Lai See | Why no travel alert for mainland China with this grim toll?

Travelling in mainland China is becoming more risky. In yesterday’s South China Morning Post, we read that six people were wounded in a knife attack at Guangzhou railway station.

This is the third attack on a mainland railway station in the past two months. Last week, there was an explosion in Urumqi  that resulted in the deaths of two attackers and one civilian,  with 79 wounded. In March, machete-wielding attackers killed 29 and wounded 143  in Kunming.

Last week, six people, including three children, were killed and 13 injured by a deranged driver who repeatedly drove his car onto the pavement.

By the standards our Security Bureau applies,  this would have attracted some comment on its Outbound Travel Alert System, if not an alert of some kind. Indonesia, for example, has an amber travel alert. Our Security Bureau experts note: “Protests in different cities in end-March 2012; An explosion in Central Java on 25 September 2011 resulted in casualties; A bomb attack in West Java on 15 April 2011.”

The Philippines was put on a black travel alert when eight Hong Kong people died and seven were injured in the Manila hostage-taking. However, despite the 36 deaths and 235 injured in the four incidents mentioned above, the mainland doesn’t even warrant a mention, let alone a travel warning. Now, how can that be?