Chinese student targeted in 'racially motivated' attack in New Zealand

The Chinese consulate in Auckland has urged the local police to investigate a "racially motivated" attack on a Chinese teenager.

The 16-year-old was attacked by an unidentified person on a bus in the city at around 9am on Friday - a public holiday to mark Matariki, the Māori New Year.

The boy has lived in New Zealand for seven years, according to The New Zealand Herald, which said he had been attacked by a woman with a metal bar.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

The boy, who did not want to be named, told the newspaper "a woman started verbally abusing me and then immediately started to physically abuse me."

The newspaper described the incident as "racially motivated" and said the woman had shouted racial slurs at the boy before attacking him, knocking out three of his teeth and damaging another two.

According to Mao Peng, an independent Chinese journalist based in Auckland who goes by the name "Portia" on X, formerly Twitter, a 75-year-old Chinese man on the bus intervened and prevented the boy from suffering further injury.

The man told Mao that shortly before the bus started, a passenger who appeared to be a heavyset Maori woman in her 40s got on carrying a metre-long iron bar.

Mao also managed to speak to the boy's mother, who said her family migrated to New Zealand about seven years ago. She said her son was on the way to play basketball with his friends at the time of the attack.

The Chinese consulate in Auckland said it was "deeply shocked and saddened" and had activated its consular emergency response mechanism as soon as it learned about the incident, and had contacted the family to express its condolences.

Police told the newspaper they are still searching for the attacker.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a visit to New Zealand in March, the most senior Chinese official to visit the country since 2017.

Wang described China's relations with New Zealand as "a force for stability" and announced that New Zealand citizens would be able to visit the country without a visa for stays of 15 days or fewer.

Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the nationalist tabloid Global Times, wrote on the social media platform Weibo that "Chinese people face far more risks outside their country than foreigners do in China".

Last week a Chinese woman was killed when she came to the aid of a Japanese woman and child who were attacked by a man armed with a knife in the eastern city of Suzhou.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.