My Take | Simplistic criticisms of China are little better than propaganda

Whenever something bad is reported about China, foreign pundits will inevitably link it to alleged communist misrule. That has been a long-standing narrative template that offers a veneer of expertise. Of course, government misrule could be a causal factor, but only one of many. Social phenomena tend to be immensely complicated and defy simplistic mono-causal explanations, which usually just perpetuate ignorance and mystification.

Take the deadly incident in November when a 62-year-old man drove into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai, killing 35 people and injuring 43 others. It was followed by a 21-year-old student who killed eight and injured 17 at a vocational school in Wuxi, near Shanghai.

These and other similar incidents have been cited by a US expert writing in Foreign Affairs, titled “The Roots of ‘Revenge Against Society’ Attacks in China”.

The root, the author from Cornell University claims, is China’s “repressive rule [which] is creating a climate of isolation and grievance”.

I admit that could well be a factor, or not. However, as best as I can tell, the author didn’t investigate those two police cases, but merely drew on news reports and crime statistics to build up an “explanation”. But how? Maybe the 21-year-old just stopped taking antidepressants, or took too many of them; who knows?

On New Year’s Day in New Orleans, a 42-year-old man ploughed a pickup truck into a crowd of revellers, killing 14 people and injuring dozens. On the same day, another man blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, injuring bystanders. He reportedly shot himself in the head inside the car.

Perhaps those two men were driven to such desperate acts by freedom and democracy, American-style, enjoyed so much by their fellow citizens, no? Both men were US Army veterans, with one being a special forces soldier. Does joining the US military make you a psycho? Well, there is some evidence of that.