China executes student over hit-and-run murder

Yao Jiaxin

BEIJING — China on Tuesday executed a music student convicted of stabbing a woman to death after hurting her in a car crash, a crime that sparked national debate over China's "rich second generation."

Yao Jiaxin was executed after the high court in north China's Shaanxi province turned down his appeal over the April 22 death sentence, China Central Television reported.

The execution was also approved by China's Supreme People's Court, which noted the "extremely despicable and odious" nature of the crime, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Yao, 21, was convicted of murdering 26-year-old mother Zhang Miao on October 20 after hitting her with his car on the streets of the provincial capital of Xian.

Zhang, who was riding her bike, only suffered minor injuries in the accident but instead of helping the woman, Yao stabbed her eight times with a knife as she eyed his car number plate.

Yao, a student at the Xian Conservatory of Music, fled the scene but was later caught and, according to an earlier Xinhua report, confessed that he killed her because he feared the "peasant woman would be hard to deal with" over the accident.

The crime has prompted hand-wringing over the country's so-called "rich second generation."

The term is applied to the wealthy offspring of people who have prospered with China's economic opening of the past 30 years -- youths seen as expecting privilege and sometimes lacking in morals.

It follows another notorious incident involving a 23-year-old man, Li Qiming, who was sentenced to six years in prison in January after attempting to exploit his father's senior police rank to flee a fatal drink-driving accident.

After running over two young women on a college campus in north China, killing one, he shouted, "my father is Li Gang," and dared onlookers to try to stop him leaving the scene.

News reports said Yao's family was neither especially wealthy nor well connected, but that both his parents worked for companies in China's defence industry, which has boomed in recent years as the country has rapidly modernised its military.

Reaction to Tuesday's execution on the Chinese Internet was mixed, with some saying Yao's actions could be the result of the huge pressure to succeed heaped on many youngsters by their parents, sometimes at the expense of moral values.

"He shouldn't have been killed, what a pitiful kid. Why can't we have a little compassion -- this entire episode has been good for neither family," said a posting from a sina.com user in south China's Guangdong province.

Another user from the eastern province of Shandong identified as Fenfang said: "What good is a college student if they cannot have just a little bit of humanity? The execution of Yao Jiaxin is a necessary result of the crime."

Source: AFP, June 7, 2011

Chinese man executed for road-rage murder

Yao Jiaxin stabbed woman to death to prevent her from demanding compensation after he drove into her

Chinese authorities have executed a piano student who accidentally drove into a young mother and then stabbed her to death so she would not demand compensation.

The high-profile case has become a focus of massive public resentment towards a privileged elite, as well as a source of concern that lethal justice is being handed down to placate internet mobs.

Yao Jiaxin, a 21-year-old student of the Xian Conservatory of Music, was killed – probably by lethal injection – shortly after losing an appeal at the supreme people's court.

He was sentenced in April for the murder of 26-year-old Zhang Miao in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province.

Yao knocked his victim off her bike and then flew into a fury when he saw her noting down his licence plate – apparently to seek compensation for her minor injuries.

"Yao stabbed the victim's chest, stomach and back several times until she died. The motive was extremely despicable, the measures extremely cruel and the consequences extremely serious," the court said in a statement released through the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The road-rage incident gained nationwide notoriety among China's online community, who are inclined to suspect that the so-called "rich second generation" – young people with power and money – can avoid justice by using their connections.

The case was widely – although in many ways inappropriately – connected to a separate drink-driving fatality in which the son of a senior police officer reportedly shouted to bystanders that he could avoid prosecution because "My father is Li Gang".

Yao was not from a particularly wealthy or powerful family, but his piano education and the fact that his parents are employment by the defence industry appear to have added to the hatred generated by his crime. Suspicions were raised further when the propaganda department insisted media outlets could only use Xinhua reports about the issue rather than making their own investigations.

There were tens of thousands of comments on internet chatrooms, the vast majority of which demanded his death. Many feared this put undue pressure on judges, particularly after a lower court acknowledged that public opinion would be taken into account when delivering a verdict.

However, the lawyer Mo Shaoping – who is not connected to the case and opposes the death penalty – said the execution was in line with Chinese law. "This was a very flagrant crime that would normally be punishable by death. With or without the media exposure, he would be executed," said Mo.

Source: The Guardian, June 7, 2011
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