China hands death sentence to man who killed Japanese boy

A Chinese man has been sentenced to death for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy in Shenzhen, a case that has sparked concern among the Japanese expatriate community in China. According to Japanese media reports, the verdict for the knife attack, which occurred in September, was delivered on Friday.

The day before, another court sentenced a Chinese man to death for attacking a Japanese mother and son in Suzhou in June, killing a Chinese woman who tried to protect them. The court rulings come as Chinese authorities have recently carried out several high-profile executions.

The stabbings in Shenzhen and Suzhou are among three attacks targeting foreigners in China over the past year. Just days before the Suzhou incident, four American university instructors were injured in a knife attack in a park in Jilin, in the north of the country. Following the Shenzhen attack, Japanese companies, including Toshiba and Toyota, told employees to take precautions against any potential violence, while Panasonic offered staff free flights home.

In the Suzhou case, the Chinese court said that 52-year-old Zhou Jiasheng had lost his will to live after losing his job and falling into debt, leading him to carry out the attack outside a Japanese school. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told a press conference that the court had determined the attack to be "intentional homicide," and the sentence was due to the crime having a "significant social impact."

Hayashi added that the court did not mention Japan in its ruling, and added that officials from the Japanese consulate in Shanghai had attended the sentencing. Hayashi also stated that the crime, which caused the deaths of "innocent people," including a child, was "absolutely unforgivable." He also paid tribute to Hu Youping, the Chinese bus attendant who was killed by Zhou Jiasheng while trying to protect the Japanese mother and son.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning commented briefly at a daily press briefing earlier on Thursday that the case was "under judicial process," adding that China would "as always, take action to protect the safety of foreign citizens in China." China has been struggling to deal with an increase in public violence, with many attackers believed to be driven by a desire for "revenge on society" – where perpetrators vent personal frustrations by attacking strangers.

There were 19 attacks targeting pedestrians last year, a sharp increase compared to the single-digit numbers in previous years. On Monday, a man was executed for a car attack that killed at least 35 people, in what is believed to be the country’s deadliest attack in a decade. Last month, a man was sentenced to death for stabbing eight people to death at his university. Additionally, in December, a man who drove into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 people, was given a suspended death sentence.