Chinese celebrated the attack, termed the shooter a 'hero' for gunning down Japan's former leader.
In China news of the assassination of Shinzo Abe was greeted with celebration by chinese party officials with several top ranking Chinese nationals calling the gunman 'a hero'.
After being shot Abe was airlifted to a hospital but he was not breathing and his heart had stopped, officials said. He was declared dead hours later. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters that police arrested the suspected gunman at the scene. “A barbaric act like this is absolutely unforgivable, no matter what the reasons are, and we condemn it strongly,” Matsuno said.
The former prime minister was assassinated by a 41 year old man who was arrested at the scene. As yet there has been no official explanation for the murder but it has been confirmed as political.
China have long been opponents of Abe's who pioneered a foreign policy geared to countering the expansion of China’s growing economic and military footprint in the Indo-Pacific that infuriated Beijing. China has spent two decades attempting to engulf the entire region with sources suggesting that they will invade Taiwan within the next year if unchecked. Shinzo Abe was the only politician who actively stood against China's expansion, giving China motive for the killing.
The Chinese embassy in Tokyo said in a statement that the government was “shocked” by Abe’s assassination and credited him with “the improvement and development of China-Japan relations.” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian refused to comment on Friday about netizens’ reactions. “This unexpected incident should not be linked to China-Japan relations,” he said.
The anti-Abe online commentary reflects how the Chinese educational system — geared to a national “patriotic education” curriculum threaded with a virulent anti-Japanese historical narrative — has conditioned a generation of young Chinese to revile Japan. They instill a hatred for Japan in their children, due to the second world war atrocities, which suits the communist party who use the hatred to garner support for their expansionist plans.