China please save the children

[mDumb]

China has witnessed a series of assaults by knife-wielding attackers on schools in recent years. Many have been blamed on personal grudges or people with psychiatric problems:

April 30, 2010: A farmer attacked and injured five kindergarten students with a hammer in Shandong province's Weifang city before burning himself to death. The man struck a teacher who tried to block him and then used the hammer to attack the children. None of the children had life-threatening injuries.

April 29, 2010: A 47-year-old unemployed man attacked a classroom of 4-year-olds at a kindergarten in Jiangsu province, wounding 28 of them. Two teachers and a security guard were also hurt.

April 28, 2010: A man wielding a knife broke into a primary school in Leizhou city in Guangdong province in southern China and stabbed 18 students and a teacher.

April 12, 2010: Yang Jiaqin, 40, hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman near an elementary school in Xizhen village of the southern Guangxi region. The attack came one day before Yang's family was scheduled to send him to a hospital for psychological treatment. He had been diagnosed with a mood disorder.

March 23, 2010: Zheng Minsheng, 42, killed eight children in a knife attack at the Nanping Experimental Elementary School in south China's Fujian province. Zheng was executed April 28.

March 2, 2009: Xu Ximei, 40, hacked two preschoolers, aged 4 and 6, to death with a kitchen knife and injured three other children and a grandmother at a primary school in Mazhan, a village in Guangdong province, and at a yard in the village. Xu was believed to be mentally disabled.

Feb. 24, 2008: Chen Wenzhen, a former student at the Leizhou No. 2 Middle School in Guangdong province, stabbed to death a boy and a girl, then killed himself. Chen had dropped out half a year earlier because he suffered from headaches and could not concentrate on his studies, state media said.

June, 2007: A man state media identified only by his surname, Su, broke into the Chiling Primary School in Longtang township in Guangdong and killed a 9-year-old boy with a kitchen knife. Three other students were seriously wounded. The attacker had been seen quarreling with the boy's parents in the past.

May 24, 2006: Yang Xinlong hacked a neighbor to death in the village of Luoying in central China's Henan province, then took 19 elementary school students hostage and killed one before police subdued him. Yang was hospitalized after police shot him when he refused to surrender.

Nov. 25, 2004: Yan Yiming, 21, broke into a Chinese high school dormitory and stabbed nine boys to death in Ruzhou, Henan province. Yan's mother turned him in to police after he attempted suicide on the day following the attack. He was executed two months later.

Aug. 4, 2004: Xu Heping, 51, a part-time gatekeeper at a Beijing kindergarten killed one student and slashed 14 others and three teachers. State media said at the time Xu had a history of schizophrenia. The attack, near the compound where President Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders live and work, prompted the government to order stepped up security at schools nationwide.

 

[ao333]

I guess ppl in China want to show their discontent for the government through murdering during the Expo...

 

[no_name]

If it had been legal to own firearms the majority of these attacks could have been shooting incidents with potentially much higher casulties

 

[mDumb]

What no respond from PRC flag members? Why are you guys mum?

We're talking about possible future Chinese leaders, taikonauts, scientists, engineers, etc., being killed here.

If China can field arrays of security systems and security measures for Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo then China should use them to protect these Children (because they are China's future).

Here is an assessment of why the killing:
BEIJING: The latest deadly school rampage shows China is paying the price for focusing on economic growth for decades while ignoring mental health problems linked to the nation's rapid social change, experts say.

A 48-year-old man apparently angry over a property dispute killed seven children and two adults with a kitchen cleaver at a kindergarten in northern China Wednesday -- the fifth assault on schoolchildren in less than two months.

For decades, China had been relatively free of the sort of multiple killings by deranged assailants that regularly seize headlines in the West.

But while cautioning that the causes of the attacks remain unclear, experts say that even as economic reforms have lifted millions from poverty in China, insufficient attention has been paid to psychological health.

"We have focused on economic progress but have most certainly lost sight of psychological improvements," said Ma Ai, a criminal psychologist with the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.

"This is because the changes of the past 30 years have been too fast."

17 people, mostly young children, have died in the attacks, and more than 50 children have been hurt. Two attackers, including the man who carried out Wednesday's assault, committed suicide while another has been executed.

Why children were targeted is unclear, but Ma said the attackers may be seeking to shock the public in copycat attacks carried out in revenge against a more complicated society that they feel has wronged them.

Despite rising living standards and greater freedoms, Chinese today face new pressures unknown 30 years ago when China began opening again to the world -- particularly the struggle to keep up in a dog-eat-dog capitalist landscape.

Numerous studies have chronicled rising stress and mental illness levels.

Michael Phillips, a mental health expert at Shanghai's Tongji University, said many doctors outside major cities "don't know anything about mental illness."

A strong social stigma also prevents many from coming forth for treatment, he said.

"The stigma issue is really quite strong, but there really are a whole range of issues impinging on a lack of treatment as well," he said.

Phillips conducted a study last year that found 173 million Chinese suffered some sort of mental problem ranging from schizophrenia to alcohol abuse, and that 91 per cent had never been treated.

China's national health system is widely pilloried as too costly, badly funded and marked by shoddy or indifferent treatment.

The government indicated its concern last year by announcing an ambitious plan to pump in more than 100 billion dollars to create a system ensuring basic care for all by 2020.

But China faces a huge task laying a proper mental health foundation for its 1.3 billion-strong population, Phillips said.

"In China, we know we need to go in that direction, but how to get there remains a big problem," he said.

The latest attack in the city of Hanzhong in Shaanxi province came despite a push to boost security at schools nationwide following the earlier rampages.

Chinese reporters have claimed in blog entries they have been barred by the government from independently reporting on the killings and that all media must use only versions published by official Xinhua news agency.

Han Han, an outspoken novelist who writes China's most popular blog, said in an entry last week such measures prevent a full investigation of why such attacks occur.

He said the order was aimed at avoiding embarrassment in the six-month spotlight of the Shanghai World Expo, which opened May 1.

"I just want to tell everybody, right here, that when the story of a person breaking into a kindergarten to slash up 32 children can't become news, you have all been slashed as well," he wrote.

China sees tens of thousands of protests, clashes and other outbursts each year related to property disputes, official corruption and a range of other growing pains, and the government has vowed to maintain security.

But clamping down is only one part of the equation, said Ma, who feels China urgently needs to take a more holistic approach that takes mental health into account.

"The recent cases serve as a warning," said Ma who called society an "ecosystem" made of several factors including both economic and mental health.

"If this ecosystem is not supported by mental health, all other things are built on a dangerous foundation."

 

[dingyibvs]

What no respond from PRC flag members? Why are you guys mum?

We're talking about possible future Chinese leaders, taikonauts, scientists, engineers, etc., being killed here.

If China can field arrays of security systems and security measures for Beijing Olympics and Shanghai World Expo then China should use them to protect these Children (because they are China's future).

Here is an assessment of why the killing:
BEIJING: The latest deadly school rampage shows China is paying the price for focusing on economic growth for decades while ignoring mental health problems linked to the nation's rapid social change, experts say.

A 48-year-old man apparently angry over a property dispute killed seven children and two adults with a kitchen cleaver at a kindergarten in northern China Wednesday -- the fifth assault on schoolchildren in less than two months.

For decades, China had been relatively free of the sort of multiple killings by deranged assailants that regularly seize headlines in the West.

But while cautioning that the causes of the attacks remain unclear, experts say that even as economic reforms have lifted millions from poverty in China, insufficient attention has been paid to psychological health.

"We have focused on economic progress but have most certainly lost sight of psychological improvements," said Ma Ai, a criminal psychologist with the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.

"This is because the changes of the past 30 years have been too fast."

17 people, mostly young children, have died in the attacks, and more than 50 children have been hurt. Two attackers, including the man who carried out Wednesday's assault, committed suicide while another has been executed.

Why children were targeted is unclear, but Ma said the attackers may be seeking to shock the public in copycat attacks carried out in revenge against a more complicated society that they feel has wronged them.

Despite rising living standards and greater freedoms, Chinese today face new pressures unknown 30 years ago when China began opening again to the world -- particularly the struggle to keep up in a dog-eat-dog capitalist landscape.

Numerous studies have chronicled rising stress and mental illness levels.

Michael Phillips, a mental health expert at Shanghai's Tongji University, said many doctors outside major cities "don't know anything about mental illness."

A strong social stigma also prevents many from coming forth for treatment, he said.

"The stigma issue is really quite strong, but there really are a whole range of issues impinging on a lack of treatment as well," he said.

Phillips conducted a study last year that found 173 million Chinese suffered some sort of mental problem ranging from schizophrenia to alcohol abuse, and that 91 per cent had never been treated.

China's national health system is widely pilloried as too costly, badly funded and marked by shoddy or indifferent treatment.

The government indicated its concern last year by announcing an ambitious plan to pump in more than 100 billion dollars to create a system ensuring basic care for all by 2020.

But China faces a huge task laying a proper mental health foundation for its 1.3 billion-strong population, Phillips said.

"In China, we know we need to go in that direction, but how to get there remains a big problem," he said.

The latest attack in the city of Hanzhong in Shaanxi province came despite a push to boost security at schools nationwide following the earlier rampages.

Chinese reporters have claimed in blog entries they have been barred by the government from independently reporting on the killings and that all media must use only versions published by official Xinhua news agency.

Han Han, an outspoken novelist who writes China's most popular blog, said in an entry last week such measures prevent a full investigation of why such attacks occur.

He said the order was aimed at avoiding embarrassment in the six-month spotlight of the Shanghai World Expo, which opened May 1.

"I just want to tell everybody, right here, that when the story of a person breaking into a kindergarten to slash up 32 children can't become news, you have all been slashed as well," he wrote.

China sees tens of thousands of protests, clashes and other outbursts each year related to property disputes, official corruption and a range of other growing pains, and the government has vowed to maintain security.

But clamping down is only one part of the equation, said Ma, who feels China urgently needs to take a more holistic approach that takes mental health into account.

"The recent cases serve as a warning," said Ma who called society an "ecosystem" made of several factors including both economic and mental health.

"If this ecosystem is not supported by mental health, all other things are built on a dangerous foundation."

I know you're just trolling but please don't bring kids into it. There's nothing the government can realistically do.

 

[new wave]

Premier pledges to address root causes of school attacks - People's Daily Online

Security has been stepped up around schools across the country amid calls by sociologists that solutions be found to deep-seated social problems that have led to a spate of attacks around campuses.


Students at Beijing No 1 Experiment Primary School are escorted by security guards on Thursday. [China Daily]

Premier Wen Jiabao, expressing condolences to the families of the victims, pledged to address the root causes behind the tragedies.

Apart from beefing up security, "we need to handle social problems, resolve disputes and strengthen mediation at the grassroots level", he told Phoenix TV on Thursday.

Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu ordered police forces to ensure criminals "dare not and cannot" get their hands on children.

He stressed that security measures in privately-run schools and kindergartens as well as those in remote areas and rural regions should be reassessed to stem risks.

The directive followed Wednesday's deadly attack in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, the fifth on children in the past month.

A 48-year-old local farmer stabbed seven children and two adults to death - the youngest victim aged only 3 - before he killed himself.

Initial police investigations showed that suspect Wu Huanming, who had rented out his house to kindergarten owner Wu Hongying, demanded in April that his house be vacated when the lease expired.

But the victim said she could only do so in June or July, during vacation.

The tragedy shows that privately-run kindergartens as well as those in remote rural areas are a weak link in the tightened security network, experts said.

"In rural areas, especially remote villages, it is impossible for every kindergarten to be guarded by a police officer," said Guo Taisheng, professor and dean of the public security department of the Chinese People's Public Security University.

More importantly, the increased security efforts are only one way of thwarting school assaults, sociologists and experts said.

Law professor Li Yunlong said the five attacks on children in the past month share some common characteristics, such as the attackers were jobless men in their 30s to 40s.

"Severe punishment is not a deterrent because they are not afraid of death, which has been demonstrated in some cases in which the attackers later committed suicide," said Li, who is at the Jiangxi provincial academy of social sciences.

"Their motives are to exact revenge on society and expose social problems, such as unemployment and unfair distribution of wealth," he said.

Fang Changchun, associate professor at the sociology department of Nanjing University, said this group needs a way to vent long-suppressed frustration, which the attackers in the five cases apparently did not find.

"They turned to children to express their resentment because they had no direct targets to do so, and compared to other places, schools and kindergartens are not as heavily guarded," he said.

But before such social problems are resolved, placing schools under police protection is necessary, he said.

Starting Thursday, many cities beefed up security measures.

Police in Changsha of Central China's Hunan province patrolled with sub-machine guns.

In Beijing, 800 well-trained security guards, clad in helmets and armed with tear gas and batons, made their presence felt in primary schools and kindergartens. The municipality aims to equip each school with at least two such security guards.

In Shanghai and Guangzhou, parents need passes to enter school.

Schools also started teaching children on how to respond to abductions or injuries, said Hu Zhijin, deputy principal of Zhenguang Primary School in Guangzhou.

"Though children feel restricted and some are a little afraid, the measures are necessary and reassuring," said an elderly man picking up his granddaughter at Huayang Primary School in Guangzhou.

Despite all the security measures, a woman in her 30s carrying a long knife was caught on Thursday by security guards and traffic police when she ran into a children's activity center in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, local newspaper City Express reported.

No casualty was reported.

Source: China Daily

The facts are that you simply can't do too much about psychopaths committing crazy crimes, cos you never know whats in one's mind.

Look, i live in US, the supposed one of the most modern, safest country in the world, "School mascre happened a lot of times" and can they prevented them from happening ?

Conclusion, try your best and hope for the best period.

 

[mDumb]

<I know you're just trolling but please don't bring kids into it.>

I am not trolling this is a serious problem that China has to tackle. China's children are the future of China. If you've got nothing better to say don't respond.

<There's nothing the government can realistically do.>
BS statement!!!! Are you educated? If you care about China you should do something about it. Otherwise, don't use the PRC flag for your flag.

 

[Communist]

I know you're just trolling but please don't bring kids into it. There's nothing the government can realistically do.

No he is not trolling, rather he has raised an important issue to be concerned.

The way this copy cat crimes are occurring is quite mysterious. It seems it is an organized crime but at the same time the criminals' records do not indicate they have relations among them, at least as far as the police says. We don't know whether there is any home grown terrorist organization or foreign undercover agents are involved in the master plan.

I want to know whether any Tibetan or Falun Gong member is involved or not.

---------- Post added at 01:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:26 AM ----------

<I know you're just trolling but please don't bring kids into it.>

I am not trolling this is a serious problem that China has to tackle. China's children are the future of China. If you've got nothing better to say don't respond.

<There's nothing the government can realistically do.>
BS statement!!!! Are you educated? If you care about China you should do something about it. Otherwise, don't use the PRC flag for your flag.

Easy Easy.

 

[mDumb]

<The way this copy cat crimes are occurring is quite mysterious. It seems it is an organized crime but at the same time the criminals' records do not indicate they have relations among them, at least as far as the police says. We don't know whether there is any home grown terrorist organization or foreign undercover agents are involved in the master plan.

I want to know whether any Tibetan or Falun Gong member is involved or not.>

I see you bring up a conspiracy theory. I don't think Tibetan or Falun Gong has the sophistication or foolish enough to do this. It's possible but very unlikely.

More likely is this:
The latest deadly school rampage shows China is paying the price for focusing on economic growth for decades while ignoring mental health problems linked to the nation's rapid social change, experts say.

 

[no_name]

No he is not trolling, rather he has raised an important issue to be concerned.

The way this copy cat crimes are occurring is quite mysterious. It seems it is an organized crime but at the same time the criminals' records do not indicate they have relations among them, at least as far as the police says. We don't know whether there is any home grown terrorist organization or foreign undercover agents are involved in the master plan.

I want to know whether any Tibetan or Falun Gong member is involved or not.

---------- Post added at 01:27 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:26 AM ----------

had similar thoughts before but don't want to be called paranoid

 

[Communist]

<The way this copy cat crimes are occurring is quite mysterious. It seems it is an organized crime but at the same time the criminals' records do not indicate they have relations among them, at least as far as the police says. We don't know whether there is any home grown terrorist organization or foreign undercover agents are involved in the master plan.

I want to know whether any Tibetan or Falun Gong member is involved or not.>

I see you bring up a conspiracy theory. I don't think Tibetan or Falun Gong has the sophistication or foolish enough to do this. It's possible but very unlikely.

More likely is this:
The latest deadly school rampage shows China is paying the price for focusing on economic growth for decades while ignoring mental health problems linked to the nation's rapid social change, experts say.

Man, I was just assuming.

May be the Hukou system is responsible for one case, for another house rent or one child policy.

Then, if the route cause is socio-economic.

Solutions:

1. Drop the one child policy now.
2. Abolish the Hukou system.
3. Make economic opportunities for everyone so that everyone will be able to nourish hopes for betterment in life.
4. Form a strong espionage system with a nation wide network to conduct regular surveys of social stability and create domestic policies accordingly.
5. Foster national fraternity through the promotion of patriotic nationalism so that national fellow feeling becomes stronger.
6. Merge all existing ethnicities into one entity promoting inter ethnic marriages.
7. Militarize the society.

 

[mDumb]

<had similar thoughts before but don't want to be called paranoid>

If you're paranoid you're not much different than these killers (from mental aspect).

 

[Communist]

In Mother China,

There should be life.
There should be liberty.
And there should be the pursuit of happiness.

But all of them must serve national interests.

 

[no_name]

<had similar thoughts before but don't want to be called paranoid>

If you're paranoid you're not much different than these killers (from mental aspect).

Lol that's why I didn't take it (my conspiracy theory) seriously.

But who doesn't have thoughts towards the dark side?

 

[mDumb]

<But who doesn't have thoughts towards the dark side?>

Don't go to the dark side it's black hole.

<But all of them must serve national interests.>

Yes, China must save these children from being killed further.