China has seen a slew of crimes in a single week, all occurring in Beijing.
The week started off on July 17 with a young man stabbing to death two people on the street, including a foreigner. Police immediately apprehended the suspect at the scene. He told police that his surname was Xiao and he had a mental disorder.
The well-known case of the airport bomber, Ji Zhongxing, 33, also occurred in Beijing that week. Dissatisfied with the lack of response to his petitions, the disabled man detonated homemade explosives on July 20 in the Capital Airport.
Then on the afternoon of July 22, a knife-wielding man slashed four people at the Jiayuefu supermarket, causing one of them to die. The man was arrested and police reported that he had a mental disorder.
The next day, a young mother pushing a stroller across a Beijing street was struck down by two men driving a sedan. The men got out of the car and started beating the woman and threw her child to the ground. Family members stood outside the Intensive Care Unit on July 25, gravely watching the woman. The child later passed away. The men were arrested.
A fire broke out on July 24 in a warehouse on the top floor of a Shuangjing Jiayuefu Beijing building with no causalities. Earlier that morning, a bakery in Beijing had exploded, possibly from a gas explosion, police said. Several employees were injured but none were life-threatening.
Beijing police promised to “take down any serious criminal offenders,” according to a statement on the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau’s website but netizens commenting on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, were outraged by the crimes, which they counted to include the fires.
“Six crimes in seven days,” a netizen from Beijing wrote, “The imperial capital is not peaceful.”
“People have had enough,” wrote another netizen from an unspecified location in China.
“It’s all about corrupt officials having peace of mind. They don’t care about the well-being of people,” said Yi-Qiu 2012, another netizen.
“Why can’t they think of why there are so many crimes? Suppressing violence with violence only perpetuates violence. If someone really has guts, then prove it by bringing all the corrupt officials to justice,” wrote a netizen in Shandong Province.
“Are you safe? Asking this question is like asking—are you really happy?” said a Guangdong netizen. “The answer has become no, not really.”
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