At 8.20 a.m. yesterday, 48-year old villager Wu Huanming entered the Shengshui Temple Kindergarten in Shaanxi province in north-east China, took out a kitchen cleaver and hacked to death seven children and two teachers. He also injured eleven others.
Shockingly, it was the sixth such attack in a Chinese primary school or kindergarten in less than two months. The first attack occurred in Nanping, Fujian province, on March 23, when former surgeon Zheng Minsheng, 42, killed eight children and injured five. Then followed four school attacks in April in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces.
The school attacks have all happened in towns or small or medium-sized cities and were committed by unemployed or underemployed middle-aged men. Most had personal grievances that they felt powerless to redress. The attacks have been escalating at an alarming rate, several of them being copy-cat massacres.
The locations of the recent school attacks
What are we to make of this very sudden shift in Chinese society, which has always seen itself as holding a deep love of children? What does it say about futures within and beyond China?
