Last month, a startling incident in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, captured nationwide attention. Someone hurled human waste from a high-rise residential building, splattering it onto a ground-floor window.
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In a bid to force the culprit to come forward, estate management, in collaboration with local police, ordered DNA tests for all residents of the building. This sordid story quickly spread across social media, once again igniting debate about the decline of public civility and moral standards in modern China.
Throwing rubbish from tall buildings has become disturbingly common. According to reports, from mid-2016 to 2018, Chinese courts heard 31 criminal cases involving high-rise littering, half of which resulted in deaths.
Some people online used the term quede, meaning “unethical” or “morally wrong”, to describe the Kunshan incident. I also see it as immoral and in violation of the accepted code of social behaviour. In another egregious example, two bike repairmen in Chengdu were caught deliberately placing blades on the road, in the hope of profiting from motorcyclists’ misfortune.
The situation seems equally dire online, with news being distorted to attract attention. Last year, a headline misleadingly announced the death of director Zhang Yimou when it was actually his teacher who had died.
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As online fraud and financial crime proliferate, in-person crime is also on the rise. On the eve of National Day, a 37-year-old man armed with a knife attacked random shoppers in a Shanghai supermarket, killing three and injuring 15 more. Reports suggest his rampage was fuelled by personal grievances.