China’s own school attack prompts soul-searching

A woman holds a mobile phone for her niece to chat with her mother after the girl was injured during a knife attack, at a hospital of Guangshan county, Henan province.

Reuters/Beijing 

As the US debates its gun laws after the Newtown school massacre, China is doing its own political soul-searching after a shocking knife attack on a Chinese elementary school.

On the same day as the Newtown shooting, a crazed man broke into a school building in central China, stabbing and slashing 23 pupils in an attack that, although not fatal, lit up the Internet - but barely registered with official state media. Instead, media gave top coverage to the US shooting and barely mentioned the Henan school attack, a decision that has drawn sharp criticism of the ruling Communist Party’s readiness to reflect on the ills of US society but not on China’s own.

“On the same day as the US shooting, 22 children were slashed at the school in Henan, but mainstream media were virtually mute on this. Are the lives of Chinese children worthless to them?” a microblog user wrote in one of many such posts.

According to China Digital Times, a website following social and political developments in China and run by the University of California, the government’s central propaganda department ordered all official media to downplay the Henan attack. The Internet criticism of official media coverage follows the installation last month of a new Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping, who has signaled a more open style of leadership and told the media not to shy away from focusing on genuine news. However, last week’s Henan attack has been largely missing from Chinese newspaper and TV reports.