BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police Four instructors stabbed from Iowa Authorities announced the arrests on Tuesday of the Cornell University students who were teaching at the university in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin.
According to Jilin city police, a 55-year-old man surnamed Cui was walking through a public park on Monday when he bumped into a foreigner. The man then stabbed the foreigner and three other foreigners who were with him, as well as a Chinese man who approached to intervene.
The lecturers are Cornell According to a U.S. university official, students from the university are teaching at Beihua University.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular press conference on Tuesday that the injured were taken to hospital for treatment and were not in critical condition. Based on their preliminary assessment, police believe the attack in Jilin’s Beishan Park was an isolated incident and that the investigation was ongoing.
Cornell University President Jonathan Brand said in a statement that the lecturers were at a park with other faculty members in Beihua city, an industrial city on the outskirts of Jilin province, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northeast of Beijing. Monday was a national holiday in China.
The State Department said in a statement it was aware of the reports of the stabbing and was monitoring the situation. The attack comes as both Beijing and Washington seek to expand people-to-people exchanges to help strengthen ties amid rising tensions over international issues including trade, Taiwan, the South China Sea and the war in Ukraine.
The Iowa senator posted a statement on Instagram saying his brother, David Zabner, was injured in the stabbing in Jilin province. Rep. Adam Zabner explained that his brother was a doctoral student at Tufts University who was in China through a partnership between Cornell University and Beihua University.
“I spoke to David a few minutes ago and he is recovering from his injuries and doing well,” Adam Zabner wrote, adding that his brother was grateful for the care he received at the hospital.
Reports of the incident were suppressed in China, due to the government’s strict control over any information deemed sensitive. Media outlets did not report the incident. Some social media accounts published foreign media reports about the attack, but hashtags relating to the incident were blocked by popular portals and photos and videos of the incident were quickly removed.
Cornell spokeswoman Jen Visser said in an email that the university is still gathering information about what happened.
Visser said the private university in Mount Vernon, Iowa, has a partnership with Beihua University. University news release Since the program began in 2018, Beihua University has provided funding for Cornell professors to travel to China and teach select courses in computer science, mathematics and physics for two weeks.
According to a 2020 article on the Beihua University website, the Chinese university is using American teaching methods and resources to equip its engineering students with an international perspective and English language proficiency.
According to the article, about one-third of the program’s core courses use American textbooks and are taught by American professors, and students can apply to study two years of their four-year education at Cornell and earn degrees from both universities.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has revealed plans to invite 50,000 young Americans to China over the next five years, but Chinese diplomats say travel advisories from the U.S. State Department are discouraging Americans from visiting China.
The State Department has issued a Level 3 travel advisory for mainland China (the second-highest level of warning) citing the risk of arbitrary detention and exit bans that could prevent Americans from leaving the country, and urged Americans to “reconsider” traveling to China.
Some American universities have canceled programs related to China in response to travel advisories.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin said China was taking effective measures to safeguard the safety of foreigners. “We believe this isolated incident will not hinder normal cultural and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries,” he said.
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Tan reported from Washington, D.C., and Associated Press writer Summer Valentin in Columbia, Missouri, contributed to this report.
