'Revenge on society': SUV ploughs into students at China school

An SUV ploughed into a crowd outside a primary school in China’s southern Hunan province, sparking concerns that it could be the latest incident related to the “revenge on society” phenomenon.

BBC reported state media saying “several students and adults were injured” and several people were hospitalised.

The driver of the white SUV has been apprehended.

“About a dozen people were hit, some of them seriously, but luckily the ambulance came very quickly,” Mr Zhu, a parent of one of the children at the school, said to the BBC.

“Six or seven parents forced the car of the person who hit others to stop. Even the security guard was knocked down. The guard is quite old, in his 70s or 80s, and couldn’t do much,” he said.

According to the BBC, a video posted on a private WeChat account showed some children lying on the ground while others were seen fleeing.

On Saturday (Nov 16), a knife attack at a vocational school in eastern China claimed the lives of eight people. Seventeen others were injured.

Police said the suspect was a 21-year-old former student at the school who was supposed to graduate this year but failed the exam.

On Nov 12, 35 people died when a man rammed his car into a group of people exercising in Southern China.

And in October, in Shanghai, a man killed three people and wounded 15 others in a stabbing at a supermarket.

These incidents have led to widespread speculation about the phenomenon of “taking revenge on society” where individuals vent their grievances on strangers.

“These are symptoms of a society with a lot of pent-up grievances,” Lynette Ong, distinguished professor of Chinese politics at Canada’s University of Toronto, told AFP.

“Some people resort to giving up. Others, if they’re angry, want to take revenge,” she added, citing a sluggish economy, high youth unemployment, and a property crisis.

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