China Vows To Attack As ISIS kills Chinese, Norwegian hostages

Beijing has vowed to bring ISIS to justice after the group said it had executed a Chinese and a Norwegian hostage.

ISIS said it had killed the two men, identified as Chinese national Fan Jinghui and Norwegian citizen Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad in its English-language online magazine “Dabiq.”

President Xi Jinping “strongly condemned” ISIS for the killing of Fan, the first known Chinese national to be kidnapped by the group, and the country’s foreign ministry said the Chinese government would “definitely hold the perpetrators accountable.”

But how to respond to Fan’s “cold-blooded and violent” death presents a dilemma for China, which has stayed on the sidelines in the fight against ISIS and has a long-held principle of non-interference in other country’s affairs.

To date, Beijing has been vague on the question of what it will contribute to the global fight against ISIS and has declined to explicitly offer its support for air strikes being conducted against the group in Syria.

Norway also condemned the killings.

“We have no grounds to doubt the contents of the photos that have been published,” Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said, according to Reuters.

China hasn’t been an active participant in the fight against ISIS, but, in the wake of the killing, pledged to “enhance its counter-terrorism cooperation with the international community.”

But experts say the chances of Chinese aircraft flying alongside Russian and U.S. planes in Syria and Iraq are slim to none.

“It seems most likely that the Chinese government will continue to stay on the sidelines,” said Professor Xie Tao, of Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Xie said there are multiple reasons for that. First, he said by officially declaring war on ISIS, Chinese officials fear that could draw further scrutiny from the group, and perhaps increase the chances of a Paris-style attack in China.

He also pointed to the notion of precedent.

If the Chinese were to join the anti-ISIS coalition, it would be a historic step in their foreign policy, ignoring a decades-old policy of non-intervention and potentially giving other countries leverage when asking China to take sides in future conflicts.