This content was first published by Radio Free Asia, and it is now being reprinted with permission.
Following a marital break in Zhuhai in November, China executed a man who fatally stabbed eight students in a Wuxi school after failing his final exams, as well as a man who killed at least 35 people with his vehicle at a facility in the southwestern area of Zhuhai.
Fan Weiqiu, 62, was executed by the Zhuhai Intermediate People’s Court on Jan. 20 “in comply with the murder order issued by the Supreme People’s Court”, state news agency Xinhua reported, adding that the murder was controlled by representatives from the condition attorney’s office.
When Fan rammed his car into a crowd at a stadium in Zhuhai city, killing 35 people and injuring 43 others, the president’s rare request was for an investigation and punishment for the offender.
The ruling Communist Party is counting the costs of a growing number of” social revenge” attacks on people, including the Zhuhai car attack, as the sentences are issued.
Since then, further violence has been making the headlines, including the fatal stabbing of eight people at a vocational college in Wuxi by 21-year-old Xu Jiajin, who was also executed on Monday.
Two rulings
Fan was sentenced to death on Dec. 27, 2024 for “endangering public security by dangerous means”, and accepted the sentence, the agency reported. He was accused of carrying out the attack because he had broken up with his divorce settlement.
” After review by the Guangdong Higher People’s Court, the case was submitted to the Supreme People’s Court for approval”, it said.
Xu Jiajin was executed on January 20 by the Wuxi Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu’s eastern province, according to state broadcaster CCTV, after permission was given to arrange for a meeting with his family in advance.
Xu, 21, was handed a death sentence by the court on Dec. 17, 2024, after the court found him guilty of the “intentional homicide” of eight people and the injury of 17 more on the campus of his vocational school in Wuxi on Nov. 16, 2024.
The circumstances and effects of this crime were particularly serious, according to the report.
Police claimed that Xu had failed his exams, had been unable to graduate, and was unhappy with his low salary at an internship.
New security measures
The “revenge” attacks have sparked , new security measures, with authorities in Guangdong sending local officials and volunteers to , intervene in people’s marital troubles , and to mediate disputes between neighbors in the wake of the Zhuhai attack.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party is also stepping up the use of big data to , predict people’s behavior , in a bid to identify” social risks” and prevent violent attacks on members of the public.
Local officials are being encouraged to set up systems that analyse , huge amounts of big data , to warn them of potential social tensions and disgruntlement, so they can try to intervene before such crimes are committed.
However, experts cautioned that further state-backed social cohesion and conflict-related disputes could result from this.
