A year of mass attacks reveals anger and frustration

“The Chinese people are so unhappy,” a social media post said after another mass killing in the country earlier this year. The same user also warned: “The impersonation attack will only get bigger and bigger.”

“This tragedy reflects the darkness in society,” wrote another.

Such bleak assessments after a series of deadly incidents in China in 2024 have led to questions about what drives people to kill strangers en masse “revenge on society”.

Such attacks are still rare given China’s huge population and are not new, says David Schack, an associate professor at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to come in waves, often as imitations of trying to get attention.

This year turned out to be particularly difficult.

From 2019 to 2023, the police recorded three to five cases of attackers attacking pedestrians or strangers every year.

In 2024, this number will increase to 19.

In 2019, three people died and 28 were injured in such incidents; in 2023 — 16 dead and 40 injured, in 2024. — 63 dead and 166 wounded. November was especially bloody.

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

A few days later, in the city of Chande, a man drove into a crowd of children and parents outside an elementary school, injuring 30 of them. Authorities said he was angry over financial losses and family problems.

The same week, a 21-year-old boy who failed to graduate after failing exams went on a stabbing rampage at his university campus in the city of Wuxi, killing eight and injuring 17.

In September, a 37-year-old man ran through a shopping mall in Shanghai, stabbing people as he went. In June, a 55-year-old man with a knife attacked four American instructors in the park. There have been two separate attacks on Japanese citizens, including one in which a 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death outside his school.

Professor Schack says criminals mainly target “random people” to show their “dissatisfaction with society”.

In a country with widespread surveillance, where women are rarely embarrassed to walk alone at night, the killings have caused understandable alarm.

So what has caused so many mass attacks in China this year?

The main source of pressure in China right now is the sluggish economy. It’s no secret that the country is struggling with high youth unemployment, massive debt and a real estate crisis that has swallowed up the savings of many families, sometimes leaving them with nothing.

There are entire housing estates on the outskirts of most major cities that have been halted because debt-ridden developers can’t afford to build them. In 2022, the BBC polled people camped in the concrete shells of their own unfinished apartmentswithout water, electricity or windows because they had nowhere to stay.

“The optimism certainly seems to have disappeared,” says George Magnus, a research fellow at Oxford University’s China Centre. “Let’s use the word trapped now. I think China is in a kind of cycle of repression. Social and economic repression, on the one hand, and a kind of shaky model of economic development, on the other.”

The research appears to indicate a significant change in attitude, with a marked increase in pessimism among Chinese people about their personal prospects. A major joint analysis by the US and China, which for years has documented how inequality in society can often be attributed to a lack of effort or ability, found in its latest survey that people now blaming the “unfair economic system”.

“The question is, who do people really blame?” asks Mr. Magnus. “And the next step from that is that the system is unfair to me and I can’t get through. I cannot change my circumstances.’

In countries with healthy media, if you believe you have been unfairly fired from your job or that your house has been demolished by corrupt builders with the support of local officials, you can turn to journalists to get your story heard. But that’s rarely the case in China, where the press is controlled by the Communist Party and is unlikely to publish stories that reflect poorly on any level of government.

In addition, there are courts that are also run by the party and for the party, and operate slowly and inefficiently. There was a lot of talk on social media about the alleged motive of the attacker from Zhuhai: he did not get what he thought was a fair divorce in court.

Experts say other avenues for expressing frustration have also narrowed or been shut down entirely.

Chinese often express their grievances online, says Lynette Ong, a political science professor at the University of Toronto who has conducted significant research on how the Chinese state responds to pushback from its own people.

“(They) will go on the Internet and berate the government … just to express their anger. Or they can organize a small protest, which the police often allow if it’s small,” she explains. “But that kind of dissent, that little dissent, has been shut down in the last couple of years.”

There are many examples of this: increased internet censorship that blocks words or expressions deemed controversial or critical; a crackdown on cheeky Halloween costumes that mock officialdom; or when people in plainclothes who appear to have been mobilized by local officials, beat down demonstrators in Henan province outside the banks that froze their accounts.

In terms of people’s mental and emotional responses to these stresses, this has also been recognized as a disadvantage. Experts say China’s counseling services are woefully inadequate, leaving no outlet for those who feel isolated, lonely and oppressed in modern Chinese society.

“Counseling can help build emotional resilience,” says Professor Sylvia Kwok of the City University of Hong Kong, adding that China needs to increase the number of mental health services, especially for at-risk groups who have experienced trauma or those suffering from mental illness.

“People need to find different strategies or constructive ways to deal with their emotions…to reduce the likelihood of violent reactions during times of high emotional stress.”

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

“There are not many people who engage in mass murder. But it still seems that tensions are building, and it doesn’t look like they will ease in the near future,” says Mr. Magnus.

The Communist Party should be worried about public comments blaming the government for this.

Take, for example, this remark: “If the government really acted honestly and fairly, there would not be so much anger and resentment in Chinese society… the government’s efforts were focused on creating a superficial sense of harmony. Although they may appear to care for the disadvantaged, their actions have resulted in the greatest injustice.”

According to Professor Ong, while violent attacks are on the rise in many countries, the difference in China is that officials have little experience in dealing with them.

“I think the authorities are very alarmed because they haven’t seen this before and their instinct is to retaliate.”

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke about the attack in Zhuhai, he appeared to acknowledge that public pressure was building. He called on officials across the country to “learn serious lessons from the incident, address risks at their roots, resolve conflicts and disputes early, and take proactive measures to prevent extreme crime.”

But lessons learned so far appear to have led to police speeding up response times with increased surveillance rather than considering any changes to how China is governed.

“China is entering a new phase, a new phase that we haven’t seen since the late 70s,” says Professor Ong, referring to the time when the country began to open up to the world again, unleashing huge changes.

“We need to prepare for unexpected events, such as multiple random attacks and the emergence of pockets of protest and social instability.”