A Parent’s Worst Nightmare in China

BEIJING —  When Ding Xiuzhen heard about the stabbings at the neighborhood high school, her legs went limp.

As many as nine people were killed and four were wounded Thursday when an intruder broke into the dormitory and attacked sleeping students, according to Chinese media reports.

“I was so scared I could barely make it down the stairs,” said Ding, who lives near the No. 2 High School in Ruzhou in central China’s Henan province. “I have a 14-year-old daughter. She is supposed to go there next year. Now there’s no way I would let her go to that school. All the parents I know are terrified.”

The attack was the latest in a wave of assaults on students this summer by knife-wielding assailants. The violence has prompted officials to call for the hiring of guards and tightening of campus security across China.

Analysts say the attacks demonstrate how crime has escalated in a country once viewed as virtually crime-free. More than two decades of economic growth have created rising social tensions but few institutions to address them.

The attacks on children, analysts say, can also be seen as cries for help.

“It’s no longer just about personal revenge,” said Zhao Xiao, a Beijing-based scholar who studies transitional economies. “They also want ... impact. That’s why they are seeking out little children to make their point by attacking someone even weaker. This is potentially a very scary development.”

In September, farmer Yang Guozhu woke up, shaved his head, bought some sunglasses and marched into a day-care center in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou. He used a fruit knife to attack children. Twenty-eight were wounded; the oldest was 6 and the youngest 2.

According to Yang’s account in Chinese media reports, he was forced to take drastic action because no one would pay attention to his family tragedy. Back in his village, Yang’s younger brother and the brother’s girlfriend had been charged with living together illegally. The village’s family planning committee levied a fine on Yang’s parents and confiscated their meager possessions: 17 sacks of grain and three bags of fertilizer.

A year later, the committee imposed a new fine, this time $1,200, an unobtainable sum for the peasants. Feeling helpless and humiliated, his parents committed suicide by drinking pesticide.

Yang and his siblings preserved their parents’ bodies so they could seek justice. But local officials forcefully removed the corpses for cremation and beat relatives who tried to stop them.

After failed attempts to seek redress, Yang told a friend he would do something that everyone would hear about. For maximum impact, he picked Sept. 11, the three-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the United States. A week earlier, Yang watched militants shock the world by killing more than 300 people -- mostly young children -- at a school in Beslan, Russia.

Yang’s target was a local elementary school. He apparently went prepared with gasoline and homemade explosives. But this year, Sept. 11 fell on a Saturday and the campus was empty. So he made his target the day-care center.

About a week later, another man, from eastern China’s Shandong province, also took out his frustrations on schoolchildren.

Chinese media reported that bus driver Jia Qingyou tried to borrow some music recordings from a co-worker. When she refused and an argument ensued, the woman’s boss sent someone to beat up Jia, who suffered injuries that required him to spend a week in the hospital.

According to one Chinese newspaper, Jia called the police but got no action. He too decided to do something no one would ignore. He slashed 25 primary school students with a kitchen knife.

On Wednesday, Jia was executed for his crime.

Little is known about the 52-year-old doorman who in August used a kitchen knife to kill one child and wound 18 people at a Beijing kindergarten. The man was reported to have a history of mental illness.

The motive behind Thursday’s attack is under investigation. On Friday, police arrested a 21-year-old suspect after his mother reported that he had tried to commit suicide after the killings.

The New China News Agency reported that police said the suspect held grudges against the students at the school and during the attack allegedly kept saying, “Don’t blame me.”