A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced a 52-year-old to death for a knife attack that injured a Japanese mother and her young child and killed a bus attendant near Shanghai last June.
The attack, which took place on 24 June 2024 at a bus stop near the Japanese School of Suzhou in Jiangsu province, had caused concern about the safety of Japanese nationals in the country.
Zhou Jiasheng, apparently struggling with heavy debt and despair, targeted the Japanese mother and her son as they waited for the school bus, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said.
The mother and son sustained minor injuries but a female bus attendant named Hu Youping, 54, who stepped in to protect them was fatally stabbed. She succumbed to her wounds a few days later, becoming a symbol of selfless bravery.
Zhou told the court he carried out the attack because he “no longer wanted to live”.
The court handed him the death sentence.
Mr Hayashi noted that the ruling made no reference to the Japanese nationality of the mother and son injured in the attack. “We believe the crime that killed and injured innocent people, including a child, was absolutely unforgivable,” Mr Hayashi said.
Officials from the Japanese consulate in Shanghai were present for the sentencing.
The case was one of two knife attacks targeting Japanese nationals in China last year. In September, a 10-year-old Japanese student was fatally stabbed near his school in Shenzhen. The trial of the alleged perpetrator in that case only just began.
The incidents heightened fears of growing anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Following the Suzhou attack, Japanese officials had urged Beijing to ensure the safety of its citizens.
The Chinese government described the incidents as isolated, while technology companies, including Tencent and NetEase, vowed to curb online hate speech to prevent further violence.
The incident in Suzhou also drew attention to a wider problem of the rise in violent attacks across China.
In May last year, a stabbing attack at a hospital in southwestern China left two people dead and 21 injured.
In June, an attack in Jilin targeted four US university instructors and a Chinese bystander.
