HONG KONG — Chinese authorities scrambled Wednesday to quell public outrage over the country’s deadliest mass killing in a decade, as well as the delay in reporting it.
Flowers and other offerings were removed almost as soon as they were laid at a makeshift memorial in the southern city of Zhuhai, where 35 people were killed Monday evening when a car rammed into a crowd of people exercising outside a sports center.
The initial statement from authorities said the driver had been detained at the scene and that those who were injured had been taken to the hospital. State media downplayed the incident.
It wasn’t until almost 24 hours later, on Tuesday night, that authorities reported the death toll in the incident, which also injured 43 other people.
State media reported that President Xi Jinping had ordered “all-out efforts” to treat the injured and that the perpetrator be “severely punished in accordance with the law.”
Amid a growing public outcry, discussion of the attack appeared to be suppressed on heavily censored Chinese social media platforms, with videos and other posts continually deleted.
It is the latest in what appears to be a spike in violent crime in China, though it is difficult to know because there is no publicly available data.
In a country where there are limited avenues to express dissent, such attacks can be unnerving for the ruling Chinese Communist Party, which prizes social stability perhaps more than anything else and may worry that they reflect the toll of an economic slowdown it is struggling to address.
The suspect, a 62-year-old man identified only by his surname, Fan, was said to be upset by the division of property after his divorce. He was in a coma after he harmed himself with a knife in his car, police said, and could not be questioned.
Lynette Ong, a distinguished professor of Chinese politics at the University of Toronto, said it would not be surprising if officials in Zhuhai were punished or removed from office, “because incidents like this are classified as destabilizing, a threat to social stability.”
She said the attacks were symptoms of a “pent-up society” that is more tightly controlled under Xi, who has increased online censorship and kept the country under strict “zero-Covid” measures for three years.
Combined with personal trauma and growing economic hardship, “people reach [a] boiling point and they go out and commit something extraordinary, big violent crimes,” said Ong, who is a senior fellow at the Asia Society.
The attack in Zhuhai, a city of 2.5 million, took place on the eve of a major air show that is held there every two years and where China debuted a new stealth fighter jet Tuesday. There is no indication that the two events are connected.
But the sensitive timing of the attack may have been one reason for the delay in reporting the death toll, said Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies Chinese media and censorship. Local officials may have been waiting for directives from Beijing, he said.
Posts related to the attack appeared to be censored on Weibo, China’s X-like platform, where it ranked only 11th among trending topics as the death toll was reported Tuesday. By Wednesday evening local time, it was not listed among trending topics at all.
Censorship is “very common” after such incidents, Fang said.
“The government wants to control the narrative and ensure that the public support for the regime won’t be affected,” he said.
Many commenters lamented the driver’s actions.
“Those who lash out at society are truly wicked. If you have a grudge, confront the person directly. Why harm innocent bystanders?” read a comment on Weibo.
While the identities of the victims have not been disclosed, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said Wednesday that no foreign nationals were among the casualties.
China, which has strict gun control laws, often describes itself as one of the world’s safest countries. Last year, the country’s “national public safety index” was above 98% for the fourth consecutive year, according to the state newspaper People’s Daily.
But a series of attacks in recent months, including attacks against children and foreign nationals, has drawn national attention. Last month, three children were among five people injured in a stabbing attack in Beijing, the capital.
At the end of September, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, three people were killed and 15 others were injured in a knife attack at a supermarket in Shanghai.
Earlier that month, a 10-year-old Japanese boy died after he was stabbed on his way to a Japanese school in the southern city of Shenzhen, in the second such attack on a Japanese national since June.
China also has a history of killings by car rampage as outlets for personal resentment.
Last year, a 22-year-old man drove his car into a crowd in a busy district in the southern city of Guangzhou, killing five people. A court later sentenced him to death, saying he had committed the crime to “vent his personal emotions.”
In 2020, a 52-year-old man deliberately drove a bus into a lake, killing 21 people in the southwestern province of Guizhou. A police investigation suggested that he was motivated by “dissatisfaction with his life.”
In cases such as the attack in Zhuhai, Chinese officials view any expression of grief, especially mass grief, as a further threat to social stability, Ong said.
“What I think should happen, but I don’t think it will happen under Xi Jinping, is to allow people to talk about it,” she said, “to allow people to grieve together, to hold vigils, even offline to get together and discuss these issues and heal as a community, especially in Zhuhai.”
It is more likely that the opposite will happen, Ong said, with the government cracking down on any sort of gathering that commemorates the victims.
“It’s going to be counterproductive,” she said, “so they will have to counter that with more repressive measures. So it’s a vicious circle.”
Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong and Henry Austin from London.
