A Chinese court sentenced a man to death on Friday for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy in Shenzhen last September, Japan's government said, a day after another court handed down the same penalty in a separate knife attack involving Japanese citizens.
At the first hearing on the case, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court convicted the Chinese man of killing the boy in the Sept. 18 knife attack near a Japanese school in the southern city, Japanese Ambassador to China Kenji Kanasugi told reporters.
Zhong Changchun, 45, from Jiangxi Province, attacked the boy -- the son of a Japanese father and a Chinese mother -- after buying a knife to "draw online attention" through the assault, the envoy quoted the ruling as saying.
The accused told the hearing that he hoped to speak with the victim's family as well as the Japanese Embassy in China, but he did not say he had particularly targeted Japanese nationals, Kanasugi said.
Although the ruling made no mention of Japan, the ambassador vowed to keep taking measures to ensure the safety of Japanese citizens in China, such as recommending them not to speak Japanese loudly, while remaining cautious on politically "sensitive" anniversaries.
The hearing at the Shenzhen court was closed to the media. The boy's family as well as Yoshiko Kijima, Japan's consul general in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, which also includes Shenzhen, attended the session.
The boy died a day after being stabbed while on his way to school.
The stabbing occurred on the 93rd anniversary of the Japanese bombing of a railroad track near Shenyang, which marked the start of the Manchurian Incident that led to Japan's invasion of northeastern China.
The incident sent shockwaves toward Japanese expat communities in China. Tokyo has repeatedly asked Beijing to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals living in the country.
About a dozen pupils at the Shenzhen Japanese school returned to Japan following the stabbing, according to a source familiar with the educational institution.
The Shenzhen ruling was handed down a day after a court sentenced a man to death over a knife attack near Shanghai last June that injured a Japanese mother and her child and killed a Chinese bus attendant who tried to protect them.
While there had been speculation that the assailant Zhou Jiasheng, 52, might have targeted Japanese nationals, the court in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, made no mention of Japan in rendering the ruling.
© KYODO
22 Comments
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WA4TKG
Well, there you have your motivation, in black and white.
Care to guess who brought that tidbit of information up to the public?
Fighto!
Good. Justice has been served.
Rest in Peace to the poor young boy. His family have no doubt had their lives destroyed by this evil act.
Samit Basu
No Xi pardon for being a patriotic Chinese?
quercetum
Would be just the same if the boy were not half Japanese half Chinese.
Kill and be killed.
BakaFugu
As always if these psychos wanted to rack up a body count, they should have to start with themselves.
sakurasuki
What happened to people that being convicted in stabbing spree in Japan?
China doing better way in protecting people.
quercetum
The Akihabara killing spree of 2008? He was sentenced to death in 2021 and executed in 2022.
Long live the death sentence!
Tokyo Guy
Not down with everything China does, but for crimes like this I wouldn't say they were wrong.
Eat the left
That's your state-sanctioned killing for the day. Have a great weekend.
stormcrow
Before the execution takes place, there needs to be a thorough investigation of the killer’s motive.
Was it really just a random attack, or did government propaganda of the CCP influence the murderer to target Japanese in a hate crime?
Hercolobus
Violeta begets violence.
WoodyLee
And this is how you handle it, FOLKS.
Sometimes taking someone else's life is NOT a joking matter as many Psychos seem to think.
WoodyLee
This is how the Chinse justice system has managed to keep the Psychopaths under control and it works.
Agent_Neo
In Japan, they would take the time to thoroughly investigate the motive, as they did in the Aum Shinrikyo subway sarin gas attack, but in China, which is not a country governed by laws, this is the best they can do.
It's the same as burying a railway line before finding the cause of an accident.
As with other crimes, they sent the culprit underground and put a lid on it forever.
TokyoLiving
Excellent..
As it should be..
Well done China..
GuruMick
Quercetum above....not so silly.
People with mental illnesses like Paranoid Schizophrenia SOMETIMES believe say, the TV is talking to them directly and implicitly telling them to take some action.
I have zero info. on this particular case but have a background in Psychiatry ....not as a patient, but a nurse, and it is common that affected people hear voices or commands .
Tony W.
China's sentence on this deranged killer is just. A psychiatric investigation into why he did it, while possibly professionally interesting, should not have a bearing on the nature of the sentence: this would be unfair on the victim's relatives, and possibly lead other mentally disturbed to not hesitate to commit similar crimes.
Five Families
Justice means giving each person what he or she deserves. A word taken for granted in times we live in.
In this case. Served. RIP to the little boy who lost his life. A parent should never have to lay to rest a child.
Speed
Congratulations. You've drawn online attention. Now you'll die for it.
This advice is basically telling them to hide that they're Japanese. The result of brainwashing the Chinese populace, most who've had nothing to do with WWII, to hate and blame the current Japanese for atrocities committed 80+ years ago.
Brian Wheway
I wonder how long he will be on death row? Weeks, years?
WA4TKG
If they wanted REAL Justice, they’d let affected families take care of the punishment
Nguyen Huu Minh
The CCP should be made accountable for these crimes because it has been promoting anti-Japanese sentiment in education, media, social apps, propaganda outlets to such a point Chinese people seen Japanese people as enemies that got to be get rid of off China. The man is a victim of the regime. The poor Japanese boy is the victim of the CCP.