“The Chinese people are so miserable,” read a social media post in the wake of yet 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 within society,” wrote another.

Such bleak assessments, following a spate of deadly incidents in China during 2024, have led to questions about what is driving people to murder strangers en masse to “take revenge on society”.

Attacks like this are still rare given China’s huge population, and are not new, says David Schak, associate professor at Griffith University in Australia. But they seem to come in waves, often as copycat attempts at garnering attention.

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

In 2024, that number jumped to 19.

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In 2019, three people were killed and 28 injured in such incidents; in 2023, 16 dead and 40 injured and in 2024, 63 people killed and 166 injured. November was especially bloody.

On the 11th of that month, a 62-year-old man ploughed a car into people exercising outside a stadium in the city of Zhuhai, killing at least 35. Police said that the driver had been unhappy with his divorce settlement.

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Days later, in Changde city, a man drove into a crowd of children and parents outside a primary school, injuring 30 of them. The authorities said he was angry over financial losses and family problems.

That same week, a 21-year-old who couldn’t graduate after failing his exams, went on a stabbing rampage on his campus in Wuxi city, killing eight and injuring 17.

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China’s slowing economy

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

Studies appear to point to a significant change in attitudes, with a measurable increase in pessimism among Chinese people about their personal prospects. [While in the past] inequality in society could often be attributed to a lack of effort or ability, […] people were now blaming an “unfair economic system”.

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A lack of options

In countries with a healthy media, if you felt you had been fired from your job unfairly or that your home had been demolished by corrupt builders backed by local officials, you might turn to journalists for your story to be heard. But that is rarely an option in China, where the press is controlled by the Communist Party and unlikely to run stories which reflect badly on any level of the government.

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