The boy was stabbed by a man on his way to class Wednesday about 200 meters (650 feet) from the gates of the Japanese school in the southern city of Shenzhen, according to China’s foreign ministry. The tech hub is home to many Japanese businesses.
The child was taken to a hospital and later died of his injuries, Japanese authorities said Thursday.
A 44-year-old suspect was apprehended at the scene and taken into custody, Shenzhen police said in a statement.
Japanese and Chinese authorities did not specify the boy’s nationality. But Japanese nationality is required for enrollment at the Shenzhen Japanese School, according to its website.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters Thursday that the “despicable act … against a child on his way to school is truly regrettable.”
“We take this incident extremely seriously, and we have once again requested that the Chinese side ensure the safety of Japanese nationals,” she said.
The Japanese embassy in Beijing and the consulate-general in Guangzhou have asked Chinese authorities to give a detailed explanation of the facts, Kamikawa added.
The attack took place on a sensitive date, the anniversary of the “918” incident in 1931, when Japanese soldiers blew up a Japanese-owned railway in northeast China in a pretext to capture the region.
The emotionally charged day is commemorated in China as the start of Japan’s invasion, with state media and officials urging the public to never forget the national humiliation.
Chinese authorities did not mention the motive for Wednesday’s attack. But nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Japanese sentiment are on the rise in the country, often fanned by state media.
In June, a Chinese man wounded a Japanese woman and her child in a stabbing attack in front of a school bus in Suzhou, eastern China. A Chinese bus attendant who tried to intervene later died of her injuries.
Following that attack, Japan’s foreign ministry told Japanese schools in China to review their safety measures, Kamikawa said.
Ahead of the 918 anniversary, “we had just made a request to the Chinese foreign ministry to take thorough measures to ensure the safety of Japanese schools, so we are extremely disappointed that this incident occurred in this situation,” she added.
At a regular news conference Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said the case was being investigated.
“China will continue to take effective measures to protect the safety of all foreigners in China,” he added.
Public attacks against foreigners had been rare in China, but a series of high-profile stabbings have raised concerns in recent months.
Two weeks before the Japanese mother and child were attacked in Suzhou, four American college instructors were stabbed by a Chinese man at a public park in Jilin in the northeast, after he bumped into one of them, according to Chinese police.
China’s foreign ministry has described both attacks as isolated incidents and did not release further information on the motives.
‘Extreme nationalism’
Rooted in bitter memories of Japan’s invasion and brutal occupation and fueled by present-day territorial disputes, Chinese public sentiment against Japan has flared into violence before.
In 2012, anti-Japanese protests broke out across Chinese cities over contested islands in the East China Sea. In a country where authorities rarely permit protests, the nationwide rallies seemingly went ahead with a degree of at least tacit official approval. Under the watch of police officers, angry demonstrators besieged the Japanese embassy in Beijing, ransacked Japanese restaurants and smashed Japanese-made cars in numerous cities.
But the recent attacks on children have raised fresh alarm among Japanese families living in China.
In recent years, Japanese schools in China have faced growing criticism and suspicion from extreme Chinese nationalists. Some online posts have called for the schools to be shut down, while others accused them of being breeding ground for spies.
After the knife attack in Suzhou, China’s major social media platforms launched a crackdown on online hate speech targeting Japanese, removing content and shutting accounts promoting “extreme nationalism.”
But anti-Japanese sentiment has persisted. Following Wednesday’s stabbing, some nationalists accused Japan of “directing and staging” the attack, while others questioned why Japanese schools still exist in China.
As news of the attack gained traction online, censors deleted articles citing Japanese media reports, which offered more details than the terse statements from the Chinese foreign ministry and Shenzhen police.
Comments critical of Beijing’s push to promote nationalism have also been deleted.
“When will the anti-Japanese education and propaganda finally come to an end?” asked a now-deleted comment on Weibo, a microblogging site.
“If this continues, who will be willing to come (to China?)” said another deleted post.
