Picking up on items in The New Republic and Scientific American on the strategy and the mentality of suicide bombing, Joel at Far Outliers ponders the root causes of suicide bombing in China.:

The recent spate of suicide bombings in China seems to underline Mr. Skeptic’s point about despair in the face of oppressive and unresponsive governments.

Discontented or disturbed attackers in China have used mining explosives or fertilizer devices in previous bombings.

In August, a farmer with lung cancer set off a bomb on a bus in Fuzhou in southeastern Fujian province, wounding 31 people, and in July a murder suspect set off a bomb in a shopping mall in northeastern China, injuring 47 people.

A man set off a bomb on a bus in the western Xinjiang region in January 2005, killing 11 people.

On Saturday, Xinhua reported an explosion in a coal mine in Xinjiang in November was set off deliberately in the Beitaishan Coal Mine, killing 11 people.

Perhaps there are other bombings we haven’t heard about, and religious nationalism cannot be ruled out in the case of Xinjiang (or East Turkestan), but it seems that suicide bombing in China is driven as much by individuals bent on revenge as by religion, nationalism, or occupation. Some of these Chinese suicide bombers seem to be aiming their Propaganda of the Deed at international news media in order to exact personal revenge on their otherwise unresponsive government–and, of course, on many of its innocent citizens.

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