China’s online ultranationalists feel the heat over Japanese school bus attack comments
- Chinese social media has seen a wave of extreme nationalism directed at Japan in recent years amid rising bilateral tensions
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Hu Youping, 54, was stabbed multiple times while trying to restrain an attacker at a school bus stop in China’s eastern city of Suzhou on Monday. She died in hospital two days later.
The attacker first targeted a Japanese mother and her child waiting at the stop and then tried to get on the bus, which was carrying Japanese schoolchildren. Hu immediately rushed to help and her courageous act “prevented more people from being hurt”, Suzhou police said.
Hu’s bravery was hailed by most of the public. The Japanese embassy in Beijing lowered its flag to half-mast on Friday morning in honour of Hu, and posted condolence messages on social media sites X and Weibo.
But other online posts still sought to defame Hu and stir up anti-Japanese sentiment.
Tech giant NetEase, which runs online gaming, social media and email services, said that some users had recently been exaggerating or even fabricating the truth, posting “inappropriate comments to incite nationalist sentiment”.
Some posts urged Chinese to “go against the Japanese and eliminate traitors” while calling to establish a “modern-day Yihetuan”, it said in a statement on Saturday night.
NetEase said other users spread rumours that Hu had been a “Japanese spy”, and there were also extreme nationalist comments saying “Japan should sink and their ethnicity needs to be wiped out”.
The statement said NetEase had launched an investigation, deleted offensive comments and banned accounts that promoted hatred and extremism. It also called on the public to report any harmful information.
“We strive to provide a secure and healthy internet space for users,” NetEase said. “We also call on users to obey platform rules and discipline themselves.”
The same day, Tencent – China’s No 1 internet company – also said it had deleted more than 800 posts and suspended 61 accounts for inciting “anti-Japanese sentiment and extreme nationalism”.
The company, owner of hugely popular social media platforms WeChat and QQ, also called for public tip-offs on users posting objectionable content.
Online cultural and entertainment forum Douban said it had deleted 104 comments, and asked users to “stay objective and reasonable” and comment “in a friendly way”.
Similar statements were issued by Sina Weibo, Douyin – the Chinese version of TikTok, and Phoenix New Media’s news portal Ifeng.com.
The measures were in line with the response from Beijing. In a commentary on Friday evening, Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily said that “Chinese people have the same standards on right and wrong”.
“We are against any form of violent crimes, regardless of whether they are against Chinese or foreigners,” it said.
“We also do not accept it when a few individuals incite ‘hatred against foreigners’. These are unacceptable by Chinese mainstream society and Chinese people.”
Web users also applauded the measures. “It’s very courageous of NetEase to issue such a statement,” ran one post on Weibo.
Another said: “In the past few years, the extreme comments and these crazy people have been hurting our own people more than the foreigners that they hate.”
Since Monday’s attack, many members of the public have visited the bus stop and brought flowers to pay tribute to Hu. Others have offered to donate to her family.
The family has thanked the public for their kindness but turned down the donation offers, suggesting that people donate instead to charity foundations for courageous acts.
Suzhou, a hi-tech manufacturing hub, is home to the local operations of many Japanese firms and has a sizeable Japanese population.
Monday’s attack was the second knife crime in two weeks in which foreigners had been wounded in public in China.
