Multiple children injured after car crashes at school in China; driver arrested

BEIJING - A 39-year-old male driver of a vehicle that ploughed into pupils in Changde, a city in southern China, has been arrested, according to local police.

Multiple children were injured in the incident outside a primary school on the morning of Nov 19, the Global Times said in a tweet.

Those hurt in the incident have been taken to hospitals, and none of the injuries is life-threatening, the local police said, without providing details. The investigation into the incident is ongoing.

China has witnessed a spate of deadly incidents in recent months – from mass stabbings to car rammings – in a rare development for a country with a proud reputation for public security.

The issue has prompted soul-searching about the state of society, with some despairing about why a rising number of individuals seem willing to “take revenge” on random civilians.

State broadcaster CCTV reported that “many schoolchildren were injured” in the Nov 19 incident, but said the “specific casualties” were still being investigated. State media did not say if the crash was deliberate.

Video circulating on Chinese social media that matched images of the school appeared to show the aftermath of the crash, with dozens of children running in panic away from the site of the crash.

One clip shows a compact, white sports utility vehicle stopped beyond the school entrance. At least five people, including a pupil with a backpack, were lying on the path taken by the vehicle on the narrow street in front of the school, the videos show.

Someone can be heard shouting, “Call the police” as a man is surrounded by a crowd and apparently beaten with sticks and rods.

A separate clip shows a man handcuffed and being held down on wet cement by a figure in uniform. A woman’s voice says the person drove to the school by himself and crashed there.

Many initial videos of the incident already appeared to have been removed from China’s tightly controlled social media platforms.

The crash took place outside Yong’an primary school in the central city of Changde, home to more than five million people. It quickly became one of the most discussed social media topics, racking up over 95 million views on the Weibo platform by 11.10am.

Many users despaired at the occurrence of another grisly incident involving children. “How can something like this be happening yet again?” wrote one user.

“There have been so many people taking their revenge on society recently,” lamented another.

A third commented: “These kinds of things have a copycat effect. It just takes one big event for others to learn from.”

China’s top prosecutors met on Nov 19 to discuss sentencing for “major vicious and extreme crimes”, as well as those that endanger public security, a statement from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate said on its official Weibo social media account.

“The hand of ‘strictness’ can never be loosened,” said procurator-general Ying Yong in the post, which was among the top five trending topics on the social media platform. “We must be resolute and determined and punish crimes severely and quickly in accordance with the law to provide a strong deterrent.”

China has seen a string of mass casualty incidents in 2024, which some analysts have linked to growing anger and desperation at the country’s slowing economy and sense that society is becoming more stratified.

The crash on Nov 19 was the third seemingly random outbreak of violence in just over a week.

On Nov 11,

a man killed 35 people and wounded more than 40 more

when he rammed his car into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai – the country’s deadliest attack in a decade.

But the authorities took almost 24 hours to release that toll, and videos of the attack later appeared to be scrubbed from social media. Police said the suspect, surnamed Fan, had been “triggered by dissatisfaction with the division of property following his divorce”.

On Nov 16,

eight people were killed and 17 others wounded

in a knife attack at a vocational school in Yixing in eastern China. Police said the suspect was a 21-year-old former student who was meant to graduate in 2024, but failed his exams.

In October, in Shanghai, a man killed three people and wounded 15 others in a knife attack at a supermarket.

China’s official crime statistics show rates of violent crime much lower than the global average.

But Fudan University professor Qu Weiguo said the recent cases of “indiscriminate revenge against society” in China had some common features: Disadvantaged suspects, many with mental health issues, who believed that they had been treated unfairly and who felt they had no other way to be heard.

“It is important to establish a social safety net and a psychological counselling mechanism, but in order to minimise such cases, the most effective way is to open public channels that can monitor and expose the use of power,” the academic posted on Weibo. The short essay was removed by censors in the afternoon of Nov 17.

Trending online discussion topics over the past year have put a focus on diminished optimism in China for a turnaround in jobs, income and opportunity. One of those, “the garbage time of history”, took off in the summer as a shorthand for economic despair.

In recent weeks, Chinese officials have rolled out a raft of stimulus measures to revive the economy. Last week’s car attack also prompted an intervention by President Xi Jinping, who urged local police to “strengthen their control of risks” by identifying people at risk of lashing out.

Security has been tightened this week at major street crossings in Beijing, with additional barriers and police officers deployed to key locations.

Mr Xi had visited Changde, a transit hub and city with more than five million people, in March, in one of his regular inspection trips around the country. AFP, REUTERS