Anti-Japanese Sentiment Suspected Motive in Shenzhen Stabbing; Attack Occurred on Anniversary of Manchurian Incident

By Daisuke Kawase and Keiichiro Azuma / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondents

20:00 JST, September 20, 2024

BEIJING — A series of attacks on foreigners have been reported in China this year.

A 10-year-old boy was fatally stabbed while walking to a Japanese school in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, on Wednesday, a day which happened to be the 93rd anniversary of the 1931 Manchurian Incident, which triggered Japan’s invasion of northeastern China. Some people suspect the 44-year-old Chinese man, who committed the fatal stabbing, was motivated by anti-Japanese sentiment.

The social media account of the Japanese Embassy in China was flooded Thursday with messages of condolences in Chinese following the boy’s death. The messages also include anti-Japanese comments that bring up historical issues, with some reading, “Make the Japanese remember Sept. 18.”

In 1931, a railroad track belonging to the South Manchurian Railway Company, near Liutiao Lake on the outskirts of Mukden, now Shenyang, was blown up by officers of the Kwantung Army, part of the Japanese Imperial Army stationed in northeastern China. Japan blamed China for the incident and began an attack which would expand into military operations across the whole of the northeast China. China regards the day of the incident as one of national disgrace, and anti-Japanese sentiment is said to be easily inflamed on its anniversary.

It is unclear if the 44-year-old suspect in Wednesday’s stabbing had anti-Japanese sentiment, but a source in Japan-China relations said, “It is possible that China’s anti-Japanese education and media coverage with an anti-Japanese slant influenced Wednesday’s incident.”

In June, three people, including a Japanese woman and her child, were attacked by a knife-wielding Chinese man while waiting for a school bus in the eastern city of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. In the northeastern city of Jilin, Jilin Province, four American university teachers were stabbed by a local Chinese man in a park.

The Chinese economy has not recovered from the coronavirus pandemic. People feel more and more stuck under President Xi Jinping’s administration and are exposed to an “overly stressful society,” a veteran Chinese Communist Party member said. There is also a view that foreigners and children are becoming outlets for people’s dissatisfaction in Chinese society. Wednesday’s incident has received little coverage in major Chinese media.

Many Chinese pray for boy

The Yomiuri Shimbun

20:00 JST, September 20, 2024

SHENZHEN, China — The school the boy attended received a flood of condolence messages and bouquets of flowers from all over China.

Late on Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday morning, mainly Chinese people continued to gather and pray at the gates of the school. Bouquets arrived from Guangzhou and other areas further away using delivery services.

A man in his 30s who works at an IT company in Shenzhen said he was surprised that many people at his workplace were unaware of the incident due to little coverage of it in China.