China’s largest social media companies have condemned online hate speech targeting Japanese. They have responded strongly to the backlash following a knife attack last week that left one person dead and a Japanese mother and child injured.
Such waves of sentiment and a vocal nationalist element are not uncommon, but companies from WeChat owner Tencent to TikTok’s ByteDance sister site Douyin, Weibo and NetEase condemned last week’s comments.
“These comments have disrupted the positive and peaceful atmosphere on the platform and even incited illegal behavior,” Douyin said in an online post on Sunday, citing “extreme and incorrect statements” that “fuel xenophobia.”
In the latest in a series of knife attacks across the country, a Japanese mother and her toddler were wounded in the eastern city of Suzhou while waiting for a school bus. A Chinese bus attendant died from wounds he sustained while trying to intervene.
Anti-Japanese sentiment in China stems from bitter memories of its neighbor’s aggression during World War II, and some celebrate the targeting of Chinese civilians.
The extreme comments about Douyin stood out amid a flood of tributes praising the heroism of 55-year-old bus driver Hu Youping, it added.
Tencent said it had addressed 836 cases of related content that violated its rules.
“Some Internet users have incited confrontation between China and Japan, provoked extreme nationalism and made up all kinds of extreme remarks online,” online comments read 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-run People’s Daily said in an editorial Friday. “This is unacceptable to mainstream Chinese society and to us Chinese.”
