Man enraged about his divorce kills 35 people in China in car ramming massacre.

 

A makeshift memorial at the sight of the crime. AP.

A man upset about his divorce killed 35 people in a car ramming attack in China. AP. The 62 year old man was receiving treatment for self inflicted wounds. The man had driven a car into a crowd outside of a PLA military aviation exhibition at a sports complex in Zhuhai. Dozens of people were wounded in the attack. News about the attack is being censored on Chinese internet but is widely available on X, formally Twitter. The attack happened yesterday but only today has China released casualty figures. China has a long history of mass violence, though those have mostly been mass stabbings, not car attacks. No motive has been released other than police saying the man was upset that he was losing money in his divorce. 

My Comment:

This is another example of how mass violence is not strictly an American problem. China does indeed have a long history of mass violence, though in most cases it's mass stabbings instead of car ramming attacks. China has the strictest gun control in the world but when someone is angry enough that they want to kill a bunch of innocent people, they will find a way. And this is just another example of this.

Indeed, car ramming attacks have become more common. Unfortunately, ISIS showed the world just how effective these attacks could be, with the Nice attack being the most relevant but hardly only example. In a country where even knives are hard to get, it's easy for someone to hop in a car and run down a crowd. 

Censorship is a concern here as well. China is notorious for censoring what their citizens can access in terms of news. This story has largely been erased from Chinese internet and they have gone so far as to rough up a BBC reporter for covering the story. It's sad just how censored the Chinese media environment is. 

To be fair, I have said that we should probably give less coverage to mass killings like this because I have always been convinced that doing so tends to inspire copy cat attacks. You can see that pattern here in the United States. School shooters used to use shotguns and High Point Carbines because that is what the Columbine shooters did but then it switched to handguns and then AR rifles. Following trends is a think even in mass violence and there is an argument that advertising to the world how easy it can be to kill a large group of people is a bad thing. It's one of the reason why I think we rarely hear about the Las Vegas attacks, folks doing the same thing could have even more deadly results... 

Still, there is a difference between downplaying an issue to try and prevent the spread and ignoring it to the point where you rough up journalists that try to cover it. China is in the wrong here, folks do deserve to know if  there is a major attack like this. There has to be freedom of speech. 

As for the motive of the attack, this seems to be pure nihilism. The attacker was upset over a divorce, and for that 35 people had to die (at least, I don't trust the numbers from China). I can understand being upset about a divorce ruining your life, but the solution isn't to kill a bunch of people that had nothing to do with it. China has the death penalty so I am guessing this guy won't be long for the earth and to be honest, if anyone deserves it, it's someone that kills people, not for some greater cause, but just because he's angry about a divorce...