China: A year of mass attacks reveals anger and frustration

In response to still another mass shooting in the nation earlier this year, a social media post read,” The Chinese people are so miserable. The exact user even warned:” There will only be more and more imitation attacks”.

” This drama reflects the darkness within society”, wrote another.

Such bleak assessments, following a spate of deadly incidents in China during 2024, have led to questions about what is driving people to murder strangers en masse to “take revenge on society”.

Problems like this are also exceptional given China’s great people, and are not fresh, says David Schak, associate teacher at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to appear in waves, generally as ripoff attempts at garnering interest.

This year has been particularly troubling.

From 2019 to 2023, officers recorded three to five instances each year, where offenders attacked walkers or neighbors.

In 2024, that amount jumped to 19.

In 2019, three people were killed and 28 injured in like incidents, in 2023, 16 useless and 40 wounded and in 2024, 63 people killed and 166 injured. November was mainly terrible.

On the 11th of that month, a 62-year-old man ploughed a car into people exercising outside a stadium in the city of Zhuhai, killing at least 35. Police said that the driver had been unhappy with his divorce settlement. He was sentenced to death this week.

Weeks later, in Changde metropolis, a man drove into a group of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 of them. He claimed he was upset over economic costs and family issues.

That same year, a 21-year-old who don’t student after failing his examination, went on a stabbing spree on his school in Wuxi capital, killing eight and injuring 17.

In September, a 37-year-old man raced through a Shanghai shopping centre, stabbing people as he went. In June, four American instructors were attacked at a park by a 55-year-old man wielding a knife. And there were two separate attacks on Japanese citizens, including one in which a 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death outside his school.

The offenders have mostly targeted “random people” to display their “displeasure with society”, Prof Schak says.

These killings have sparked natural discomfort in a nation with extensive surveillance capabilities and women who often hesitate to wander alone at evening.

What, then, is the cause of China’s recent spate of mass problems?

The slow economy is currently a major cause of stress in China. It is no secret that the nation has experienced great youth unemployment, severe bill, and a real estate crisis that has squandered some families ‘ life savings, sometimes with little evidence of it.

On the outskirts of most major cities there are entire housing estates where construction has stopped because indebted developers cannot afford to complete them. In 2022, the BBC interviewed people camping in the concrete shells of their own unfinished apartments, without running water, electricity and windows because they had nowhere else to stay.

” Optimism truly does seem to have faded”, says George Magnus, a research associate at Oxford University’s China Centre. ” Let’s use the term trapped, just for the time. I believe China has sat in a kind of routine of oppression. On the one hand, there is a kind of faltering socioeconomic development model and social repression, and there is financial repression.

Studies appear to point to a significant change in attitudes, with a measurable increase in pessimism among Chinese people about their personal prospects. A significant US-China joint analysis, which for years had recorded them saying that inequality in society could often be attributed to a lack of effort or ability, found in its most recent survey that people were now blaming an “unfair economic system”.

” The question is, who do people actually blame,” he said. Mr Magnus asks. The next step is that the system is unfair to me, and I didn’t get past that. I didn’t alter my situation”.

You may turn to journalists in nations with strong media if you had the feeling that your home had been destroyed by corrupt builders supported by local officials or that you had been badly fired from your job. However, in China, where the Communist Party controls the media and is doubtful to publish articles that negatively impact the government’s standing.

Then there are the slow and ineffective courts, which are also run by and for the group. The Zhuhai suspect’s reported purpose, which he claimed was to avoid paying what he thought was a good divorce settlement in court, was widely shared on social media.

Additional sources for venting concerns have narrowed or been completely eliminated, according to authorities.

According to Lynette Ong, a political research professor at the University of Toronto who has conducted extensive research on how the Chinese state reacts to resistance from its citizens, Taiwanese people frequently voice their concerns online.

“]They ] will go on to the internet and scold the government … just to vent their anger. Or they may orchestrate a little opposition which the officers would generally help if it’s small-scale”, she explains. ” But this sort of protest, little opposition, has been closed off in the last couple of ages”.

There are plenty of examples of this: Increased internet censorship, which blocks words or expressions that are deemed controversial or critical; crackdowns on cheeky Halloween costumes that make fun of officialdom; or when plain-clothed men, who appeared to have been mobilised by local officials, beat up protesters in Henan province outside banks which had frozen their accounts.

As for dealing with people’s mental and emotional responses to these stresses, this too has been found wanting. Specialists say that China’s counselling services are vastly inadequate, leaving no outlet for those who feel isolated, alone and depressed in modern Chinese society.

According to Professor Silvia Kwok of Hong Kong’s City University, counseling can help strengthen emotional resilience. She adds that China needs to expand its mental health services, particularly for those who have experienced trauma or those who have mental illnesses.

People need to discover new strategies or effective ways to handle their emotions, which will lessen their risk of violent reaction in times of intense emotional stress.

Taken together, these factors suggest the lid is tightening on Chinese society, creating a pressure cooker-like situation.

” There aren’t many people engaged in mass murder,” the statement read. But still the tensions do seem to be building, and it doesn’t look like there is any way it is going to ease up in the near future”, Mr Magnus says.

The general public’s criticism of those in power should worry the Communist Party, which they claim is responsible for this.

Take this remark for example:” If the government truly acts fairly and justly, there would not be so much anger and grievance in Chinese society … the government’s efforts have focused on creating a superficial sense of harmony. Although their actions may seem to be caring about less fortunate people, they have actually caused the worst injustices.

According to Professor Ong, the difference in China is that officials have had little experience dealing with them, despite the rise in violent attacks in many nations.

” I believe the authorities are very concerned because they have never seen it before, and their instinct is to repress.”

When Xi Jinping, the leader of China, mentioned the Zhuhai attack, he appeared to acknowledge that social pressure was growing. He exhorted government officials to “learn hard lessons from the incident, address risks at their roots, end conflicts and disputes early, and take proactive measures to prevent extreme crime.”

However, so far, it seems as though the lessons learned have pushed for quicker police response times and a greater level of surveillance rather than taking into account any changes to how China is run.

According to Prof. Ong,” China is moving into a new phase, a new phase that we have not seen since the late 1970s,” referring to the period when the nation began opening to the world once more, unleashing enormous change.

” We need to be prepared for unexpected occurrences like numerous random attacks and emerging pockets of social unrest,” he said.