By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
SHANGHAI—A former community doctor allegedly stabbed to death eight children and injured five others at an elementary school in east China's Fujian province, authorities said, as China grapples with a rise in high-profile criminal violence in its cities.Police in Nanping city said they arrested Zheng Minsheng, 41 years old, at the site of the attack, which occurred as students were arriving to start school in the morning.
The mother of a child killed on Tuesday in China Fujian province is helped from the school.
"The government hasn't paid enough attention" to the problem of violent crime, said Pi Yijun, a criminology professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. He said crime rates are edging up, driven by unemployment and other economic problems, and the widening gap between rich and poor. He said that in many cases, attackers "think they were unfairly treated by society."
In 2008, a 28-year-old man stabbed to death six Shanghai policemen in a police station in a case that ended up winning the convicted killer a fair measure of public sympathy after local media reported the man, Yang Jia, had been arrested and beaten by Shanghai police in 2007 for riding an unlicensed bicycle. His attempt to file a lawsuit against the police was thwarted. Mr. Yang was executed in 2008.
After Tuesday's attack on the school, many online comments about the incident focused on social pressures presumed to be behind the violence. "Another guy who is getting revenge on society," wrote one person on a bulletin board. "What a society that makes people so crazy," wrote another.
Attacks succeed even in the face of tightened security. An unemployed Chinese man killed the brother-in-law of a U.S. Olympic volleyball coach during the first weekend of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, amid a massive security clampdown in the capital. That man committed suicide.
—Bai Lin contributed to this article. Write to Gordon Fairclough at gordon.fairclough@wsj.com
"The government hasn't paid enough attention" to the problem of violent crime, said Pi Yijun, a criminology professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. He said crime rates are edging up, driven by unemployment and other economic problems, and the widening gap between rich and poor. He said that in many cases, attackers "think they were unfairly treated by society."
In 2008, a 28-year-old man stabbed to death six Shanghai policemen in a police station in a case that ended up winning the convicted killer a fair measure of public sympathy after local media reported the man, Yang Jia, had been arrested and beaten by Shanghai police in 2007 for riding an unlicensed bicycle. His attempt to file a lawsuit against the police was thwarted. Mr. Yang was executed in 2008.
After Tuesday's attack on the school, many online comments about the incident focused on social pressures presumed to be behind the violence. "Another guy who is getting revenge on society," wrote one person on a bulletin board. "What a society that makes people so crazy," wrote another.
Attacks succeed even in the face of tightened security. An unemployed Chinese man killed the brother-in-law of a U.S. Olympic volleyball coach during the first weekend of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, amid a massive security clampdown in the capital. That man committed suicide.
—Bai Lin contributed to this article. Write to Gordon Fairclough at gordon.fairclough@wsj.com
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