These sorts of crimes can feel senseless, and yet also depressingly common.
Go back to the 1990s and things like this were virtually unheard of in China. It's not that terrible things didn't happen to children. They did.
There was the horrific incident in March 2001 when a school in the southern province of Jiangxi exploded, killing 41 children. An investigation found the school was doubling as a fireworks factory and the school children as cheap labour.
It was a tragedy that rocked China. There was much soul-searching about the exploitation of children and callous disregard for their safety. But their deaths were an accident.
Then, starting from around 2010, something began to change. That year, there was a sudden spate of knife attacks in which 17 children were killed.
This was something completely different. The children had been deliberately targeted to cause maximum pain and outrage.
