Kindertarten Attacks

Background:

In the past 40 days, five schools in different cities in China were attacked by five different stabbers. All the schools under attack were kindergartens with students ranging from 3 to 5 years old. Here’s a list of the attacks:

Date_____ Location_Attacker/Age______Casualties
3/23/2010_Nanping_Minsheng Zheng/41__8 dead, 5 injured
4/13/2010_Xichang_Jiaqin Yang/40______2 dead, 5 injured
4/28/2010_Leizhou_Kangbing Chen/33___17 injured
4/29/2010_Taixing__Yuyuan Xu/47______32 injured
4/30/2010_Weifang_Yonglai Wang/45____1 dead, 6 injured

Due to information control, the identity and true motive of the five attackers are unknown, although people posted various guesses on microblogs. To ensure that most news reports focus on Shanghai Expo and that people see a positive image of China, the government “advises” media to not report the school attacks. People could reach a few reports that offered very limited information.


Comments:

With those armed police standing guard in front of kindergartens, do our kids feel safer or more scared?

-- King Kong


Is the series of kindergarten attacks somehow related to our media reports? Why did all the anti-society events occur so frequently? How to stop the extremist behavior? Did our media reports in some way encourage perpetrators to commit the same kind of crime?

-- Bro Pong


For people who want to take revenge on society, attacking kids in kindergarten has become a new fashion. In stabbing kindergarteners, you will expect the least resistance and kill the most people, resulting in tremendous scare among common people. Killing youngsters is the most effective way to take revenge on society.

-- Han Han


Taixing Kindergarten is a private and expensive school. Most of the kids in the kindergarten have parents who are senior officials in government. It’s probably why the perpetrator chose this school.

-- Happy Tramp


It’s been said that the perpetrator of Taixing Kindergarten attack is a victim of the government’s housing policy. The night before he killed those children, the Housing Department of Shanghai sent some people to ask him and his wife to move out of their apartment soon because the government was planning to tear down his house for building a shopping mall.

-- shell2046


After the series of school attacks, a kindergarten in Guangdong hanged a banner on its front gate. The banner read, “Every injustice has its perpetrator. The people’s government building is next to us”.

-- Xi7


A senior university student wrote on his microblog, If I can’t find a job after graduation, I will just take tour in one of the kindergartens with a knife.

-- Volcano


My point of view:

Reading through the microblog comments, I found it interesting that a lot of bloggers tend to relate the school attacks with the Chinese government. Some were humorous allusions, such as the banner in front of a kindergarten that directs potential stabbers to kill government officials instead of small kids. Some were open accusations, which questioned the government’s capability to keep its citizens safe. I personally believe the connection between the school attacks and the Chinese government is not accidental. Moreover, a well-hidden causal relationship exits between the Chinese government and the school attacks. I have been assisting a professor in the Government Department to research the mass protests in China. Throughout the past 15 years, the number of mass protests and murder cases increased whenever corruption cases occurred more often within the Chinese government. Considering the growing tension in the Chinese economy and the widening gap between the 1% rich and the 99% poor, I think China is in a critical transitional period while the future is not yet clear. The series of school attacks is only one tiny indicator of the social unrest but it’s severe enough to demand the government to take a more active role in solving these profound social problems.