(MENAFN- Asia Times)
Chinese social media platforms have shut down radical nationalist posts promoting hatred of Japan after a stabbing attack on June 24 that injured a Japanese mother and child at a school bus stop in Suzhou, west of Shanghai, according to media reports.
A female bus attendant who tried to protect the Japanese nationals was killed in the melee, the reports said.
An unemployed Chinese man in his 50s carried out the attack. His personal difficulties appear to have made him susceptible to ultranationalist online“influencers” who specialize in stoking animosity toward Japanese and Americans to attract followers and generate revenue.
The event marked the second high-profile knife attack on foreign residents in China in a single month. On June 10, four American college instructors were stabbed in a park in the city of Jilin in China's northeast.
There have been several knife attacks recently in China, most of them against other Chinese, according to press reports. Unlike Americans, ordinary Chinese do not have easy access to guns so violence often involves knives rather than firearms.
One long-time American resident in China told Asia Times the spate of knife attacks could be attributed to the stress caused by economic difficulties including loss of income that is driving many Chinese men toward desperation.
There was an outpouring of sympathy for the Suzhou victims and admiration for the bus attendant, Hu Youping, who has been praised as a heroine in both China and Japan. But there was also hostile and cynical commentary on Chinese social media.
Writing on the Pekingnology Substack, founder and editor Xichen Wang, a veteran of China's state-run Xinhua News Agency, wrote:
In response to such extremist commentary, Douyin, NetEase, Tencent, Weibo and other Chinese social media operators cracked down.
Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, said“These comments have disrupted the positive and peaceful atmosphere of the platform and even incited unlawful behavior.” NetEase issued a statement asking users to report inappropriate and harmful expressions of extreme nationalist sentiment and incitement of conflict between China and Japan. Tencent has reportedly dealt with more than 800 violations of its social media platform rules.
China's mouthpiece media also made its position clear, with the state-run People's Daily writing that“We will also not accept the hype of 'xenophobia' and hate speech... This is unacceptable...”
Well-known commentator Hu Xijin, a former editor of the Communist Party-run Global Times, said that China“must avoid excessively exaggerating external challenges and hostility online, which turns extreme nationalism into a commodity of hating America and Japan, blaming most of China's issues on external factors.”
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