Views: 7
Taxis to school, father escorts among ideas; censors halt incendiary chatter on Weibo.
SHANGHAI/HONG KONG — The killing of a 10-year-old Japanese boy in the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen this week has sent Japanese communities in the country scrambling for additional security.
On Friday morning, an emergency meeting was convened in Shanghai between the Consulate-General of Japan in Shanghai, the Shanghai Japanese Commerce and Industry Club and Japanese schools in the city. “There is a considerable amount of anxiety spreading among Japanese people,” Masaru Okada, the consul general, told reporters after the gathering. He said the Japanese government will provide financial and human resources to bolster safety measures.
The child was stabbed by a 44-year-old man around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, according to the Shenzhen authorities. He died on Thursday while being treated at a hospital. The incident occurred less than three months after a man attacked a Japanese mother and child at a bus stop in Suzhou, west of Shanghai, raising fears over safety in China. The motives of the attackers remain unclear.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Thursday called for the Chinese government to provide a detailed explanation and to ensure the safety of Japanese people and schools in the country. Consulates in China have emailed Japanese residents, urging them to be aware of their surroundings when going out.
A representative of Japanese schools in Shanghai said that since the Suzhou incident, they had purchased shields, bulletproof vests and taken other safety measures for school buses. But as the Shenzhen attack took place while the boy was walking to school, the representative said schools will consider taking additional security precautions.
Ideas discussed included having students take taxis even if the school is within walking distance.
Companies are also seeking ways to protect the children of their employees. At Friday’s meeting, there was talk of adjusting fathers’ working hours so that they can escort their children to school. Both the Suzhou and Shenzhen attacks happened as the children were with their mothers. Panasonic Holdings is offering employees and their families assistance to temporarily return to Japan.
Similar gatherings have been held across China, including in the coastal city of Dalian, where many Japanese companies are based, and Beijing. The Japanese school in Shenzhen held a meeting for parents of its 260 students on Thursday. The school’s governing board indicated that it is willing to provide financial support for safety enhancements.
Beijing, for its part, appears to be scrambling to avoid a broader political and diplomatic crisis.
In Shenzhen, the authorities were allowing people to express grief and lay flowers at the gate of the Japanese school, while security in the area remained tight.
But Weibo, a popular Chinese social media platform, appeared to have shut down discussion under the hashtag “Shenzhen — Japanese boy attacked and killed while on his way to school” after the subject sparked heated exchanges.
Some comments slammed the 44 year-old Chinese suspect for carrying out such a heinous attack against a 10 year-old boy. “No matter what, randomly killing the innocent is not acceptable,” one user wrote. But another post alluded to the uglier remarks that had proliferated: “To my surprise, there are so many extreme comments, which is so scary.”
Some spread unfounded claims that the attack was “self-made and performed,” making an allusion to the 1931 Mukden Incident, in which the Imperial Japanese Army bombed a railway to create a pretext to invade Manchuria. The Shenzhen killing took place on the 93rd anniversary of the incident in what is now the northeastern city of Shenyang.
Others argued the solution was to ban Japanese schools in China. “If there were no schools, and there were no elementary school students, no one would have been stabbed,” one wrote. A fellow user said simply, “Why don’t we close down all Japanese schools?”
Still others questioned China’s responsibility to ensure safety and showed their disdain for Japanese residents, with comments such as, “Is China obliged to protect Japanese nationals?” and, “Hurry up and go back to your islands.”
The shutdown of the Weibo hashtag may reflect authorities’ concerns that such anti-Japanese rhetoric could undermine their efforts to cool the situation.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian expressed condolences to the boy and his family during a daily briefing in Beijing on Thursday, but also downplayed the case by saying “a similar incident could happen in any country.”
Sun Weidong, deputy foreign minister and Lin’s boss, told Japanese Ambassador Kenji Kanasugi on Thursday that the suspect in detention is “a person with a past criminal record,” and that the attack was “an isolated case,” according to the Japanese Embassy’s account.