Why experts say China urgently needs to intervene to stop ‘lone wolf’ killings

China needs a crisis intervention system to identify high-risk individuals to help prevent the kinds of “lone wolf” attacks that have left more than 40 people dead this month, according to two legal experts.

“We need to put more effort into mental health crisis intervention and conflict resolution, and urgently establish a systematic prevention mechanism,” the experts said in an article published on Chinese news site Guancha.cn on Monday.

The authors – Gao Yandong, deputy dean of the Institute of Digital Rule of Law at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, and research assistant Liu Yicen – cited two deadly attacks this month as examples of how China’s public security system needed to provide “clear legal bases and operational norms” for “identifying high-risk individuals”.

The first case involved a vehicle ramming in the southern city of Zhuhai in which 35 people died and the second was a stabbing in the eastern province of Jiangsu that killed eight.

Authorities said the suspect in the Zhuhai attack was upset about a divorce ruling, while the 21-year-old Jiangsu stabbing suspect was a university student who had been denied his graduation certificate after failing exams and was also angry about the low pay he received as a factory intern.

In both cases, the suspects should have received psychological help, Gao and Liu said in the article.