaten and rob people. It happens all over the world. What is unusual is for an entire city like Urumqi to be gripped by fear, with hundreds of people claiming to have been stabbed, and rumors swirling about separatists deliberately spreading AIDS.
But this is not the first time panic over needle attacks has filled a city in China. In January 2002, shopping areas in Tianjin were deserted and people on the streets were in a state of constant vigilance. Everyone knew some version, or versions, of the rumor: that people with AIDS from Henan were taking revenge, either for being infected or for being abandoned by society. Then the rumors spread to Beijing. None of them were true.
Four people were arrested and convicted in Tianjin; three in Beijing. In Tianjin, two of the attackers had used syringes during a robbery. The others were completely unconnected and none of them had AIDS. In one of the Beijing cases, the man didn’t even use a syringe - he was just pricking people with an awl. It was never clear how this really started. All of the people convicted had heard the rumors and copied them.
The panic in Tianjin and Beijing in 2002 was remarkably similar to the situation now in Urumqi. While some people really had been threatened or pricked by needles, it seemed that many of those who flocked to the hospitals had not pricked by anyone. Their “attacks” were just a product of mass hysteria.
The difference between these cities is that Tianjin and Beijing were not already on a knife edge when the rumors began. Unlike Urumqi, no one was beaten to death and there were no protests demanding the resignation of city leaders.
Below, I’ve translated a Southern Weekly report from late January, 2002. It’s worth reading now because we are unlikely to see open reporting like this in Urumqi and because it highlights just how unreliable such rumors are. In one of the claims the paper investigated, people were able to give detailed descriptions about the pursuit and capture of a non-existent attacker. The “victim” did exist, but she had simply misinterpreted a previously unnoticed scratch on her hand.
The original Chinese, via Sina.com, is here. (See also: Snopes on various versions of this rumor around the world.)
Investigation into the “Tianjin AIDS needle-stabbing” incidents
Southern Weekly, January 24, 2002
Rumors that people are using AIDS-carrying syringes to prick city residents have created anxiety throughout Tianjin. Police in Tianjin have caught four suspects. Tianjin TV broadcast an expert’s explanation: the HIV virus dies a minute and a half after leaving the human body due to congealing of the blood and unless the HIV carrier draws the blood at the scene and immediately injects a large quantity into another person, it is extremely difficult to transmit the HIV virus with a needle.
Why were the rumors so ubiquitous? Because there was no authoritative mainstream voice. It is worth considering how to make use of emergency mechanisms when public security crises occur.
Tianjin’s “anxiety”
For the last two to three weeks, the streets of Tianjin have been unusually deserted and residents’ eyes are on the alert as they have never been before.
The pedestrian shopping streets of Binjiang Road and Heping Road have given the city’s busiest commercial district the name “Tianjin’s Wangfujing.” But the sprinkling of pedestrians make it seem that the name does not match reality. One person from Shandong who came to Tianjin on a business trip says, “If you just looked at the people walking in the streets, you wouldn’t believe this was a big city. It’s pretty much like the small county town back at home.”
The source of the widespread malaise in this huge city of nine million people is a rumor: that a group of people with AIDS from Henan have come to Tianjian and are taking revenge on society by randomly stabbing people with syringes loaded with HIV-infected blood in public places like shopping centers, supermarkets and on the street.
According to a local reporter, people say the rumor began on Christmas Eve when it’s said that a man was pricked in Binjiang Shopping Center. After New Year’s Day [Jan. 1], stories about needle-pricking spread further and further and the number of people pricked became greater and greater until the whole city was filled with anxiety.
Faced with the difficulty in judging whether the rumor was true or false, people chose to take an attitude of “better safe than sorry” and did their best to keep outside activities to a minimum. (Continued)