China’s second mass attack in a week spurs soul-searching

WUXI, China: A former student went on a stabbing rampage at a vocational college in eastern China, killing eight people and injuring 17, police said on Sunday, prompting further soul-searching just days after the deadliest attack in the country in a decade.

Saturday’s knife attack took place at the Wuxi Vocational College of Arts and Technology in Yixing, part of Wuxi city in the eastern province of Jiangsu. The suspect, a 21-year-old man, was arrested at the scene and confessed, police said.

Also on Saturday, authorities in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai said they had charged a 62-year-old man who they said rammed his car into a crowd outside a sports stadium, killing 35 people and injuring 43 on Monday night.

In both cases, the suspects lashed out with fatal violence against unrelated bystanders after suffering an economic loss, according to the sparse details released by police.

The killings touched off a rare and heavily censored online discussion over mental health in China, deeper stresses as the world’s second-largest economy slows and whether young people will find themselves worse off than generations before them that benefited from China’s rapid development.