A year of mass attacks reveals anger and frustration

“The Chinese people are so unhappy,” read a social media post after another mass killing in the country earlier this year. The same user also warned: “There will only be more and more copycat attacks.”

“This tragedy reflects the darkness in society,” wrote another.

Such grim assessments, following a series of deadly incidents in China in 2024, have led to questions about what drives people to mass-murder strangers “revenge on society”.

Attacks like this are still rare given China's huge population and are not new, said David Schack, an associate professor at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to come in waves, often as imitation attempts to get attention.

This year was particularly difficult.

From 2019 until 2023 police recorded three to five cases each year where perpetrators attacked pedestrians or strangers.

In 2024 that number jumped to 19.

In 2019 three people were killed and 28 injured in similar incidents; in 2023 16 killed and 40 injured, and in 2024 63 killed and 166 wounded. November was particularly bloody.

On the 11th of the same month, a 62-year-old man rammed a car into people exercising outside a stadium in Zhuhai city, killing at least 35. Police said the driver was unhappy about his divorce. He was sentenced to death this week.

Days later, in the town of Chande, a man plowed into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 of them. Authorities said he was angry over financial losses and family problems.

That same week, a 21-year-old who failed to graduate after failing exams went on a knife rampage at his campus in the city of Wuxi, killing eight and injuring 17.

In September, a 37-year-old man raced through a shopping mall in Shanghai, stabbing people as he went. In June, four American instructors were attacked in a park by a 55-year-old man with a knife. And there were two separate attacks on Japanese citizens, including one in which a 10-year-old boy was stabbed to death outside his school.

Perpetrators largely targeted “random people” to show their “dissatisfaction with society”, says Prof. Shak.

In a country with vast surveillance capabilities, where women rarely hesitate to walk alone at night, these killings have caused understandable concern.

So what has caused so many mass attacks in China this year?

A major source of pressure in China right now is the sluggish economy. It's no secret that the country is struggling with high youth unemployment, massive debt and a real estate crisis that has swallowed up the savings of many families, sometimes with nothing to show for it.

On the outskirts of most major cities, there are entire housing estates where construction has stopped because debt-ridden developers can't afford to finish them. In 2022 The BBC interviews people camping out in the concrete shells of their own unfinished apartmentswithout running water, electricity and windows because there was nowhere else for them to stay.

“The optimism has definitely faded,” said George Magnus, a research fellow at Oxford University's China Centre. “Let's use the word trapped, just for now. I think China is trapped in a kind of cycle of repression. Social repression and economic repression on the one hand, and a kind of fluctuating pattern of economic development on the other.”

Surveys appear to indicate a significant shift in attitudes, with a measurable increase in pessimism among Chinese about their personal prospects. A major joint analysis between the US and China, which for years has noted that inequality in society can often be attributed to a lack of effort or ability, found in its latest study that people are now blaming an “unfair economic system”.

“The question is, who do people really blame?” asks Mr. Magnus. “And the next step from that is that the system is unfair to me and I can't break through. I can't change my circumstances.'

In countries with a healthy media, if you believe you have been fired from a job unfairly or your home has been destroyed by corrupt builders backed by local officials, you can turn to journalists to get your story heard. But that's rarely an option in China, where the press is controlled by the Communist Party and is unlikely to publish stories that reflect badly on any level of government.

Then there are the courts – also run by and for the party – which are slow and inefficient. Much has been made on social media here of the alleged motive of the Zhuhai attacker: that he did not reach what he believed to be a fair divorce settlement in court.

Experts say other outlets for venting frustration have also been narrowed or closed off altogether.

Chinese often voice their grievances online, says Lynette Ong, a political science professor at the University of Toronto who has conducted significant research on how the Chinese state responds to the pushback from its own people.

“(They) will go on the internet and lash out at the government … just to vent their anger. Or they can organize a small protest, which the police would often allow if it's small,” she explains. “But that kind of dissent, little dissent, has been shut down in the last few years.”

There are many examples of this: Increased Internet censorship that blocks words or expressions deemed controversial or critical; a crackdown on cheeky Halloween costumes that poke fun at officialdom; or when plainclothes men who appear to have been mobilized by local officials, beat up protesters in Henan province foreign banks that have frozen their accounts.

When it comes to dealing with people's mental and emotional responses to these stresses, this has also proven insufficient. Experts say counseling services in China are woefully inadequate and leave no way out for those who feel isolated, alone and depressed in modern Chinese society.

“Counseling can help build emotional resilience,” said Professor Sylvia Kwok of the City University of Hong Kong, adding that China needs to increase its mental health services, especially for at-risk groups who have experienced trauma or people with mental illness.

“People have to find different strategies or constructive ways to deal with their emotions … making them less likely to react violently in times of intense emotional stress.”

Taken together, these factors suggest that the lid is tightening on Chinese society, creating a pressure cooker-like situation.

“There aren't many people who are mass murderers. But even so, the tension seems to be building and it doesn't look like there's any way it's going to ease in the near future,” says Mr Magnus.

What should worry the Communist Party is the general public's comment blaming the rulers for this.

Take, for example, this remark: “If the government really acted honestly and fairly, there wouldn't be so much anger and discontent in Chinese society… the government's efforts are focused on creating a superficial sense of harmony. While they may appear to care about the disadvantaged, their actions have instead caused the greatest injustices.”

Although violent attacks are on the rise in many countries, according to Professor Ong, the difference in China is that officials do not have much experience in dealing with them.

“I think the authorities are very worried because they haven't seen it before and their instinct is to take action.”

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke about the attack in Zhuhai, he seemed to acknowledge that public pressure was building. He called on authorities across the country to “learn hard lessons from the incident, address risks at their roots, resolve conflicts and disputes at an early stage and take proactive measures to prevent extreme crimes.”

But lessons learned so far appear to have led to a push for faster police response times, using greater surveillance, rather than considering changes to the way China is governed.

“China is entering a new phase, a new phase that we haven't seen since the late 1970s,” says Prof. Ong, referring to the time when the country began to open up to the world again, unleashing a huge change.

“We need to prepare for unexpected events, such as very random attacks and emerging outbreaks of protest and social instability.”