Taiwan officials said on Monday they had received intelligence reports last week warning of a planned attack on Beijing airport and the city's subway system. The information cannot be verified or linked with Flight MH370, which has been missing since early Saturday after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 227 people and 12 crewmembers on board. But there is little doubt that terrorism poses a grave threat to China.

The March 1 terrorist attack at Kunming railway station in Yunnan province shows how terrorism has spread from the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region to Beijing in the east and Kunming in the southwest. But Chinese citizens should not panic, because that is exactly what terrorists want. However, the government should be fully prepared to fight against terrorism.

Terrorism has grown in China because of both internal and external factors. Domestically, some separatists in Xinjiang are using more violent means to strike fear among the people, while the approaching date of withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan has made terrorists unleash a new round of terror across the world. In a way, the Kunming attack, in which 29 people were killed and scores were injured, marks the beginning of China's renewed fight against terrorism.