Hong Kong
CNN
—
The stabbing death of two people in a residential area in southern China has sparked further online debate this summer after a spate of similar crimes across the country.
Two days after the June 28 murder in Guangxi, national attention shifted to a separate stabbing incident thousands of miles away. Two unrelated attacks in public places then left seven people dead in four provinces within two weeks.
Police said the circumstances of each incident were different — one of the attackers was drunk and arguing, while the other had a history of mental illness. All incidents remain under investigation, and little information has been released about suspects or their motives.
China, a country of 1.4 billion people, generally has a low rate of violent crime and very strict gun laws, but it has been rocked by a series of high-profile stabbings in recent decades, including several attacks on schools.
What’s striking about the recent stabbings is the debate they have sparked on social media that experts say reflects the growing sense of anxiety and frustration that has swept across the country in recent days as the country’s economy struggles to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The world’s second-largest economy is beset by a range of problems, including a real estate crisis, sluggish spending, tightening regulation and high youth unemployment, leading economists to worry the country could face years, if not decades, of economic stagnation.
These concerns have been on display on Chinese social media following the recent attacks, with several commentators linking the violence to China’s tough economic situation, although the attackers’ motives remain unclear.
“We should be more kind to others, especially considering the poor economic situation over the past two years,” wrote one user on the X-like platform Weibo. “Many people are struggling and emotionally unstable.”
Many others echoed this sentiment: “Don’t argue with people in public,” wrote another Weibo user. “You never know if they’re unhappy with their life and might take it out on others.”
Experts warn that the messages don’t necessarily reflect the reality of the stabbings: Authorities have released little information about the suspects beyond their age and gender, nothing is known about their personal or financial lives and, in some cases, it’s unclear whether they even knew the victims.
The stabbings this summer have garnered significant attention online – related hashtags have been viewed more than 64 million times on Weibo, for example – and state media reports say overall violent crime in China, already extremely low compared with many other countries, has been declining in recent years but is still on the decline.
Instead, online speculation may reflect people’s own concerns as the economic downturn drags on, said Michelle Miao, an associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a research fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences.
“Usually when people think about these issues and interpret social events, they use the events as a mirror to reflect their own feelings and thoughts about current social realities,” she told CNN.
Two of the most high-profile recent attacks occurred in June and both targeted foreigners: one in which four visiting American university lecturers were stabbed to death, and the other in which a gunman stabbed people to death at a bus stop near a Japanese school.
Ultranationalism, as well as anti-American and anti-Japanese sentiment, has been on the rise across China and on Chinese social media in recent years, but Chinese authorities have been keen to downplay suggestions that these attacks are specifically targeted at foreigners.
“Such isolated incidents can happen in any country in the world,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said at a regular press conference after the Japanese school bus attack, which left a Chinese woman dead and a Japanese woman and her child injured as they tried to stop the attackers.
The American instructors and a Chinese tourist who intervened were stabbed after one of the instructors “clashed” with the assailant while walking, Chinese officials said. China would continue to safeguard the safety of foreigners in the country.
According to police reports on the bus stop incident and one of the American instructors, who cited Chinese officials, the suspects in both attacks were unemployed.
The Chinese government does not release detailed data on knife attacks and keeps a close eye on the crime with a powerful and ubiquitous surveillance system.
China had just 0.46 murders per 100,000 people in 2023, state media reported, citing the Ministry of Public Security. China had just one intentional homicide per 100,000 people in 2020, compared with seven in the United States, according to the World Bank, citing the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) International Homicide Statistics Database.
According to UNODC, the most recent data available shows that the homicide rate per 100,000 people in Asia in 2021 was 2.3, while in the Americas it was 15.
The 2023 work report of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, which oversees legal prosecutions, claims that China has curbed major violent crimes as well as gun, explosives and drug-related crimes over the past five years, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Gun violence is rare in China, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Chinese law generally prohibits private ownership of firearms (except for licensed hunters), and the government has been cracking down on illegal guns in recent years.
But in recent years, stabbings have made headlines – and authorities say the suspects often live with mental illness – highlighting the need to strengthen mental health services in China.
Some attacks have targeted schools, including a knife attack at a primary school in 2020 and attacks at or near kindergartens in 2022 and 2023.
Miao, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that compared with other countries, and unlike the late 1970s and 1980s, when China faced significant social change and a corresponding crime wave, the current situation in China does not seem to show a “noticeable pattern of rising crime”.
However, some Chinese studies have shown a correlation between crime rates and economic indicators such as unemployment rates.
Youth unemployment hit a record high last spring, with more than one in five 16- to 24-year-olds at one point unemployed. The rate has since fallen, according to the latest government data, which now uses a different measure to calculate the youth unemployment rate.
At the same time, other economic crises, including a real estate collapse, deepened, causing loan defaults and sparking protests across the country. As local governments struggled financially, some cities cut basic services and cut health benefits for the elderly.
The view that economic insecurity threatens national security remains prominent on social media.
After the stabbing in Guangxi, one Weibo user wrote that China’s financial pressure was “reaching out to everyone, layer by layer.”
“Don’t become a victim of the economic environment,” they said.
