"something in China is seriously askew"...

Man kills 3 children, 1 teacher in latest in series of Chinese school attacks



By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 4, 2010; 9:46 AM
BEIJING -- A knife-wielding man rampaged through a kindergarten in the eastern city of Zibo on Tuesday, killing three children and a teacher, and wounding a dozen others in the latest in a string of a strikingly similar attacks that have left about 20 people dead, parents on edge and the country grappling for answers.

The seemingly random attacks have raised questions about the state of mental health treatment in China, and the dislocation caused by two decades of explosive economic growth and dynamic change that has left many bypassed on society's margins.

The latest attack -- the sixth since March -- followed the now-familiar pattern; the assailant, identified as a man in his 20s, had no immediately known connection to the kindergarten. He apparently mingled with parents waiting to pick up their children about 4 p.m. before he began slashing victims with a two-foot-long knife.

Some reports said the man fled the scene but later turned himself in to police. In a brief dispatch, Xinhua, the official state news agency, identified the attacker as Fang Jiantang, 26. A local lawyer who lives in Zibo, in Shangdong province, said the man was unemployed and lived about 100 yards from where the attack occurred.

According to Zibo residents reached by telephone, the attack occurred at the Boshan District Experimental Kindergarten in the Golden Phoenix Compound, a facility for government workers. A teacher at a nearby kindergarten said the school that was attacked had 40 to 50 students attending, most of them the children of local civil service workers.

Immediately after the attack, the government, in a stated effort to head off copycat attacks, imposed a news blackout, with few details filtering out through media sources. The local police, government offices and the hospital in Zibo all refused to give any details.

News of the Tuesday attack only came out Wednesday, nearly 24 hours after the fact. Chinese media Web sites during the day carried prominently displayed stories about a workplace shooting in Connecticut that left nine people dead, but not a word on the latest kindergarten attack here in China.



Even residents of Zibo said they had difficulty finding out what happened. "News about the kindergarten is blocked," said a teacher from a nearby kindergarten. "Last night, the local news didn't cover the accident. This morning, the head of our kindergarten had a meeting in the city to discuss enhanced security. But no other news was released.

"I would be lying if I said I'm not panicked," she said. "I worry a lot in my heart. But we have two full-time security guards and two part-time security guards. Besides that, our kindergarten has already installed advanced alarming system and cameras. We have three locked gates to cross to enter our kindergarten."

The director of the nearby Golden Key Kindergarten, in the same district as the school that was attacked, said, "The tragedy happened so suddenly. Parents are scared. More than 100 kids in our kindergarten didn't come today. Their parents dare not to put their kids in kindergarten now."

A local primary school in Zibo posted a notice Wednesday saying all parents had to come into the classroom to pick up their children, according to a local hairdresser whose child attends the school.

Kindergartens and primary schools across China have become heavily fortified with cameras and extra security guards since the string of attacks began March 23, when 42-year-old Zheng Minsheng, a former community doctor, burst into a primary school and stabbed eight children to death with a knife as they were lining up outside before the start of classes.Zheng was executed by firing squad a month later -- and on the day of his execution, another school assailant, Chen Kangbing, a mentally ill 33-year-old man, wounded 18 children in a primary school in Leizhou, in Guangdong province, in what authorities called a copycat crime.

Three other school attacks came in rapid succession. On April 28, an angry, unemployed 47-year-old man burst into a nursery school in Jiangsu province and slashed 28 children. On April 30, a village farmer armed with a hammer attacked and injured five children in Weifang, also in Shandong province, before setting himself on fire. And on May 12, a 48-year-old man in Shaanxi province angry over a property dispute killed seven children and two adults in a kindergarten.

The school attacks have become an embarrassment for China's ruling Communist Party, led by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, who have made "social harmony" and stability the catchphrase of their tenure.

Hu and Wen have guided China through expansive economic growth, and placed China on the global stage with large-scale events like the 2008 Olympics and this year's World Expo in Shanghai. But the ongoing spate of apparently random school killings has shown that despite the progress, something in China is seriously askew.

Some experts have blamed the mental health system, which is still rudimentary here. China lacks trained psychiatrists, psychologists and mental hospitals, and mental illness carries a social stigma. Most people with mental illness simply go untreated.

Others said the killings pointed to a problem of people feeling resentment toward society, because of perceived economic unfairness or the pressure of authoritarian control, and they are responding by lashing out, often at innocent victims.

Ma Ai, a professor of criminal psychology at the China University of Politics and Law, called these attacks, and other random incidents against adults that go largely unnoticed, "the inevitable result of rapid social change in China."



"It's a matter of how to express their dissatisfaction," Ma said. "It's easier to draw attention by attacking kids."

"In the past 30 years of opening and reform, China attached more importance to economic development and ignored fairness in society," Ma said. "When people feel they are treated unfairly, they fight for themselves, no matter in which way."

Ma also said that in recent years, the government has become more heavy-handed in maintaining "stability" and security, and violence can be a backlash. "The authorities took simple measures to keep the stability, like suppressing people," he said. "But in terms of social psychology, when people feel pressure, they will push back against the pressure being imposed on them."

Researchers Zhang Jie and Liu Liu in Beijing contributed to this report.