So, I was waiting for a coffee and killing time on WeChat and saw a Xinhua news article pinned to the top of my feed. It was a white paper issued by the State Council’s New Office regarding the “struggle to combat terrorism and remove extremism in Xinjiang while preserving human rights.” It would almost both worth taking it line by line because these things can be quite fun to read. About four lines in, I come across a character I swear I’ve never seen before: 戕 (qiang1 “kill”) in the construction 戕害 (qiang1hai4, “injure or harm”).
The depths of literary Chinese are unfathomable, but 戕 just looks like an ancient relic. It’s definitely low frequency (expect it to occur 1.12 times per million characters), but is included in the general purpose character list (of 7,000). 戕 has a straightforward radical structure with 戈 (ge1, “halberd” or some sort of ancient weapon) on the right and 爿 on the right as the phonetic signifier. It’s easy to miss 爿 as a functional radical because it was simplified to 丬 in the most common characters, such as 状 (zhuang4)、妆 (zhuang1)、and 将 (jiang1).
Anyways, the full sentence is:
恐怖势力通过暴力、破坏、恐吓等手段，肆意践踏人权、戕害无辜生命、危害公共安全、制造社会恐慌，严重威胁世界和平与安宁。
恐怖 (kong3bu4) = terror[ist]
势力 (shi4li) = force
通过 (tong1guo4) = by means of
暴力 (bao4li4) = violence
破坏 (po4hui4) = destroy; damage
恐吓 (kong3he4) = threaten
等 (deng3) = etc.
手段 (shou3duan4) = means; method
肆意 (si4yi4) = wantonly; recklessly
践踏 (jian4ta4) = tread on; trample
人权 (ren2quan2) = human rights
戕害 (qiang1hai4) = harm
无辜 (wu2gu1) = not guilty
生命 (sheng1ming4) = life
危害 (wei1hai4) = harm
公共安全 (gong1gong4 an1quan2) = public order
制造 (zhi4zao4) = make; manufacture
社会 (she4hui4) = society
恐慌 (kong3huang1) = panic
严重 (yan4zhong4) = serious; critical
威胁 (wei1xie2) = threaten
世界 (shi4jie4) = world
和平 (he2ping2) = peace
与 (yu3) = and
安宁 (an1ning2) = peace
In other words, “Terrorist forces use violence, destruction, and intimidation, among other means, to wantonly trample human rights, harm innocent lives, disrupt public order, and create panic in society. This seriously threatens world peace and tranquility.”
It’s both impressive that not a single word is repeated through the sentence and that verbal jujitsu is deployed to argue that the terrorists are the real abusers of human rights