A year of mass attacks brings out anger and frustration

“The people of China are sad,” reads a text on social media following another killing in the country earlier this year. The same user also warned: “There will be copycat attacks.”

“This tragedy shows the darkness that exists in society,” wrote another.

Such pessimistic experiments, following a series of deadly incidents in China in 2024, have led to questions about what drives people to kill strangers in large numbers. “revenge on society”.

Attacks like this are still rare given China’s large population, and are not new, said David Schak, a professor at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to come in waves, often as copycat attempts to grab attention.

This year has been very stressful.

From 2019 to 2023, the police recorded three to five cases each year, where the perpetrators attacked pedestrians or strangers.

By 2024, that number jumps to 19.

In 2019, three people died and 28 were injured in incidents like this; in 2023, 16 people died and 40 were injured and in 2024, 63 people died and 166 were injured. November was particularly bloody.

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

Days later, in the city of Changde, a man rammed a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 of them. Authorities say he was angry about lost money and family problems.

This week, a 21-year-old boy who was unable to complete his exams, stabbed himself in his hometown in Wuxi city, killing eight and wounding 17.

In September, a 37-year-old man ran into a shopping mall in Shanghai, stabbing people while walking. In June, four American teachers were attacked in a park by a 55-year-old man with a knife. There have also been two separate attacks on Japanese citizens, including one in which a 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death outside his school.

Perpetrators often target “random people” to show their “disgust with society,” Prof Schak said.

In a country with high surveillance capabilities, where women rarely hesitate to walk alone at night, the killing has caused understandable concern.

So what caused so many attacks in China this year?

The biggest source of stress in China right now is the sluggish economy. It’s no secret that this country has been struggling with youth unemployment, huge debts and a housing crisis that has consumed many families’ savings, sometimes leaving them with nothing.

On the outskirts of many big cities are housing estates where construction has stalled because debt-ridden developers can’t finish them. In 2022, the BBC interviewed people camped in the concrete shells of their unfinished houseswithout water, electricity and windows because they had no other place to live.

“Really, hope seems lost,” said George Magnus, a research fellow at Oxford University’s China Center. “Let’s use the word trapped, for now. I think China is trapped in a kind of cycle of repression. Social repression and economic repression, on the one hand, and some kind of stagnant economic development model on the other.”

The survey seems to point to a major change in attitudes, with a relative increase in pessimism among Chinese people about their own prospects. A key joint US-China analysis, which for years has documented that social inequality is often caused by a lack of effort or ability, found in its latest study that people now to blame “the wrong economic system”.

“The question is who do people really blame?” asked Mr. Magnus. “And the next step in that is that the system isn’t right for me, and I can’t break through. I can’t change my circumstances.”

In countries with healthy media, if you feel that you have been unfairly fired from your job or your house has been demolished by corrupt builders with the support of local officials, you may turn to journalists to make your case heard. But that’s rarely an option in China, where the media is controlled by the Communist Party and it’s impossible to run stories that reflect badly on any level of government.

Then there are the courts – also run by the party – which are slow and inefficient. Much has been made on social media here of Zhuhai’s attacker’s alleged motive: that he did not reach what he believed was a fair divorce settlement in court.

Experts say that other frustrated outlets have also shrunk or closed altogether.

Chinese people often express their grievances online, said Lynette Ong, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, who has done important research on how the Chinese state reacts to push back against its people.

“[They] they will go online and yell at the government… to express their anger. Or they may organize a small protest which the police usually allow if it is small,” he explains.

There are many examples of this: The rise of internet censorship, which prevents words or expressions deemed controversial or critical; a crack at trick-or-treating Halloween costumes that are legitimately funny; or when the men are not dressed, they seem to be gathered by the local officials; beat protesters in Henan province except the banks that had closed their accounts.

As for dealing with people’s mental and emotional reactions to this stress, this has also been found to decrease. Experts say China’s counseling services are woefully inadequate, leaving no room for those who feel alone, isolated and depressed in today’s Chinese society.

“Counseling can help stabilize emotions,” said Professor Silvia Kwok of Hong Kong’s City University, adding that China needs to expand its mental health services, especially for vulnerable groups who have experienced trauma or those with mental illness.

“People need to find different strategies or constructive ways to deal with their emotions … that make them less likely to react violently in times of high emotional stress.”

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

“Not a lot of people go around killing a lot of people. But even so, tensions seem to be increasing, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to subside anytime soon,” said Mr. Magnus.

What should concern the Communist Party is the comments from the general public accusing those in charge of this.

Take this comment for example: “If the government really acted fairly and justly, there wouldn’t be so much anger and complaints in the Chinese public… the government’s efforts are focused on creating superficial harmony. Although it may seem that they care about the disadvantaged people, their actions have caused the greatest injustice.”

Although violent attacks are increasing in many countries, according to Professor Ong, the difference in China is that officials do not have the knowledge to deal with them.

“I think the authorities are very scared because they have never seen it, and their instinct is to demolish it.”

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke about the attack on Zhuhai, he seemed to acknowledge that pressure was building in the community. He called on officials across the country to “learn hard lessons from this incident, face the root of the danger, resolve conflicts and disputes early and take measures to prevent extreme crime”.

But, so far, the lessons learned seem to have led to a push for faster police response times using greater surveillance, rather than any changes to the way China is run.

“China is entering a new phase, a new phase that we haven’t seen since the late 70s,” said Prof Ong, referring to the time when the country began to open up to the world again, creating a big change.

“We need to deal with unexpected events, such as unplanned attacks and pockets of protest and emerging social instability.”