Eight killed in knife attack at Chinese college

Police in the city of Yixing said the attack at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology was carried out by a student who hadn’t graduated after failing an exam. They gave the alleged attacker’s surname as Xu and said he confessed to the crime following his arrest at the college.

The attack comes just days after a 62-year-old man plowed an SUV into a crowd at a sports stadium in the city of Zhuhai in southern China, killing 35 and injuring dozens more. That attack drew a rare public response from Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who ordered authorities across the country to learn from the incident to ensure public safety and social stability.

In the wake of Xi’s remarks, China’s Ministry of Public Security held a meeting in Beijing, vowing to guard against “extreme cases" with utmost vigilance and to help “resolve conflicts and problems at the grassroots level."

A run of uncommonly violent incidents has shaken China this year as the country grapples with a weakening economy, high youth unemployment and a drawn-out property crunch. Mass killings are rare in China given the country’s strict gun laws and deliberate acts such as these touch on what Beijing fears most: social instability that could cast doubt on the Communist Party’s ability to govern.

In June, four instructors affiliated with a U.S. college were injured in a stabbing attack in the northeastern rust-belt city of Jilin. The injured included three Americans and an Iowa resident who isn’t a U.S. citizen. Police said a local man used a knife to stab the four foreigners as well as a Chinese citizen who tried to intervene.

In September, a 10-year-old Japanese boy was stabbed to death as he walked to school in Shenzhen in southern China.

In September, a finance official in the central province of Hunan died falling from a building alongside two male assailants, who also died. Also that month, three people were killed and 15 were injured in stabbings in a Shanghai Walmart.

In Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, a driver drove into a crowd in early 2023, killing six people. The driver was later executed for “endangering public safety with dangerous methods," according to a court statement released in April.

According to its website, the Wuxi Institute teaches subjects ranging from pottery and electrical engineering to fashion and e-commerce. Police said the suspect returned there Saturday to vent his disaffection after failing the exam. He was also unhappy with the pay he was receiving at an internship, the police statement said.

On X, an account run by Li Ying—who acts as an information clearinghouse to preserve content likely to be censored on Chinese platforms and who is known to his 1.8 million followers as Teacher Li—reposted videos and photos from Chinese social media purporting to be from the attack. They included images of a bloodied body and students barricading themselves in a dormitory.

China’s social-media platform Weibo censored content related to the incident and prevented it from becoming a trending topic. Weibo didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Li also posted details from what he said was purportedly the alleged attacker’s will, in which he said he was owed wages by a factory where he worked 16 hours a day, and that he hoped his death would “promote improvements in labor laws." The posts couldn’t be independently verified.

Clarence Leong contributed to this article.

Write to Jason Douglas at jason.douglas@wsj.com