Chinese internet platforms promise to combat extremist statements after stabbing

BEIJING – Major Chinese internet platforms have announced they will combat statements that call for confrontation between China and Japan and fuel radical nationalism.

This followed a knife attack that resulted in the death of an altruistic Chinese woman and the injury of two Japanese citizens.

The incident occurred on June 24, when the suspect surnamed Zhou attacked two Japanese citizens with a knife in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Ms. Hu Youping, who tried to stop Zhou, was also stabbed and later died in hospital on June 26.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences to Ms. Hu, and the Japanese Embassy in China flew its flag at half-mast in her honor.

In statements over the weekend, five major internet platforms – Tencent, Baidu, Douyin, NetEase and iFeng.com – praised Ms. Hu’s courage and integrity.

However, they also condemned users who made extreme remarks calling for confrontation between China and Japan or denigrating Ms. Hu as a mole for Japan. The platforms have blocked or closed accounts with such harmful content.

The platforms said they would continue to punish users who incite group hatred and extreme nationalism to gain attention and attract traffic, and have set up channels for users to report such behavior.

Earlier, China’s largest microblogging platform Sina Weibo issued a similar statement on June 26, noting that there had been comments inciting extreme nationalism and stoking group hatred following discussions about the stabbing. Sina Weibo said it had deleted more than 700 such pieces of content and penalized 36 accounts. THE CHINA DAILY/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK