On November 19^th, 2024, an isolated case of a man using his car to ram and injure several students in Changde. This followed another similar incident in Zhuhai where 35 people were killed. Take these incidents together, and even throw in a few more for good measure, and one might assume China is overflowing with violence and is similar to the US, where gun violence is endemic. Is this the right interpretation? An article by the Guardian on November 22^nd entitled China Reels from Space of Suspected ‘Revenge Against Society; Attacks, ’argues exactly this.¹ A BBC journalist names Stephen McDonell even showed up and started aggravating bystanders at one of these tragedies to incite a reaction for his viewers, while his camera man kept saying ‘keep going.’²

But the data tells a very different story. According to the research at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime .5 people per 100,000 in China died of a homicide annually. Whereas the US figure is 6.38 per 100,000 people. Which means people in the US are roughly 13 times as likely to experience a homicide. In the UK it 1 per 100,000, or double as dangerous as is China. So, while western click-bait style ‘reporting’ is meant to drive clicks and subscription sales, the reality on the ground in China is considerably different.

Grade six math makes it simple. The bell curve is that China is very safe per person. So, the average person in China is statistically very safe. The numbers prove that. The US population is 333 million, whereas China’s population is 1,412 million. So, the probability of finding violent crime exists. Because there are so many people doing so many things and living so many unique lives. But in so finding and reporting on these incidents which are both outliers and still less likely in actual numbers than in the US, one should acknowledge this as a journalist.

The problem with western journalists, is that they conflate that there were some violent incidents with a trend, without doing a deeper investigation into the facts and data. Western journalists are so eager to have headlines like “A surge in mass attacks has killed dozens in China in recent months” that they ignore their duty to put this into context.³ That context is that China still statistically remains far safer than the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany or Italy. The probability of being killed in China is roughly that of Switzerland, two of the safest countries in the world.

Poor journalism on China in the west is making the abnormal seem like it’s the norm. That’s not reporting. That’s not neutral. That’s clear bias and intent to deceive. And when directed at a singular people, in this case the Chinese, that’s racist too. The facts demonstrate that China is one of the safest places in the world.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/22/china-deals-with-violence-amid-revenge-against-society-attacks ↩︎
2. https://x.com/AndyBxxx/status/1858779567823143412 ↩︎
3. https://www.npr.org/2024/11/20/nx-s1-5197463/china-mass-attacks-killed-dozens ↩︎