Any Cultural Relevance To The China School Killings?

Great Debates
1

China recently has had a spate of attacks at schools, mostly very young children. Here’s the most recent incident here: China: School killer in property dispute - CNN.com

And here’s the timeline within that article for all of them: China school attacks in 2010 - CNN.com

So that’s four in about a month, which seems like an awful lot. And it looks like its almost always very young children (as young as pre-schoolers!) being killed or wounded by what seems to be almost always middle-aged, unhappy men, two of whom commited suicide afterwards (one immolated himself in front of his victims!).

I know jack about Chinese culture, and maybe this is just a coincidental case of copycatting…but WHY? What is there, if anything, in Chinese culture that would make a middle-aged sad sack of a man DO this? Why not just kill yourself only? Why little children? How could anyone justify this to themselves, even if they were (and they clearly were) mentally unstable/ill?

With four occurrences in a month, it just seems to me that there’s more to this than simple copycatting.

Anyone have any ideas?

2

I know almost nothing about China , but maybe it has something to do with the single child policy and the way it has effected the culture, in the pop culture imagery I see from there it always seems like they worship children(" Little kings" I think they are called…)

or something

3

I wonder if there’s any play in that angle. Hopefully evensven or someone that lives there or has extensive knowledge about Chinese culture will show up.

Or maybe it IS just coincidence/copycatting…but its so patently bizarre to me that these men selected young children to be victims of murderous rampages.

4

Personal guess would be copycatting. If there was something intrinsic to the society, little children would be getting murdered fairly regularly, not all at once.

And with China’s population size, it doesn’t necessarily imply that acting as sociopaths is intrinsic either. The US has copycats with a far smaller population. Multiply the number of people by 4.3X and getting four copycats isn’t that odd.

5

Of course it’s “copycatting”–but why copy the targeting of children, as opposed to taking some other venue for violence-as-personal-expression?

6

That’s what I’m wondering. I realize that this very well could just be copycatting, but in light of China’s emphasis on population control, I’m also wondering if people in general view children (not their own, of course) as a liability or as an asset to their country, and if there’s any thought like that in these men’s mind when they determine that by “going out in a blaze of glory” they decide to murder…little kids.

Could this just be some weird way of them thinking that they are making history somehow, by acting out an unspeakable act?

I just don’t know. There never seemed to be an issue like this in China before (that we know of) and now its happened several times in a month. Its nuts.

7

You’re presuming sanity on the part of a copycat? There may have been any number of killers who killed women, men, or old men each with a handful of copycats who did the same thing. The case that you read about, however, is this one where it was children.

8

Not at all. But even the insane usually have some kind of internal “logic” or “reason” for what they do.

9

I also wonder if forced abortions (no idea if that’s actually true) on the part of the State have devalued human life to a point where someone could conceivably murder children and think its a justifiable act based on their sorry lot in life.

10

Just to be clear. Local Chinese are absolutely appalled at this behavior. Just in case there was any thought that “China is different and maybe this isn’t considered so heinous.”

That said, the “value” of an individual human life is probably less sacred from a *societal *point of view. This stems from having 1.3 billion people and a pretty messed up recent 150 year history (100 years of civil war, cultural revolution, removal of most safety nets in past 2 decades, etc).

Just about every report I read the perp had known and serious mental health issues. There isn’t a lot of support for people with mental health problems in China. China has challenges taking care of all of it’s healthy people, and that means that handicapped/special needs/mental health people are lower down the priority list for scare resources. I’ve got a special needs child and there are some truely dedicated people out there trying to help with very limited resources.

11

This is the one that immediately came to my mind - people all crammed together and eventually there will be those that will try to - uh - do something about it. And children, particularly young ones, seem to be the obvious target if one wants to do something about overpopulation. Plus they don’t tend to be very good at fighting back.

12

I was hoping you’d chime in, and I in no way thought that the Chinese populace at large would consider these acts as anything other than the acts of madmen and that they were to be condemned. But for several of them to happen in much the same way in such a short period of time, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a deeper issue. It appears the deeper issue according to you is the lack of identification and care of mentally ill people in China. Its just amazing that events have occurred as they have in such a short timespan.

Maybe with a little luck the State will realize that they ignore such issues at their peril.

13

A few thoughts.

It bears repeating that people here are absolutely appalled by this crime. In no way does anyone consider this acceptable.

It’s also my experience that there is very little help for the mentally ill.

The general attitude is that there are many people and limited resources in China, so those resources ought to go to the people best able to contribute to society. What this means, in practical terms, is that even fairly mild disabilities can prevent you from going to college, getting a decent job, etc. People who we would consider pretty much functional are often warehoused in special homes with no chance of getting out. Parents of people who commit suicide will often refuse to claim the bodies- a lake at my friend’s university has thirteen unclaimed bodies, a number that grows each year.

Since the stigma is that big and that life-changing, people who need help are extremely reluctant to seek out whatever small help there is. I have a friend who had mild depression, and he got it treated in a town four hours away, because he was so terrified that someone would find out.

I think China may be especially prone to copycat crimes for a couple of reasons. One is that everyday crime is rarely reported. The news is mostly feel-good human interest stories and fairly hands-off stuff. I’m told there is a law that unsolved cases cannot be reported on, which means a lot of missing person stories and the like never make it on the news. There really isn’t a lot of news on everyday murders, etc. So a story like this would stand out even more in people’s heads- even the heads of psychos.

Secondly, it’s a strongly conformist society. I wouldn’t be surprised if even the crazy people choose to take the well-trod path rather than show individuality. If there gets to be a societal script that “crazy people stab children,” then when someone starts feeling a bit crazy, they may look towards that script first.

Childhood does have some different connotations in China, which I don’t know enough to comment on too much except that few of my students say they had a happy childhood. From my impression, it can be a stressful time. School lasts a lot longer and there is strong pressure even from elementary school. Weekends and time off is filled with cram schools or prestige arts (piano, classical dancing.) In rural areas, the parents often work elsewhere and children are left with their grandparents or other relatives, which in my experience is really difficult for the children to handle and makes them feel lonely and unloved. Anyway, I don’t know if this is a factor, but it may be that some of these people have deep resentments that stem from childhood.

Finally, the explanation (“I was disappointed with my romantic life and society”) may seem a bit less callous in Chinese. China tends to look for outside explanations for people’s behavior, rather than internal ones. What is a reasonable explanation to Chinese people often seems like a lame excuse to Western people.

14

My guess is that, as with any most countries today, theres always a couple of people out there who are so mentally unstable that their willing to commit acts such as this one. This only comes from a faint memory of hearing it, but I think that people who become bent on suicide usually are sufferring from extremly anti-social behaviors and feelings, which generally start in–and grew in, a feeling of lack of attention by others. When someone like this feels this way, they want to go out “with a bang” so to speak, and do the worst thing imaginable as to get the most attention, and so feel vindicated. As I was saying though, because of the certain number of people willing to do something of this sort, I would put most of the blame on copycatting.

I would also think that what willthekittensurvive? said-- it very likely would make children stick out more to chinese psychopaths.

15

Thanks for the reply. It makes sense. I wasn’t trying to imply that there was more there than what was on the surface necessarily, but I did in fact wonder if there was something within the cultural hierarchy of China that would lead people to do such a thing…repeatedly.

16

This seems pretty new but hard to say since reporting is haphazard. Ancedotally (this is Shanghai - argueable the most modern and progressive city in China), about 4-5 years ago my eldest daughter’s pre-school had a door lock installed. Whoever was dropping off /picking up the child needed the door pass to open the outer gate. This lasted for no more than 1 week as there was a huge bottleneck and complaints from parents on the inconvenience during the drop off / pick up times.

Whenever something like that is implemented, I always wonder if something bad happend that was not publicized? However, just as plausible and perhaps more likely is the school got a budget from somewhere to put in the security gate without any underlying bad event as a trigger. I’ve verified both scenarios in general.

About 2 weeks ago, every school child in Shanghai had to have both parents sign a permission form stating who was dropping off/picking up the child, bus arrangements, etc.

In my 8 years of pre-school and elementary school experience at 5 different schools in Shanghai, all schools have a main gate checkpoint with at least 1 security guard. It’s not tight security, but it’s not non-existent.

IIRC non of the incidents have occured when there were parents (or often grandparents or nannies) around. Eg, not during the morning or afternoon rush to and from school. Like anywhere, parents would not allow a madman to run amok with a knife.

Why school kids? I think you don’t have to look beyond mentally unstable people looking for easy victims and big press. Even Sven’s point on the copycat is probably also valid. Like anywhere in the world, murdering kids and especially at school stikes a very heinous chord across society.

17

At the danger of hijacking the thread, this sort of thing does make you think about the slogan “Guns don’t kill people…” The real challenge, the tougher one, is to not allow people to develop murder in their hearts.

Prince Philip said that if the UK outlawed swords, people would just kill each other with cricket mallets. He was being a bit trite, but there is some truth there.

18

I don’t have much to add to what even sven and China Guy said, but:

I planned to start a Pit thread about this, but never had a chance to get around to it I don’t know what to say about these attacks other than that I’m an elementary school teacher and father-to-be and am deeply disturbed by the things that have been happening. I’ve been trying to keep an eye out when in school to make sure there aren’t any shifty characters hanging about outside the gate. What’s more, my school has started making us escort the children directly to the school gate and make sure they’re picked up by their parents and no one else while the PE teachers (who would be considered big and burly by Chinese standards) stand outside the gate and keep watch.

I’m firmly in the camp that these are probably copycat crimes, although this most recent one seems to have had some other issues involved (the murderer rented his property to one of the victims, I guess). Would it be better if they didn’t show anything about the attacks on the news so as to discourage any other potential copycats? I don’t really know. The opinion expressed above that China doesn’t do much for people with mental health issues seems to be quite true AFAIK.

It’s just been a horrible, horrible couple of weeks with all these attacks (even though none of them were in my area, thank God) and I don’t want to see anymore. Even typing about it makes me feel bad.

19

Why do our fellow Ammurricans run amok in schools with assault rifles?

How is it different?

20

Well, it seems like most of those school shootings are done by students from the school or other teenagers (Kip Kinkel, Eric & Dylan, etc etc). These are just random psychos without any discernible connection to the students and schools they attack.