Bang Goes Stability

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Ronald McDonald was still grinning away, but other folks at the crowded eatery in Xi'an never got to finish their Happy Meals. On Dec. 16, a bomb jolted through the fast-food joint, sending patrons and Big Macs flying. The explosion killed two, injured 27 and stunned the entire city. "Things like this are supposed to happen in dangerous places, like the Middle East," says Liu Wei, a cashier who works in the same shopping complex as the town's only McDonald's. "I never thought it would happen in China."

Yet, just this month, four unrelated bombing incidents have shaken the nation, leaving Chinese citizens wondering what has happened to the country's once-vaunted social stability. For years, Chinese have proudly proclaimed that their country was free of violent crime; terror was something that gripped faraway American cities. But only last month, President Jiang Zemin reiterated that squelching social unrest was his top priority. Yet since Jiang's address to senior government officials in late November, the rate of bombings has actually increased, leaving nine dead and scores injured. "This is a new, dangerous phase in the nation's history," says Joseph Cheng, a politics professor at the City University in Hong Kong. "China can no longer contain its growing social inequalities."

Despite the soaring skyscrapers of China's eastern seaboard, much of the inland population remains undernourished—and the gap between urban rich and rural poor is yawning ever wider. Unemployment is burgeoning, and millions who are technically employed by the state haven't received a paycheck in months. Bloody labor protests have convulsed dozens of industrial towns this year. Tired of relying on lackadaisical police and ineffectual courts, normal citizens are also becoming restive. "People have no way to complain," says Shan Guangnai, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. "So they've started to take revenge themselves."

Take Lin Guijian, who used cell phones and beepers to trigger more than 20 explosions that paralyzed the southern towns of Zhanjiang and Jiangmen on Dec. 14. His staggering feat of destructive logistics killed five people, including Lin himself. A troubled businessman, he was reportedly getting back at his estranged brother-in-law, as well as a group with whom he was in financial dispute. Just a few days earlier in the southern province of Guizhou, an unemployed laborer strapped a bomb to his waist and met his pregnant ex-girlfriend for a ride around town. As they sat in a rickshaw, the device detonated, killing the pair and maiming the driver.

Explosives are the weapon of choice for the extremely disaffected. Firearms are difficult to buy in China, but dynamite and combustible fertilizer are widely available—despite a government crackdown on the sale of incendiary material. They have found new use as a tool to exact revenge on former lovers, business partners or government officials. State newspapers have urged tense citizens to adopt a Zen-like attitude—even get professional help should they be feeling too stressed. Worried by the increased violence, the government has beefed up the police force. A dragnet has nabbed some bombers. In the northeastern city of Shijiazhuang, law-enforcement officials put to death a laid-off worker who set off explosions that killed 108 people last March. But they also executed a woman who had unwittingly sold ammonium nitrate to the bomber. Her crime: peddling unlicensed fertilizer. Between deranged bombers and a ham-fisted official quest for social stability, Chinese are more at risk than ever before.