A new massive attack has shaken China. A former student has stabbed eight people to death and injured 17 others in a knife attack at a vocational training school in the city of Wuxi, Jiangsu province, located on China’s east coast. The suspect, a 21-year-old young man surnamed Xu, was arrested at the crime scene and confessed to the crime, according to a statement from local police.
It is the country’s second mass murder in a week, after a man rammed his car into a crowd of people exercising last Monday, killing 35 people and injuring 43 others in Zhuhai, southern China. .
The stabbing attack occurred on Saturday afternoon at the Wuxi Vocational Training School of Arts and Technology, with more than 10,000 students and 590 employees. The now detained man, who had been a student at the school, had failed his exams and was dissatisfied with the low remuneration he received as an intern in a factory, according to the police statement. An alleged suicide note that has circulated on social networks, collected by the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Postclaims that the alleged murderer was furious about the exploitation of workers in factories.
In the case of Monday’s mass car accident, the perpetrator, who was also arrested, fell into a coma after injuring himself with a knife, so the police could not question him. He was 62 years old and according to the preliminary investigation, the man’s motivation was his dissatisfaction with the distribution of assets after his divorce. After the event, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged “all relevant regions and departments to take precautions and strengthen risk control.” Chinese Premier Li Qian called on local governments to investigate “hidden risks and social conflicts.”
The event joins a list of attacks in recent months that have sparked debate about whether current economic pressure may have something to do with it, whether it is related to mental illness and its treatment, or even to xenophobia, since several attacks have been directed against foreigners. In September, a 37-year-old man stabbed three people to death in a Shanghai shopping mall and injured 15 others. The perpetrator of the massacre, Lin Moumou, traveled to Shanghai “to vent his anger […] due to personal financial disputes,” according to the police statement published at the time.
A few days before, a Japanese boy had died in Shenzhen after being stabbed by a 44-year-old man when he was going to school. In June, another Japanese boy and his mother were injured with a knife by a 52-year-old Chinese national while waiting for a school bus in Suzhou. In that case, the Chinese bus assistant died, who tried to stop the attacker.
Also in June, a man stabbed four American teachers and a Chinese passerby who tried to defend them in a park in the city of Jilin, and in Shanghai three were injured in the subway. In May, there were three deaths in a park in Chenzhou, two in a school in Guizi and another two in a hospital in Yunnan.
Chinese citizens often call these types of attacks in which individuals claim the lives of the civilian population for their own problems as “revenge against society.”
