Lol, I'd like to know which countries have negative growth right now and are all hunky dory?
Barring the hyperbole though, knife and car attacks are perhaps nothing new in China sadly, yet it is very concerning to see three in such short succession and producing as many casualties when before these attacks usually just result in wounded with minimal dead.
Its a given that the economy is having a bit of a hard time, but I do think some self-criticism is warranted in this case mostly with how broadly East Asian culture would make people lash out more severely when times are hard. Yes, compared to Western nations citizens of China, Japan, and Korea are more disciplined and thus follow rules more, have lower levels of street crime, and are more orderly.
But the flipside is East Asian countries are essentially pressure cooker cultures, where hypercompetition is promoted, emphasis is put on face, extreme judgmentalalism and classism is rife, mental health is stigmatized, tolerance for failure is practically nonexistent, and where most working class jobs are low paying and considered dirty work reserved for migrants. People are disciplined, but are also conditioned to bottle up whatever emotional problems they might have. In Korea and Japan, many people collapse under the pressure and off themselves, and in China nowadays it seems people who let their emotions get the better of them just let it explode into violence.
Its not like the government is unaware of this, but as the saying goes old habits die hard. (Which is why its so ridiculous to claim the CR destroyed Chinese culture.) When they banned private tutoring and beseached parents to let their kids have more free time, Chinese parents simply went underground to seek private tutors for their kids. When they banned 996, companies simply skirted the ban by cutting base salaries and incentivizing people to work overtime, as well as dangling the lay off list over the heads of every employee if they thought twice about work life balance.
The government can protect the public from future attacks by hiring more police and if necessary increasing surveillance, but on top of the economy getting back on track again some changes will needed to be made by the Chinese people themselves to decrease the pressure everyone is under.
