China takes a step to curb anti-Japanese rhetoric online
The government cultivates extreme nationalism on the web. But it wants it to stay there
![Illustration of a number of speech bubbles, in the centre there's a speech bubble with the japanese flag with a cross through, surriounding it are lots of Chinese flag speech bubbles](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240706_CND001.jpg)
It was an isolated incident, the government insists. On June 24th a Chinese man attacked a Japanese woman and her child at a bus stop outside a Japanese school in the city of Suzhou. A Chinese school-bus attendant, Hu Youping, tried to shield the pair, only to be stabbed herself. She died days later. The local administration has called Ms Hu a “righteous and courageous” role model.
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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “An attack and a crackdown”
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