I am always not sensitive to breaking news, like the this one. The reason is, I don’t position myself to be a news blogger. News is just news. It becomes relevant to me and my readers only when it is proven to be a piece of meaningful news. Only time can tell whether an event is just a random thing, like a car hit a bus, or it marks an important milestone in this city/country. Today, I want to talk about a piece of old news.
Yang Jia, a young man Killed 6 Policemen
The story was pretty straight forward – a young man from Beijing run into a police station in Shanghai with a knife, and injured 10 policemen. 6 of them died. He did it because he was, reportedly, innocent while the policemen has insulted and jailed him for long time.
Putting aside the astonishing news itself, the reaction from people around the country is very unique and interesting. Most of the people on the Internet forums, bloggers, and people around me, believed Yang Jia is a hero. He did something many people wanted to do for a long time, while was not brave to do.
The Reflection of the Social Problems
This is astonishing. The story let me recall a story happened in New York quoted in the book The Tipping Point. It happened during the time the crime rate in New York was so high, and it became a dangerous venture to take ride of Metro. When four people approached a young man, without saying anything, but appeared as bad guy, the man pull out a gun and shoot them. The New Yorker said, the man is a hero. The book tipping point used that story to tell that impact of environment for people’s behavior.
In Yang Jia’s case, it is almost the same. Policemen abuse their right to arrest normal innocent people, or restrict people’s freedom very often. I personally got very angry because of them many times, but most of the hate didn’t accumulate to a dangerous degree was in Yang Jia’s case.
To echo the event in Shanghai, hundreds of people in Wengan in Guzhou province run into a police station and burned the whole building, and beat many policemen. The violence also got many supporters on the Internet. It was the accidence in that area of young girl raped and killed happen many time, and the latest case was the trigger.
All these problem has presented a very big alarm sign for China, which is one month before the Olympic.
May China be Peace
As I mentioned in my Chinese blog: the Tragedy of Humanity and Love to the Guilty(CN), it is the crime and unfairness that we need to fight against, not the criminals.
In this case, as many of cases we saw, all people involved are victims of hate – both Yang Jia, his parents, the six policemen, and their family. No matter on which side of a crime scene, crime itself killed both the victim, and the killer.
There are more and more social problems revealed in China, and I hope these can be a force to push the peaceful political transform, instead of break out violantly one day due to the high press to the need of the people.
西安有句方言评价公安局的，说：”哈怂多，好怂少，二球能把人绊倒。”话虽糙，基本表达了大家对公安的看法，我觉得，评价还是很贴切的。
I was also aware of both incidents, and I saw many discussions on those two events on the bbs.
It also reminds me of the “The People’s Republic of Capitalism” documentary by Ted Koppel, which is shown in Discovery Channel here last week. I think in last 30 years China (economy and society) has been through the industralization, which it took US 100 years (from 1850/60 to 1950/60). All kinds of problems arise: urbanization, environment, huge gap between super rich/powerful and the poor, materialism,…
I think the goverment took the notice, thus emphasize “a harmenious society”. But it’s going to be hard, the rich and the powerful will do everything to get more from the pie. Although the pie is getting bigger, the ordinary people is getting a smaller piece.
meaning pressure in Chinese life is very high. Rich and poor divide is getting wider and wider. Also, legal system is not mature in China.
I am against death penalty, but in china if this guy had killed the policemen who are above the law and the one who have put him in jail for nothing, I might have understand…but random killing (of maybe good policemen… it happen sometime) is something different, nothing heroic.
To jqian:
There is now more inequality in China than in 1949 when communist took power.
The Legal system can NOT be “mature” in china has there is no separation of power between the gov, police, justice. and because the gov will never let the police/justice be independent otherwise they might loose power.
Do not forget the Chinese constitution say: “China protect and respect human right” Just imagine what will happen if the justice can be independent and give right to people who ask human right.
These incidents should never be labeled as so-called crimes. A more appropriate term should be UPRISING.
Obviously, the Chinese masses are saying NO to the regime LOUD and CLEAR. I can sense the restlessness and suppressed calm in this country which has been ruled by Mao’s Satanic cult for 27 years and then by a mafia hierarchy since then.
This country is sitting on a volcano now. Watch out!
Democracy! Legal system! Human rights! Liberty!
These are the ONLY way to tackle all problem we suffer in this land. None of them should be ignored, but none of them were even emerged in our history. Our saints discovered the ideal manner we should be, but no effective way to be implemented. We are human being, we are born with sin. We need a workable system to be constrained and conducted. Otherwise, we are just birds twittering in cage, nothing is changed.
it’ll only look losser of face
Without a dependable judicial system, there are no rules to follow our enforce.
The police cannot lead, and the people cannot follow.
The sad thing is, nobody wins in this case. Yang Jia will lose his life. The six police man and their families suffered for nothing they are responsible for. And the worst part, justice is not served.
For us onlookers, everybody knows what’s wrong but nobody can do anything about it.
A ticking time bomb is a good way to describe it. I suspect there are really intelligent people in the government keenly aware of this enormous looming problem, but they are not going to do anything about it. Leaving it to future generations of government leaders and people to deal with it. Like playing musical chairs, when the music stops, the unfortunate generation will HAVE TO deal with it.
He is a hero, it is the shanghai police that is at shame.
The policemen in Shanghai are crooks anyway. I cant say I feel sorry for them, they are poorly trained and act like they are above the law, picking on the weak.