Cyberspace is a place that is not beyond the law

There has been an outpouring of public condolences and grief after Hu Youping died on Wednesday having been fatally injured trying to save the lives of a mother and child.

The 54-year-old school bus attendant has touched people's hearts with the courage and kindness she demonstrated in trying to stop a knife attack on a Japanese mother and her daughter at a school bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, on Monday last week.

The mother and daughter were also injured, but not fatally, before Hu bravely put herself forward to stop the assault by a 52-year-old unemployed man, who was arrested at the scene.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has also expressed condolences to Hu's family. In a statement on Hu's death issued on Friday, the Japanese embassy in China, which flew the Japanese national flag at half-mast in her honor that day, said: "We believe (Hu's) courage and kindness represent that of the Chinese people. We pay tribute to her noble deed."

The public security case, although tragic, would not have made the waves it has were it not for some extreme opinions that appeared online with the obvious aim of inciting group hatred against the Japanese people.

The accounts spreading these views on social networking platforms even applauded the criminal behavior of the attacker targeting Japanese children in the name of "patriotism" as a "delayed but righteous fight back" to let the Japanese repay the "historical debt" they have long owed to the Chinese people stemming from their acts of aggression against China from the late 19th century to World War II.

It is absolutely necessary for the social media platforms to act promptly to remove these posts and shut down relevant accounts according to relevant laws and regulations.

The platform companies should take advantage of more technological means to further improve the efficiency of their monitoring so that they can discover and prevent such harmful and extreme views finding a gullible audience.

The network administrative authorities should also trace the online marketing accounts that fabricate and spread harmful extreme views in a bid to grab eyeballs and take concrete actions to eliminate the space in which such views can spread. Cyberspace should not be a land beyond the law. These moves are all necessary to create a clean and healthy environment where people can express themselves in a rational way.

A person's feeling of attachment to their country should not override their humanity or common sense. Those trying to hijack public opinion with their "patriotism" are harming the country by misleading society and ruining its international image. What they actually peddle is nothing but extreme xenophobia or narrow nationalism that brooks no inclusive or open attitudes to the rest of the world.