A History of Chinese Serial Killers

Danwei (which now appears, after a long time in the commie dog house, to have been unblocked in China) has a history of Chinese serial killers by Robert Foyle Hunwick. He catalogues suspected and known serial killers in the PRC from the early 1980s the the present (the apparent rise of the serial killer being seemingly in a similar arc to the introduction of capitalism and the market to China may of course by mere coincidence and you can choose to believe that if you want!). It does seem that just as China scoops all the golds at the Olympics it’s serial killers are also off the scale in terms of their numbers – Yang Xinhai with 65 victims is thought to be China’s worst serial killer. Unsurprisingly perhaps prostitutes and sex workers seem to be the main targets of these men in many cases. Also the now transitory nature of much of Chinese society, migrant wanderers without any stable sense of community – indeed with all the displacement of traditional communities it seems all too easy to murder and walk away; the neighbours won’t check for ages! There are also big questions of police capabilities in these kinds of cases and to co-ordinate nationally as well as the media’s complicity in hushing up cases on occasion leading to the raft of rumours that fly around China constantly.

And if you want a China Rhyming theme (history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme) then Foyle Hunwick refers to the spate of kidnappings now rampant, particularly in Shenzhen. Of course kidnapping was a criminal disease in the 1930s too, though mostly of the wealthy rather than children (and, again, should you wish to draw lessons from the one-child policy and forced social engineering from this then I won’t stop you!).

A fascinating article well worth a read.