The reaction of Chinese social media users to a spate of recent violent attacks has exposed widespread discontent about the nation’s downturn, as economic pressures mount.
Shanghai police reported a stabbing Wednesday morning in one of the city’s metro stations, which — like other subway lines in major Chinese cities — has security checks at its entrances. The suspect was detained after injuring three people and the case is under investigation, police said in a statement.
In a country where violence is relatively rare, the incident became a top trending item on social media platform Weibo, garnering some 164 million reads with users speculating on the attacker’s motive. Some suggested the culprit was a stocks investor, a group battered during China’s $7 trillion market meltdown earlier this year.
“The pressure of this economic environment is cascading down to everyone, who may be pushed to the brink by a slight change in circumstances,” one user wrote. “Don’t provoke or bully others; you don’t know where their limits of outbursts are. Don’t let yourself become a victim of the economic climate.”
Another user posted: “When the economy is bad, social problems grow, people are becoming more aggressive.” […] Protests over the economy, especially the housing crash, have become more frequent and made up 80% of publicly recorded dissent last year, according to Freedom House’s China Dissent Monitor. Almost a third of office workers saw their salaries fall in that period, according to recruitment platform Zhaopin. […] The Jiangxi attack was viewed more than 390,000 times on Weibo, with one user asking for tougher penalties as “the economy slows down, life becomes more torturing, and crazy people become more frequent.”