Jail time for a man in Nanjing handed down after he threw a kitchen knife and a pair of scissors from a tall building is highlighting the amendments to China’s criminal law which reveal the extent of what is an increasingly worrisome problem.
The confrontation unfolded one morning in May of last year in a residential community in Nanjing’s Gulou District.
There, on the seventh floor of an apartment building, the man in question demanded that his wife show him her WeChat. She refused, angering the man to the extent that he picked up a kitchen knife to threaten her.
But she was not for backing down, picking up a pair of scissors in defence. The man successfully disarmed his wife, but during the scuffle, her mobile phone fell from the window.
The man then impulsively threw the knife and scissors after it. Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident, but there was obviously the potential for a fatality.
In judgement, the man was handed 6 months in prison, suspended for 1 year, and a fine of ¥4,000 by the Nanjing Gulou District Court, reported The Paper yesterday, 6 April.
The decision was the result of amendments made to The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China in 2020, among which was Article 291(b) (Article 33 of Amendment XI to the Criminal Law); the “Crime of throwing objects from high buildings” (高空抛物罪).
It received that particular amendment for good reason. Stuff gets thrown out of the windows of tall buildings in China all the time.
Also in Nanjing, in June of 2019, a 10 year old girl received a head inquiry when a boy of similar age threw an egg from the window of a high rise on the city’s Dongbao Lu.
The incident prompted one residential community in Nanjing to go so far as to install skyward facing surveillance cameras to catch perpetrators, reported China Daily.
It may sound strange, but the phenomenon has been around in China for eons. In actual fact, it dates back to when the first tall buildings went up in Shanghai around The Bund at the turn of the 20th Century.
The problem was even prevalent enough for pedestrians to make a habit of shunning the pavements for fear of falling objects. The preference they adopted then for walking along the roads instead is still a common sight across China.