WASHINGTON / BEIJING - A Chinese graduate student, Zhai Tiantian, who has been arrested and jailed for more than one month in the United States, threatened to "burn to the ground" a campus building, according to officials from the Stevens Institute of Technology, where Zhai was enrolled.

Institute officials, who spoke to China Daily on Monday local time, confirmed Zhai is facing the charge of "terrorism".

Zhai, 27, from Xi'an of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, has become the first Chinese student to face such a charge in the US, his New York City lawyer, Hai Ming, told China Daily.