China has put to death a man who was found guilty of committing a fatal knife attack close to a school bus stop in Suzhou, killing a Chinese woman and wounding two Japanese nationals, authorities confirmed on Wednesday.
Zhou Jiasheng, aged 52, received a death sentence in January 2025 for the June 24, 2024, attack. Heavily indebted and mentally disturbed, Zhou attacked a Japanese mother and son waiting for their school bus close to the Japanese School of Suzhou in Jiangsu province. Though the mother and child suffered slight injuries, Hu Youping, a 54-year-old Chinese bus attendant who tried to intervene during the attack, subsequently died from injuries sustained.
Zhou admitted he did it in a desperate moment when he “did not want to live anymore.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry told the Japanese Embassy in Beijing that they executed Zhou, but that’s all.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa referred to the assault as “totally unforgivable” and reiterated Japan’s resolve to protecting its citizens in China. “We will continue to strongly urge China to ensure the safety of Japanese citizens,” he stated.
The Suzhou incident was one of two knife attacks on Japanese nationals in China in 2024. In another case, a Japanese student was fatally stabbed near his school in Shenzhen. That case is still under trial.
The attacks have raised concerns about rising anti-Japanese sentiment in China. While Beijing has classified them as isolated incidents, companies such as Tencent and NetEase pledged to curb online hate speech.
The Suzhou case has also highlighted a wider increase in violent “revenge-on-society” offenses throughout China. In January, the government executed two men for their roles in independent mass killings in Zhuhai and Wuxi.
