Chinese social media companies condemn hate speech against Japanese after knife attack

China's top social media companies have condemned online hate speech targeting Japanese, delivering a vigorous response to comments triggered by a knife attack last week that killed one person and injured a Japanese mother and child.

Such waves of sentiment, and a vocal nationalist element, are not uncommon, but companies from WeChat-owner Tencent, to TikTok's ByteDance-owned sister-site Douyin, Weibo and NetEase, condemned last week's remarks.

"These comments have disrupted the positive and peaceful atmosphere of the platform and even incited unlawful behavior," Douyin said in an online post on Sunday, citing "extreme and erroneous statements" that were "promoting xenophobia".

This surprising given that past actions by the Chinese government.  In the past they've encouraged anti-Japanese sentiment which has led to Japanese owned or themed business being attacked by angry mobs.