10-year-old student at Japanese school in China dies after being stabbed

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, demanding that Beijing do more to protect Japanese nationals 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 making any judgments about how the stabbing might affect relations between China and Japan, a U.S. ally with which Washington has strengthened ties.

“I would rather urge the Chinese side to provide all the facts related to this matter,” he said.

China’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Beijing was “deeply saddened and shocked by this tragic event.”

“We offer our condolences over the boy’s death and express our sympathy to his family,” spokesman Lin Jian told a regular news briefing in Beijing, adding that the case was still under investigation.

Lin said the boy is a Japanese national whose parents are both Japanese and Chinese citizens. He added that the ministry did not believe the case would affect China-Japan relations.

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

The student was stabbed about 220 meters from the Shenzhen Japanese School in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on Wednesday, according to the Foreign Ministry.

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

The stabbing took place on the anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931, when Japanese troops launched an attack on a railway line near Mukden, the northern Chinese city now known as Shenyang, as a pretext to invade and then occupy the region known as Manchuria.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said Thursday that her ministry has advised Japanese schools and other institutions to step up security measures after a Japanese woman and her child were injured in a stabbing attack at a Japanese school bus stop 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 has also asked China’s Foreign Ministry to do everything in its power to ensure the safety of Japanese schools on the Mukden anniversary.

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

Kamikawa said the Japanese Embassy in Beijing and the Japanese Consulate in Guangzhou, which is responsible for Shenzhen, had demanded an explanation from the Chinese side and requested that “all possible measures” be taken to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals.

Flags at Japanese diplomatic missions in mainland China and Hong Kong were lowered on Thursday.

China and Japan are major trading partners, but Chinese public opinion has vivid memories of Japanese military occupation before and during World War II, and anti-Japanese sentiment stoked by Chinese authorities sometimes boils over into protests and boycotts.

Sino-Japanese relations have also been strained by China’s increased military activity in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in Japan. Last month, Japan said a Chinese military aircraft had violated its airspace in an unprecedented incursion. Tokyo said a Chinese aircraft carrier also entered Japan’s contiguous waters for the first time on Wednesday, the same day as the stabbing; Beijing said it was a routine training mission.

Although gun violence is rare in China, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, the country has seen a spate of knife attacks. In June, a stabbing in a public park in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin left four American university professors injured, but their injuries were not serious.

Although Chinese social media is often flooded with nationalist and anti-Japanese comments, there have been many expressions of sympathy for the student online.

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

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