10-year-old student at a Japanese school in China dies after knife attack

TOKYO – A 10-year-old student at a Japanese school in China died Thursday after being stabbed on his way to school the previous day, Japanese officials said, urging Beijing to do more to protect Japanese citizens in the country.

“I consider this to be an extremely despicable crime and a serious and grave matter,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters.

Kishida said he would refrain from “any prejudgment” about how the knife attack might affect relations between China and Japan, a U.S. ally with which Washington is strengthening its ties.

“Instead, I would like to urge the Chinese side to provide all the facts about this case,” he said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that Beijing was “deeply saddened and shocked by this tragic event.”

“We express our condolences for the boy's death and our sympathy to his family,” spokesman Lin Jian said at a press conference in Beijing, adding that the case was still under investigation.

Lin said the boy is a Japanese national whose parents are Japanese and Chinese citizens. He said the ministry does not believe this isolated case would affect Sino-Japanese relations.

“Effective measures will continue to be taken to ensure the safety of foreigners in China, including those from Japan,” he said.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the student was stabbed on Wednesday about 200 meters from the Shenzhen Japanese School in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Lin said on Wednesday that the injured student was immediately taken to hospital and a suspect was arrested at the scene. The motive for the attack was unclear.

The stabbing attack occurred on the anniversary of the Mukden Incident of 1931, when Japanese troops carried out an attack on a railway line near the northern Chinese city of present-day Shenyang, using it as a pretext for invading and subsequently occupying the region known as Manchuria.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said on Thursday the ministry had advised Japanese schools and other institutions to strengthen their security measures after a Japanese woman and her child were injured in a knife attack at a bus stop of a Japanese school in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou in June. A Chinese national who tried to stop the attacker was killed.

Given the sensitivity of the date, Kamikawa said Tokyo had also asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry to do everything in its power to ensure the safety of Japanese schools on the Mukden anniversary.

“It is with deep regret that this incident occurred on such a date,” she said.

Kamikawa said the Japanese embassy in Beijing and the Japanese consulate in Guangzhou responsible for Shenzhen had asked the Chinese side for an explanation and demanded that “all possible measures” be taken to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals.

The flags of Japanese diplomatic missions in mainland China and Hong Kong were lowered on Thursday.

China and Japan are important trading partners, but memories of the Japanese military occupation before and during World War II remain strong among the Chinese public, and anti-Japanese sentiment fomented by the Chinese authorities sometimes results in protests and boycotts.

Relations have also been strained by increased Chinese military activity in the Asia-Pacific region, including in Japan. Last month, Japan said a Chinese military aircraft had violated its airspace in an unprecedented incursion. Tokyo also said a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered Japan's adjacent waters for the first time on Wednesday, the same day as the knife attack.

Although gun violence is rare in China, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, the country has seen a number of knife attacks. In June, a knife attack in a public park in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin injured four U.S. university lecturers, none of whom suffered life-threatening injuries.

Although nationalist and anti-Japanese comments often predominate on Chinese social media, there has also been a wave of sympathy for the student online.

“Heartbroken,” wrote one user on Weibo. “I hope for a world without extremists and for friendship between China and Japan.”

Arata Yamamoto reported from Tokyo, Mithil Aggarwal from Hong Kong and Rae Wang from Beijing.