Another Knife Attack at a China Kindergarten
Scene From a School Attack Earlier This Year
Not 30 minutes ago I wrote a quick post about how I wasn’t going to blog today, and yet here I am. After trying to catch up on some of my reading before exhaustion sets in for the night, I saw the news on the latest school attack. I really hoped we were done with these things.
Anyway, no inspired or interesting analysis from me tonight; I’ll just pass along a few links. Maybe in a couple of days once the details of this particular incident come out, there will be something useful to discuss.
Here’s the basic story:
Three children and at least one teacher were reported on Wednesday to have died in a Tuesday afternoon knife attack at a kindergarten in eastern China, the sixth in a string of school assaults this year that has stunned the nation and sent government officials scrambling to suppress public outrage.
The latest attack, in the city of Zibo in Shandong Province, also was reported to have injured 11 other people, including two seriously wounded children, according to accounts of the attack on Chinese Web sites. Police officers were said to be uncertain of the number of attackers, but one, described as a 27-year-old man, was reported to have turned himself in.
Details of the incident were sparse and sometimes conflicting. But postings on one blog stated that the kindergarten, said to be in one of Zibo’s most affluent communities, was limited to the children of local government officials.
As you can see from that final paragraph, this certainly seems to fit the “pattern” of other school attacks. Very troubling stuff.
The above excerpt is from a New York Times piece. The Google machine has more, but for quick reference, here are articles from Forbes, Bloomberg, The Telegraph, and the Associated Press.
wow this is worse than the gun killings in US!
Let me take this opportunity to say, once again, that I am SO HAPPY China has strict gun control. Can you imagine if China adopted the gun laws of, say, the US State of Virginia (e.g. limits include how many guns per month one can purchase)?
This really saddens and infuriates me at the same time. Through out all the school killings, the inadequacies of psychiatric support and treatment almost never surfaced. This BBC report is one of the few I came across and it barely scratched the surface of the problem factually http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/china/2010/05/100529_china_mental.shtml. This problem is not solely limited to the PRC but is endemic of the Chinese culture. Just last month in Hong Kong, a straight A student lost it and butchered his mother and sister at home for the reason that “the world is a bad place, there are too many people, the people are turning the world into a bad place ….”
The truth is that Chinese Culture does not recognize and acknowledge the need for mental health facilities and psychiatry and psychology are marginalized professions. Instead, people would rather brush individuals who need help in this area under the rug, and if something bad happens, well it’s just one of those things in life like someone being run over in a traffic accident.
I suppose the situation is complicated in China, since the mental health profession is even more marginalized since Chinese forensic psychiatrists have nonetheless been portrayed as playing a critical and malevolent role in their government’s persecution of political dissidents. The most damning allegations describe them as engaged in systematic political abuse of dissidents from the time of Mao’s regime. What is a shame is that even in Hong Kong, the treatment of mental illness is severely insufficient. And the government is not entirely to blame. The Chinese culture is such that even setting up day care centers for mild and non violent cases are met with absolute resistance from local neighborhood.
So, like freak accidents, tragedy like this will persist in Chinese communities until the culture is such we all wake up and accept that there are ailments beyond the physiological that are real and require enlightened attention for the necessary treatment, care and recuperation to take place.
To be fair to the press, I seem to recall that the in-depth stories on the school attacks focused on motivating factors. Although most of them dealt with income inequality more than anything else, several that I read discussed mental health and inadequate facilities/treatment.
I’m with you, though. Huge problem that still doesn’t get enough attention.
Some of my Chinese relatives (by marriage) and friends assert that mental illness and the need for counseling or, heaven-forbid, actual psychiatric care, is a product of the overwrought, spoiled, self-indulgent and weak American psyche. Rather than looking upon mental health care as similar to physical health care, i.e. if they were bleeding and in pain, they’d get help, the shame and stigma of admitting to needing emotional/mental assistance in order to live a better, happier life is just too great. It’s not surprising that this is also the national view…leading to a lack of services and very probably a reluctance to use the services that might exist.
I think that was the predominant view in places like the US until about 30 years ago, right? In other words, suck it up and act like a man (or woman, as the case may be). Until the aftermath of the Vietnam War, that’s the way they used to treat “shell shock.”