China executes man who shot dead 4 police officers in rare case of gun violence

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

04/26/2011

China executes man who shot dead 4 police officers in rare case of gun violence

BEIJING, China — A Chinese state news agency says a man who killed four policemen in a shootout in eastern China has been executed. It was a rare case of gun violence in a country where private firearms ownership is illegal.

The official Xinhua News Agency says 51-year-old Liu Jianjun was put to death Tuesday. The Intermediate People's Court of Tai'an city in Shandong handed him the death penalty in March for murder and illegal possession of guns and ammunition.

Xinhua says Liu and his brother shot and killed three police officers who were questioning them at home on Jan. 4. They then hijacked four cars before they were cornered by police. They killed one more police officer in the shootout. Reports say Liu's brother killed himself in the shootout.

Google News

Apr 26, 2011 1:42:39 PM | Crime, Current Affairs

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