News of the bombing of two buses in the Chinese city of Kunming made its way swiftly round the world on Monday. Two people died and fourteen were injured as two separate buses exploded within an hour of each other in the morning rush hour, just a few hundred yards apart. By mid-morning, the city's Public Security Bureau had said the blasts were "man-made" and deliberate.

     Never mind that Kunming is about as far away from Beijing and its Olympics venues as it's possible for a Chinese city to be - 1,305 miles (21,00 kilometers) off in a province that borders Vietnam and Burma. With intense scrutiny of China's Olympic preparations, the blasts were soon written up in local media from Huddersfield in the north of England to Adelaide in South Australia. Photos of a bus with mangled sides and glass sprayed across the street went up on news sites. There have also been unconfirmed reports in Kunming's local media of a third death in a third explosion in a different location.

     Watching this incident blown into a major news story it, it became a little easier to sympathize with China's Olympic security ring of steel, which includes surface to air missiles outside the main Olympic stadium, 100,000 anti-terrorist police to guard the Games, and half a million volunteers watching neighborhoods. Beijing faces the usual Catch-22: security measures are always demanded when they've failed and ridiculed when they don't. Despite the tragedy of any sudden, violent death, this was nonetheless a relatively minor incident. In China's case, it's reputation as a country that blocks free speech, jails internet journalists, and human rights activists has led to a tendency to see any security as over-kill, and much mockery.

     Which brings us to the question of who might have set the explosions. Frankly, there's simply no information. Western media were quick to draw a link - albeit cautiously - between the explosions and riots by rubber farmers elsewhere in Yunnan province, in which two farmers were shot dead by police two days earlier. The police came off badly, however; out of the 54 people injured, 41 were police. But there is no proven connection.

     The Foreign Ministry has denied any evidence of a link to the Olympics or to terrorism, and Kunming police are offering a US$14,666 reward.  

     When a bus exploded in Shanghai in May, three passengers died and 12 were hurt. The cause? A passenger carrying "flammable materials", according to official reports. This explanation drew skepticism from those who like to see a political subtext to everything, Some conspiracy theorists are already suggesting the Kunming bombings may have been set by police to justify heavy-handed Olympic security.

     Less complex explanations are believable, however. I remember watching a bus driver in the western Sichuan hick town of Songpan check engine repairs by sucking petrol through a plastic tube, whilst smoking a cigarette. Guffaws from the driver and male passengers greeted my protests. Two explosions on the same bus route on the same morning seems sure be malicious rather than just dumb, but malice can be dumb too, caused by workplace grudges (both Kunming buses were plying the same route), love triangles, gambling debts, anything really.

     Beijing's pre-Olympic clean-up, cracking down on everyone from migrant litter-pickers to expat bar owners, now looks a little more reasonable. Visualize the headlines a fire in a busy nightclub would create. Overall, Beijing's reliance on crackdowns and control-freakery is pulling in the wrong direction though. Of course, the world will always contain a few crazies, but overall the best way to minimize flare-ups, whether by disgruntled individuals, or groups with a cause are more equitable social policies, not least equality before the law - even for party officials.

       There is a bright spot in all this, which is that the official Xinhua news agency of the explosions was surprisingly detailed. Given: a crime was committed, and people died, there's nothing controversial and the authorities want to be seen to be doing everything possible. But contrast with the Shanghai explosion, official media reported the names and ages of the victims (a 26-old man and a 30-year old woman) and eye-witness interviews from passengers.  

But for some who predicted a return to tight constraints on the media after the temporary openness that followed the Sichuan earth, the picture remains if not clear at least only moderately hazy. A bit like the skies over Beijing, in fact.