ReutersChina has executed a man found guilty of killing at least 35 people in a vehicle assault in November, in what is thought to be the deadliest strike in the country for a decade.
Fan Weiqiu, 62, injured dozens more when he drove his car into people exercising outside a stadium in the southern city of Zhuhai.
State media said a second man was executed for a separate attack that came days later. Xu Jiajin, 21, killed eight people in a stabbing spree at his university in the eastern city of Wuxi.
Officials said Fan was driven by “dissatisfaction” over how his house had been divided following his marriage, while Xu carried out his assault after “failing to get his certificate due to poor test results”.
Fan was detained at the scene on 11 November, where authorities said he was found with self-inflicted scars.
In December, he was found guilty of “endangering people safety”, with the Zhuhai Intermediate People’s Court describing his purpose as “extremely horrible” and the techniques used “particularly cruel”.
His murder on Monday comes less than a quarter after the judge sentenced him to death.
In the case of Xu, authorities said he confessed to his murder “without fear” on 16 November. He was sentenced to death on 17 December, with the court hearing that the situation of his murder were “particularly awful” and “extremely significant”.
Human rights groups believe China is the nation’s leading executioner, killing thousands of people every year. The state does not release information about its use of the death sentence, so credible figures are absent.
China has been grappling with a spate of public violence, with many attackers believed to have been spurred by a desire to “take revenge on society” – where perpetrators target strangers over their personal grievances.
The number of quite strikes across China reached 19 in 2024.
Within days of the Zhuhai and Wuxi attacks, a man drove into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school in Changde city, injuring 30.
Officials said the gentleman, Huang Wen, wanted to exhaust his anger after dealing with funding costs and home discord.
Huang was handed a suspended death sentence last month, which could be commuted to life imprisonment if he does not commit another crime in the next two years.
Analysts earlier told the BBC that the string of mass killings raised questions about how people in China have been dealing with various sources of stress, such as the country’s sluggish economy.
” The hostilities do seem to be developing, and it doesn’t seem like there is any way it is going to ease up in the near future,” says George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University’s China Centre.