A former student on Saturday went on a stabbing rampage at a vocational college in eastern China, killing eight people and injuring 17, police said yesterday, prompting further soul-searching just days after the deadliest attack in the country in a decade.
The knife attack took place at the Wuxi Vocational College of Arts and Technology in Yixing, part of Jiangsu Province’s Wuxi.
The suspect, a 21-year-old man, was arrested at the scene and confessed, police said.
Photo: Reuters
Also on Saturday, authorities in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai said they had charged a 62-year-old man accused of ramming his car into a crowd outside a sports stadium on Monday last week, killing 35 people and injuring 43.
In both cases, the suspects lashed out with fatal violence against unrelated bystanders after suffering an economic loss, according to the sparse details released by police.
The killings touched off a rare and heavily censored online discussion over mental health in China, deeper stresses as the world’s second-largest economy slows and whether young people would find themselves worse off than generations before them who benefited from China’s rapid development.
At least six other high-profile knife attacks have been recorded this year across China.
“According to preliminary investigations, the suspect ... attacked others after failing an exam and not receiving his graduation certificate, as well as being dissatisfied with his internship compensation,” the Yixing Public Security Bureau said in a statement.
At the school yesterday, students were seen leaving with suitcases, although one student, who did not want to give her name, said classes were still going on.
“They were just 18, 19-year-old kids. It’s such a pity and so sad,” said a man who arrived to lay a bouquet of chrysanthemums near to one of the school gates, giving his surname as Duan (段).
“We really have to give young people better psychological guidance,” he added.
Security swiftly removed the bouquet.
The Zhuhai suspect was reportedly angry at the terms of a divorce settlement, police there said.
Qu Weiguo (曲衛國), a Fudan University professor, said the recent cases of “indiscriminate revenge against society” had some common features: disadvantaged suspects, many with mental health issues, who believed that they had been treated unfairly and who felt they had no other way to be heard.
“It is important to establish a social safety net and a psychological counselling mechanism, but in order to minimize such cases; the most effective way is to open public channels that can monitor and expose the use of power,” Qu posted on Sina Weibo.
The short essay had been removed by the censors by yesterday afternoon.
Trending online discussion topics over the past year have put a focus on the diminished optimism in China about a turnaround for jobs, income and opportunity. One phrase — “the garbage time of history” — took off in the summer as a shorthand for economic despair.
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