Chinese social media companies crack down on anti-Japanese posts after fatal stabbing

Last week, the two Japanese were attacked by an unemployed man at a bus stop in front of a Japanese school in Suzhou. Chinese woman Hu Youping intervened to stop the attack and was stabbed several times.

In recent months, Japanese schools have been accused on social media of conducting spy training, according to the Global timesa state-owned media company.

Following the attack, several Chinese internet companies condemned anti-Japanese and xenophobic statements on their platforms.

NetEase accused some users of trying to stir up nationalist feelings and cited the “extermination of anti-Japanese traitors” as an example.

Tencent, the operator of the messaging platform WeChat, said it would combat content that “incites confrontation between China and Japan.”

ByteDance said some accounts on Douyin, the company’s version of TikTok for the Chinese market, had posted “extreme and false remarks” that promoted extreme xenophobia.

Weibo, a microblogging platform similar to X, said it had deleted more than 750 posts allegedly inciting hatred within days of the attack.

Last week’s incident followed a similar knife attack on four American trainers in the city of Jilin in early June.

Relations between China and Japan

Relations between China and Japan have been difficult in recent years. Last year, China arrested a Japanese employee of the pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma on suspicion of violating the country’s anti-espionage laws. Beijing also stopped imports of seafood from Japan after Japan released treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant last August.

Official government statements described last week’s attack as an “isolated incident.” On Monday, China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng told a Japanese delegation that Hu’s death while trying to prevent the attack was proof of the “bilateral friendship” between the two countries.

Nationalist sentiments are widespread on Chinese social media. Earlier this year, social media users attacked both technology giant Huawei and mineral water maker Nongfu Spring for allegedly using Japanese references in their products. The rise in nationalist sentiments also follows a growing government push for more patriotism.

Yet even Beijing may be wary of being too patriotic. Last week, the Chinese government reportedly backed off plans that would allow law enforcement to arrest people wearing clothing that it said hurts “the feelings of the Chinese nation.” The draft law, released last year, sparked concerns among many Chinese, who cited previous cases in which they felt law enforcement officials had gone too far in enforcing the regulations.

One such case? A 2022 case in which a Chinese woman was briefly detained by a police officer for wearing a kimono, a traditional Japanese garment.

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