Are Chinese Students Safe in Canada?
(murder victim Lin Jun)
The grisly murder and dismemberment of Lin Jun, a Chinese engineering student at Montreal’s Concordia University, allegedly at the hands of gay porn psychopath Eric Clinton Newman alias Luka Rocco Magnotta, sent shock waves across China. Netizens wondered aloud not only about the safety of Chinese students abroad but whether it was racially motivated.
Just over a year ago, many recalled, York University student Liu Qian’s killing was partially witnessed on Skype by her boyfriend in China. She had been living in a supposedly safe student housing complex just minutes from the main campus. Last April, two Chinese graduate engineering students at the University of Southern California were gunned down and killed in their car outside the lot where one of the victims lived.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa along with the Consulate in Montreal immediately warned Chinese students and nationals in Canada on business or pleasure to be on their guard. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird expressed his “deepest condolences” to the Chinese Ambassador, denouncing the “senseless killing” and promised to keep him abreast of developments.
Most appalling for netizens was that Magnotta had apparently videotaped the gruesome act and posted it on Edmonton-based “Best Gore” a day after the murder. The 10-minute flick showed a man killing an Asian with an ice pick and after dismembering the corpse, defiling it sexually and seemingly cannibalizing some body parts.
Some of gory details ended up on Chinese forums and micro blogs, leading web users to call for a boycott of the segments. Sina Weibo, one of China’s leading blogging sites, announced that it has been filtering videos and picture galleries for any inappropriate scenes. Anyone found loading lurid content would have their posts deleted and even barred from Weibo altogether.
Currently, more than 50,000 Chinese students live and study in Canada, helping to prop up many Canadian universities that are teetering under the weight of rising costs and a rapidly shrinking domestic student base. Just as important, almost 1/4 million Chinese vacationed in Canada last year. With the Chinese government and media sounding alarm bells about the safety of its citizens in Canada (and other Western countries), Canadian efforts to lure more Chinese tourists could take a blow.
In an interview, Meng Xiaochao, the boyfriend of the York University murder victim, commented, “the impact of the (Lin Jun) case will be very bad on Canada…Last year, when Liu Qian’s case happened, many parents said they were no longer willing to send their children to Canada. Now comes this case.”
A recent post on China Education Online got a lot of circulation. Written a month after the April racially inspired severe beating of Chinese students at a Sydney mass transit station and just a week before Lin Jun went missing, the article, to its credit, urged Chinese traveling and studying abroad to be more self aware and on good behaviour instead of deriding their foreign hosts.
Growing up pampered, young Chinese students are often too naïve and easily trusting of others. They don’t lock windows at night and are not sufficiently vigilant when walking alone, the post chastised. Chinese students abroad tend to be overly bookish, caught up in strictly academic pursuit to the neglect of nurturing social skills. They sometimes speak without tact or act out of turn and are poor at communicating with others, especially local residents.
They can behave badly in public, chattering loudly, littering, loitering, or sitting or lying where they shouldn’t. Chinese students seem meek and generally avoid confrontation. While this is not a bad attribute, the anonymous post posited, it can lead to an image of cowardliness that invites bullying and mistreatment by others. Finally, although they won’t say it out loud, some Chinese can be equally racist, especially toward people of colour.
Ever more Chinese travel abroad for work and study. For their own safety, they’d best heed these words.