Boy Stabbed to Death in China as Anti-Japan Sentiment Soars

A 10-year-old Japanese boy who was stabbed on his way to school in southern China died Thursday, after the second such attack in months amid a social-media campaign that has stirred up anti-Japan sentiment in the country.
The stabbing took place Wednesday morning on the anniversary of Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria, a time when rhetoric maligning Japan tends to resurface.

The Japanese Embassy in Beijing warned citizens by email to be cautious when going out.
Anti-Japan sentiment thrives in certain parts of Chinese society, amid sustained tensions between China and Japan, two major economies and trading partners.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called Wednesday’s attack a despicable crime. “We will strongly call on the Chinese side to protect the safety of Japanese people and prevent a recurrence,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry described the stabbing in Shenzhen as an isolated incident that it believed was unlikely to disrupt the bilateral relationship. Authorities said the attacker was a 44-year-old man, but didn’t offer a motive.
Across China, anti-Japan sentiment has ebbed and flowed in recent decades. Rancor has led at times to mass protests—including in 2012 when crowds across China ransacked Japanese shops and smashed Japanese cars—but physical attacks have been rare.
In June, a Chinese man with a knife attacked a Japanese woman and her young child, injuring both, at a school-bus stop in Suzhou, a city in eastern China with a large Japanese population. The bus attendant, a Chinese woman, stepped out and fought the man, and was killed.
About 102,000 Japanese people were living in mainland China as of 2023, and there are 11 full-time Japanese schools in the country, according to Japan.
Japanese schools in China emerged as a target of anti-Japan sentiment last year, after Beijing accused Tokyo of treating the Pacific as a sewer by releasing water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea. The releases were approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which noted that the radioactive content was similar to or less than what other countries with nuclear power plants discharge.
When rocks and eggs were thrown at Japanese schools in two Chinese cities, Beijing said that China would protect the interests of foreigners in the country—but said Japan’s actions at the nuclear plant had led to the incidents.
Days before Wednesday’s attack in Shenzhen, a video surfaced on Tencent’s WeChat platform showing the city’s Japanese school and calling on the local police to “expel” it from China.
A similar script can be found in many clips on Chinese video-streaming sites, suggesting that Japanese schools in China breed spies and often calling the schools “the new colonies,” a description intended to evoke Japan’s occupation of China in the years following the 1931 invasion.
Videos on the theme showing Japanese schools in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere in China draw zealous comments demanding the sites to be shut down.
Chinese authorities also called the June attack an isolated incident, and subsequently revealed few findings from the investigation, saying the attacker was a 52-year-old unemployed man who wasn’t from Suzhou.