China’s grass-roots officials told to ‘sift out losers’ to stop random attacks on public
Authorities under orders to step up screening of people with emotional or financial problems following a series of random knife attacks on strangers
At the grass-roots level, there is a long-standing tradition of identifying people with financial and emotional problems. But in recent months there has been a shift away from doing so with the aim of providing social support to trying to spot people “prone to vent their anger on the public”, media reports and officials say.
These groups are sometimes referred to as people who have experienced five or six “kinds of failures” but official definitions of these categories are hard to come by.
But one official in the eastern province of Zhejiang said they typically included people with psychological and mental health problems, relationship difficulties, those whose investments had failed, those struggling to make a living or juveniles who lacked sufficient supervision.
“Before the latest round of surveys starting in early September, the police came to brief us on the recent cases of random attacks on the public,” said the official, who asked to be identified only by his surname Chen.
“They told us that our job is very important because if we can sift out all these so-called losers and put them under watch, we can reduce the chances of them hurting people on the streets randomly.”
