Chinese social media companies condemn hate speech against Japanese after knife attack

Weibo

01/07/2024 05:35

By Casey Hall
       SHANGHAI, July 1 (Reuters) - China's top social media
companies have condemned online hate speech targeting Japanese,
delivering a vigorous response to comments triggered by a knife
attack last week that killed one person and injured a Japanese
mother and child.
    Such waves of sentiment, and a vocal nationalist element,
are not uncommon, but companies from WeChat-owner Tencent
 0700.HK , to TikTok's ByteDance-owned sister-site Douyin, Weibo
 9898.HK  and NetEase  9999.HK , condemned last week's remarks.
    "These comments have disrupted the positive and peaceful
atmosphere of the platform and even incited unlawful behaviour,"
Douyin said in an online post on Sunday, citing "extreme and
erroneous statements" that were "promoting xenophobia".
    In the latest of a series of knife attacks nationwide, a
Japanese mother and her pre-schooler were injured in the eastern
city of Suzhou while waiting for a school bus. A Chinese bus
attendant died of injuries suffered during a bid to intervene.
    Anti-Japanese sentiment in China stems from bitter memories
of the neighbour's World War Two aggression, leading some to
celebrate the targeting of its citizens in the attack.
    The extreme comments on Douyin stood out from the flood of
tributes that praised the heroism of the 55-year-old bus
attendant, Hu Youping, it added.
    Tencent said it had tackled 836 instances of related content
that infringed its rules. 
    "Some netizens incited confrontation between China and
Japan, provoked extreme nationalism, and concocted various
extreme remarks online," it said in online comments on Saturday.
    State media also condemned the online hate speech.
    "We will also not accept the hype of 'xenophobia' and hate
speech by individuals," the government-controlled People's Daily
said in an editorial on Friday. "This is unacceptable to
mainstream Chinese society and us Chinese."

 (Reporting by Casey Hall; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
 ((Casey.Hall@thomsonreuters.com;))