Online and Offline Tributes Paid to Suzhou's School-Bus Attendant Heroine Hu Youping

Online and offline tributes continue to pour in for Hu Youping, the Chinese school bus attendant who was fatally stabbed when she tried to prevent a knife-wielding man from attacking Japanese schoolchildren and parents at a bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu province last week. Initial online reactions to the Suzhou stabbings were mixed, with many commentators and ordinary netizens expressing shock at the attack and sympathy for the victims, while some ultra-nationalist social media accounts used the incident to spread anti-Japanese hate-speech and baseless conspiracy theories about Japanese "Spy-training" schools. In China and Japan, there were numerous tributes to Hu Youping's heroism: the Japanese embassy in Beijing lowered its flag to half-mast and posted condolence messages on Weibo and X; Tianjin Radio and Television Tower had a light display in Hu's honor; citizens left bouquets of flowers at the site of the attack; and the city of Suzhou awarded Hu the posthumous title of "Role Model of Righteousness and Courage." Popular Chinese news outlets Southern Weekend and Phoenix News ran profiles of Hu, featuring photos from her social media accounts and providing more detail about her life, work, interests, and personal history. CDT editors have archived numerous recent articles and essays about the Suzhou stabbings and the need to curb xenophobic anti-Japanese online content, as well as several compilation posts of netizen comments praising Hu Youping for her bravery and sacrifice. Before Chinese social media platforms announced their crackdowns on extreme anti-Japanese content, there was some censorship of more progressive online voices, including the deletion of several essays criticizing inadequate media coverage of the Suzhou attack, debunking conspiracy theories about Japanese schools, and suggesting links between online ultranationalist content and offline attacks against foreigners in China. "While There Are Still Japanese Schools, Please Cherish Them," a now-deleted article by prolific WeChat blogger and former print journalist Zhang Feng, discusses some questions about the stabbing, debunks some of the conspiracy theories about Japanese schools in China, and notes past anti-Japanese incidents in Suzhou, including the case of a young Chinese woman who was detained and interrogated by police simply for wearing a Japanese kimono. A censored article from the WeChat account iSee, titled "Japanese Schools, Spy Schools?," also debunks some of the wilder rumors about Japanese schools in China, and explains that the curricula at these schools are designed for Japanese students who wish to later apply to Japanese universities-much like the curricula at American, British, and other accredited international schools in China.