At least eight people have been killed and 17 injured in a mass stabbing rampage at a vocational college in eastern China, local authorities said on Nov. 17.
A 21-year-old male who was arrested at the scene of the stabbing spree has since confessed to the killings, police said. The male has been identified only as a former student, surnamed Xu, at the Wuxi Vocational College of Arts and Technology in Yixing in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify the casualty numbers for either incident, as the CCP routinely suppresses or alters information.
Police have released sparse details about both incidents.
“[The suspect in the mass stabbing incident] attacked others after failing an exam and not receiving his graduation certificate, as well as being dissatisfied with his internship compensation,” the Yixing Public Security Bureau said in a statement, released following “preliminary investigations” by police in Wuxi.
Wuxi Vocational College offers courses to prepare students to work in industries including wire and cable manufacturing, interior design, marketing, and other fields, according to its website.
The suspect in the Zhuhai attack was reportedly angry with the way that financial assets were divided in his recent divorce, police said.
Qu Weiguo, a Fudan University professor, said the recent cases of “indiscriminate revenge against society” in China have common features: disadvantaged suspects with mental health issues who believed that they had been treated unfairly and likely felt that they had no other path of recourse.
At least six other high-profile knife attacks have been recorded this year across China, with several of those incidents targeting children and foreigners.
“It is important to establish a social safety net and a psychological counseling mechanism, but in order to minimize such cases, the most effective way is to open public channels that can monitor and expose the use of power,” Qu posted on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.
Qu’s short essay had been removed by China’s communist party censors by the afternoon of Nov. 17.
The party often censors internet content that it deems to be overly sensitive or political. Most Western social media sites and search engines such as Google are blocked behind what’s commonly known as the Great Firewall, which regulates what is accessible within China.
The mass killings touched off a rare and heavily censored online discussion over mental health and deeper stressors as the world’s second-largest economy slows.
Trending online discussion topics over the past year have put a focus on the diminished optimism in China about a turnaround for jobs, income, and opportunity. One of those—“the garbage time of history”—took off in the summer as a shorthand for economic despair.
In recent weeks, Chinese officials have rolled out a raft of stimulus measures to revive the economy. The Nov. 11 car attack also prompted an intervention by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who urged local police to “strengthen their control of risks” by identifying people at risk of lashing out.
