China executed two men responsible for two deadly attacks in one week in November last year.
Fan Weiqiu, 62, killed at least 35 people and injured dozens more after drove his car into people who were exercising outside a stadium in Zhuhai, in what is considered the deadliest attack on Chinese soil in a decade.
Days later, Xu Jiajin, 21, killed eight people and injured 17 others in a knife attack at his university in the eastern city of Wuxi.
Authorities said Fan was motivated by “dissatisfaction” with how his assets were divided after his divorce, while Xu carried out his attack after “failing to graduate due to poor test scores.” examinations”.
Fan was arrested at the scene on November 11, where he was found with self-inflicted injuries.
In December, he was found guilty of “endangering public security”, with the court describing his motivations as “extremely vile” and the “methods” used as “particularly cruel”.
His execution Monday comes less than a month after a court sentenced him to death.
In Xu’s case, police said he confessed to his crime “without hesitation” on November 16. He was sentenced to death on December 17, after the court ruled that the circumstances of his crime were “particularly bad” and “extremely serious.”
China has been grappling with a wave of public violence in recent times, with many attackers believed to have been motivated by a desire to “take revenge on society” – where attackers target strangers because of their personal grievances.
The number of such attacks across China will reach 19 in 2024.
A few days after the attacks in Zhuhai and Wuxi, a man charged into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school in the city of Changde, injuring 30 of them.
Authorities said the man, Huang Wen, wanted to vent his anger after facing investment losses and family conflicts.
Huang was suspended death sentence last month, that sentence could be commuted to life in prison if he does not commit another crime in the next two years.
Analysts earlier told the BBC that the series of massacres raised questions about how the Chinese coped with various sources of stress, such as the country’s weak economy.
Some of them point out that avenues for expressing frustrations have also narrowed, or even been completely closed off, over the years, making it difficult for people to find ways to manage their emotions.
Taken together, these factors suggest that the lid is tightening on Chinese society, creating a pressure cooker-like situation.
“Tensions do appear to be increasing, and it doesn’t look like they will ease in the near future,” says George Magnus, an economist at the China Center at the University of Oxford.
