On March 23, 2010, a case that shocked the entire nation occurred at the gate of Nanping Experimental Primary School in Fujian. Within the few short minutes during which students waited to enter the school in the early morning, a middle-aged man stabbed thirteen primary school students in succession with a knife, killing eight and seriously injuring five. The perpetrator, Zheng Minsheng, then forty-two years old, had formerly served as a doctor at a community health service station. What made this case draw far more attention than an ordinary criminal case at the time was not only the sheer severity of the casualties, but also the perpetrator’s choice of schoolchildren—those least capable of self-defense—as targets of his revenge, and the premeditation and coldness revealed in the course of the crime.

I. The Perpetrator

Zheng Minsheng was a native of Nanping, Fujian. Before the case, he had been a doctor at the Mazhan Community Health Service Station in Nanping, and he resigned in June 2009. In the descriptions of those around him, Zheng was introverted and did not get along well with colleagues or family. Colleagues testified that he “always felt others were out to harm him and liked to misjudge … Read More