IN OCTOBER last year Yao Jiaxin, a talented young music student at the prestigious Xi’an Conservatory of Music, knocked down Zhang Miao, a 26-year-old waitress, in his Chevrolet Cruze as she cycled home from work.
Worried that the mother of one would remember his number plate and report him to the police, the student stabbed her eight times.
The case has horrified China, and prompted outpourings of anger about abuse of power by the country’s growing ranks of newly rich. This week Yao (21) was executed for the murder of Ms Zhang in the capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi province.
The execution, aimed at showing that privilege is no protection in the eyes of the law, was swift. While his family was not especially rich or powerful, Yao came from a solid middle-class background, a core support base for the Chinese Communist Party.
The Xi’an Intermediate People’s Court handed down the death sentence for intentional killing on April 22nd, and Yao’s appeal was rejected by the Shaanxi Provincial Higher People’s Court on May 20th. He confessed to killing Ms Zhang because the “peasant woman would be hard to deal with”. The case has caused a major sensation on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of the banned Twitter, with more than a million micro blog postings mentioning the execution. As part of new efforts to reduce the number of death sentences, the Supreme People’s Court reviews every such sentence before execution. There would be no mercy for Yao.
“Yao, after running into the victim, stabbed the victim’s chest, stomach and back several times until she died. His motive was extremely despicable, his actions extremely cruel and the consequences extremely severe,” the court said a statement, quoted by the Xinhua news agency.
The Communist Party is aware that the biggest cause of social unrest, and the most serious threat to its single-party rule, is a feeling among the common people that the “second-generation rich”, China’s army of newly wealthy, abuse their privileged positions at the expense of the peasantry.
The government fears such abuse of power can fuel what it calls “mass incidents” such as petitions, demonstrations and strikes, both peaceful and violent. There were 280,000 such “incidents” in 2010, a steep rise from 87,000 in 2005, according to the ministry of public security.
Late last year, a drunk Li Qiming knocked down two rollerblading students outside Hebei University, killing one and injuring the other. When intercepted by security guards and students, he said “Sue me if you dare. My dad is Li Gang,” referring to his local police chief father.
He escaped execution but was jailed for six years and ordered to pay compensation. After the second trial of Yao, an online survey by sina.com.cn of 40,000 respondents showed that 67 per cent supported the death penalty while 13 per cent thought he should be given a second chance.
His father, Yao Qingwei, apologised on his microblog to Ms Zhang’s family and to “all Chinese people” for what his son had done. His son’s last wish had been for his parents to visit the dead woman’s parents and two-year-old son.
“Yao Jiaxin committed an unforgivable crime; his mother and I are filled with anger as well as pain. We sincerely apologise to Zhang’s family for the hurt our son had caused,” Yao Qingwei wrote.