Chinese Knife Rampage

[_sabotage_]

That is a terrible story. Reminds me of the guy who was stabbed in his house in New York, ran outside for help with attacker chasing and stabbing him into the streets and his dead body lying there throughout the day.

But then again your point makes less sense the more you explain it. You claim 30,000 is a princely sum, maybe indicating that I am a prince, and yet it's 10% of 300,000RMB which is the penalty for killing someone. Yes, I did take my mother-in-law to a very nice, private hospital to get her care and healthcare in China can be exceptionally low compared to other places. But why would someone choose to pay 300,000 instead of 30,000. Also, why would someone face up to 8 years in jail? From the actual article what I did see was a similar problem that has been experienced in Canada, the US and other places:

Others blamed China’s compensation culture for the apparent show of callousness, recalling a famous 2006 judgment when a Good Samaritan who helped a woman get to hospital was wrongly ordered to pay her compensation.

This refers to the Good Samaritan Act, that may have caused others not to help her after the fact. There have been many recent cases due to paying compensation that have caused people to overlook befallen people and objects associated with this. One man who fell on his own and couldn't remember why charged the man who helped him up with causing the fall. Video evidence later proved that the man who helped him hadn't caused the fall.

As to your salaries reports, it's pure rubbish. First off; your double PhD friend will receive free housing, food, medical, tuition for her children, phone expenses, etc. paid in full. Secondly, 400RMB a month must be taken into context. Thirdly, as you yourself pointed out, professors do make 5k a month, and yet this one has purposefully chosen a position where the salary is 400 a month.

My wife's second sister (my wife is the self-proclaimed first sister) is a factory supervisor and makes 2400 a month with only a middle school background, she may pick and choose her jobs. My wife had offered to pay for this sister's further education, using the savings that she had from her 1100 a month job that she got with her technical training ten years back, but the sister felt she would rather be in the workforce. Her third sister did have her university paid for by my wife. She earns 7000 a month in Shanghai and has bought her flat outright with her husband's help, she is 26. Her fourth sister works as a clerk for the PSB and has a very low salary, 2200, but like a professor, receives free everything. And her brother, the pride and joy of the family, works for Youku at 5400 a month. Not bad for a group of kids from Hunan. My wife paid for all of their education apart from her closest sister's, which she was able to do since university is so cheap and there are a vast range of schools to choose from. Their education system isn't perfect and the most unfortunate aspect is that only the best students get to choose their major, and if their major is of great concern to them, they would have to choose an inferior school if they wanted to guarantee they could pursue it. Why didn't her parents pay? By this time the English my wife was studying in her spare time had gained her several promotions and she was able to earn more than her parents combined while living for absolutely no out of pocket expenses.

But then you are trying to tell a story, and forgive me for questioning it, especially when the article you cite doesn't tell the same one and further when you know nothing of the acid attacks in HK between 2008-2010. From a quick search I see that 19 people were injured, I thought there were 20 or so and therefore made the comparison with this article. And as I said in my comment, HK is exceptionally safe. But as this thread is attempting to do, paint a picture based on limited facts, I could post a thread about the acid attacks in HK, and a follow up article to show that acid attacks have been done in HK on an on-going basis by a variety of people over at least two decades. All of which would is true. But that wouldn't be truly representative of HK, as this article and your points aren't truly representative of China.

My points try to be more representative:

1. Guns result in mass shootings;
2. They force/allow the police to act in a much more aggressive/harmful fashion in all instances.
3. The US has a massively disproportionate prison population and network feeding off arresting and imprisoning criminals while making being a criminal both highly risky and highly profitable.

And as I sit in my family's mansion writing this, and note that fewer cars pass along the road in this rather well kept nook in Canada (the locals have voted to not fix the road as it dissuades people from driving up it), I think of the pictures of 1960s HK, having cars then a relatively new and novel item, and see the look of alarm on the pedestrian faces as they and the cars come to terms with a car culture.

The fact that your mother-in-law hadn't heard the news, I'm quite sure mine hasn't as she watches mostly game shows and can't speak Mandarin, is not as surprising as the fact that 1/3 of New Yorkers hadn't known of building 7's collapse during 9/11. Or maybe closer to home, that by a narrow margin the BBC voted there was global warming and they wouldn't report any evidence against it. But maybe this is just me being paranoid, or maybe that young British/Burmese policeman was right afterall in his thin books.

[macbone]

Full disclosure - I moved to Hong Kong from Alabama back in the fall of 2010, so I wasn't here for SARS or avian flu or the acid attacks, so my view of Hong Kong is still developing.

I sincerely doubt the majority of people in China can pay 300k RMB for killing someone. Perhaps the very rich can, but that's more money than many people see in their entire lives. Many workers exist in nearly slave-labor conditions in the big factories, and the salaries you're describing are indeed princely.

It's true, though, that in Shanghai and some of the other coastal cities, wages are starting to go up (and in Hong Kong, they're declining - it seems like they'll eventually even out across the board, at least in the provinces that China is developing). The central government's philosophy in this is to increase the standard of living in some areas, and gradually all of China will be improved.

Your wife sounds like an amazing lady. That's one area that's a great strength in China, the attitude that people will work hard and sacrifice for their families.

I'm not saying Hong Kong is perfectly safe. We hear on the news every few weeks about a minibus turning over or hitting a toddler, or a child falling from a 30th story apartment building.

And I'll have you know my mother-in-law speaks perfectly serviceable Putonghua. =) My wife claims to not be able to speak Putonghua herself, but she can carry on perfectly good conversations with mainland students.

1. Guns result in mass shootings;

And the advent of automobiles result in vehicular homicides, and industrialization lead to much higher cases of pulmonary ailments.

2. They force/allow the police to act in a much more aggressive/harmful fashion in all instances.

Yet police departments do not need the presence of firearms to behave aggressively/harmfully (see Tibet, Rodney King, and the grandmother in Atlanta who was shot in her home by police officers).

3. The US has a massively disproportionate prison population and network feeding off arresting and imprisoning criminals while making being a criminal both highly risky and highly profitable.

Risky, yes. Profitable, maybe. Steven Levitt has explored this in his research in both prostititution and crack dealers, and on average, though the risk is high, the potential rewards for most of the men and women involved are rather low.

But the US does appear to have a severe problem. My family's been talking about the Oregon and Connecticut shootings, and between the killings and the tornados that ripped through Alabama and other parts of the States a couple of years ago, my wife isn't keen on returning any time soon.

[Phatscotty]

Anyone remember the axe murderer who axed the children to death? I made a thread about it at the time, wondering why adults were going into school murdering children.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/ ... 6479175491

THREE children have been killed and more than a dozen injured in an axe attack at a primary school in southern China.

I get the feeling there is some of this going on, both in China and America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUpXMae6Hs&t=35m13s

You know Winston wanted to split some heads!

[_sabotage_]

Macbone, my basic point is that this thread does not intend to paint a clear or productive picture.

I have been arrested in the States, Hong Kong and Macau. I had been a drug dealer from the age of 17-20. I know the research you are talking about, from probably the same source that you got it from. But I know it from a very different side as well. Based on this, I can tell you in the two places where guns were prevalent, the US and Macau, the police come at you with guns aimed at you. I had no weapons, was never a violent offender and was arrested for cannabis. Secondly, drugs are hugely profitable. I could earn between 300-3000% depending on how much, to who and where I sold them. Thirdly, drugs support a huge bureaucracy in both the police and the underworld. I never needed a gun because I was a merchant and not a gangster. But when the police know that a subject is armed, or potentially armed, they have a preset defense for shooting someone. This is what happens in the US. We thought he had a gun, end of investigation for them, end of life for the person who was innocent until proven guilty by a jury of his peers according to the very foundation of the US.

As for your point on paying 300k. Again you seem to be going against your original posting. You claim that the man ran over the child again instead of stopping to help because it's cheaper to kill someone than to injure them. I have pointed out the princely prices of healthcare and shown they would be a fraction of the cost of the penalty for vehicular homicide. You then further prove your point invalid by saying that people can't afford the 300k penalty. Insurance is a mandatory requirement for any motor vehicle in China and provides automatic compensation for up to 80k for injured persons, several times more than princely healthcare costs. The only way that an insurance company could avoid this is by showing that a criminal act was committed, the most common one being fleeing the scene, and another would be intentionally causing injury after the fact. Which again makes the act of killing a person to avoid paying damages a more ridiculous point. As I have said, these questions must be answered in order to obtain a driver's license and should have been known to the driver.

The case in question has nothing to do with the laws and the laws do not encourage murder or provide a lesser penalty for it.

As this regards the topic, I will merely state what I did in perhaps my first post: I would rather pick up my son from a hospital than a morgue.

Perhaps if your mother-in-law ever wants to visit Hunan she can drop by and receive the hospitality of my mother-in-law and give her a quick Mandarin lesson in exchange. I think it will highly amuse my mother-in-law, but not really increase her ability to speak Mandarin. I say this because whichever language I speak to my mother-in-law in seems to amuse her.

As for salaries around China. You may also note that the salaries in the coastal cities are also reflected in housing prices. My flat in Shenzhen, steps from the Huanggang border, rents for 4800rmb. Though this isn't at island prices yet, it is similar to other places half an hour from Central. Food and other prices are generally cheaper though. You may note that in the poor countryside, where those people have no money, that a large number of their children work in the richer cities and send money home to the village. My wife and now her siblings send a steady stream of cash to their parents, who save every cent of it. You may disagree that many people have children in big cities or that factory work is slavish, and in some instances you would be right. Bear in mind though that the little town of Shenzhen has had a population increase of 500 times its population of 35 years ago. Most of these are young people from the country like my wife was.

I have been to or taught at hundreds of factories. I have also attempted to hire non-skilled workers. I believe that you have a view that you are intent on keeping and choose your own set of facts to support them. I again am defending my wife's country. I often hear biased and ridiculous reports. I also hear true ones. China shoots the shit out of people that break their laws. China is corrupt, although not really in the way that corruption is imagined, it is like an extra tax. Families give their children's teachers red packets of cash, as they give the doctors, etc. There is also massive corruption in the granting of contracts. My wife had been an project manager for one of the largest companies in China. She was responsible for setting up 300 stores with a new joint venture from the States. When she received the bids from various contractors on tens of shops in differing cities, they each promised her a 3% kickback for choosing them. She asked me if she should take it (3% was above the 300k). I said even the best offer came with the 3%? She said, they all came with the 3% offer. I asked her if her job was worth losing for the money and she said no. I then told her to accept the best offer and demand that the 3% be cut from the price.

Please attack China for the corruption which does damage the populace. Please bash China on the fact that many driver's never take the exam, but pay a bit extra to get it without the exam (although this has become very difficult to do in the last few years). Bash China on reality not on some distorted figures or cases which reflect individual insanity rather than the greater overriding direction of the country.

Guns are used to shoot people, they may have some auxiliary uses, but their purpose is to kill. Knives have a thousand uses more often practiced than as a tool to kill. It is a policy of the States that makes me avoid my native land. There are others. People avoid them, they set up strawmen, often China and such is this thread.

[Lootifer]

Considering that knife attacks on crowds of people are an established problem in China, should the Chinese government consider banning knives?

If knifes presented the same leathality (ie ability to take life) that guns do then yes the Chinese government should consider banning them (imo). However, they do not.

Why don't we see these kinds of attacks in other countries where knives are legal?

We probably do. Im sure New Zealand will have a comparable stabbing per capita number if you can find it (I cant be bothered reseaching for a retarded thread).

[notyou2]

Gabon. next gun fight you go to, are you taking a knife instead?



Edit, I only read part of page 1 when I wrote this. I see it was said on top of page 4 and may have been said earlier.

[Maugena]

Why don't we see these kinds of attacks in other countries where knives are legal?

Because guns are accessible and more effective, I'm assuming.

[Nobunaga]

An established problem? I lived in China for seven years and never felt threatened once and would have much preferred to be threatened by a knife than a gun. As a father, I would much rather collect my son from a hospital than a morgue. A further point is that when the police approach you, they come at you with clubs as a last resort. In America, they use guns as a first resort. I was told, last time I was in the states, that America is the only free country in the world. This information was quite new to me, since I hadn't been around and had just come through the TSA search at the airport.

You're so full of shit. Where were you, Taiwan, maybe, but certainly not the PRC. I've seen the cops at work in the PRC... "clubs as a last resort".... my ass.