China's leaders urge investigation into Zhuhai car attack that killed 35

Zhuhai, China: China's top leaders have urged "all-out efforts" to treat those injured in a car attack in southern China, one of the deadliest incidents in the country's recent history, as online posts asking what the attack says about Chinese society were censored.

Chinese authorities took almost 24 hours to officially disclose that a driver on Monday evening rammed his car into a crowd at a sports centre in Zhuhai, killing 35 people and severely injuring 43 others.

President Xi Jinping and the country's No.2 official Li Qiang both urged local authorities to treat the wounded and begin an investigation into the case, China's state-run Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday evening.

"Xi urged all localities and relevant authorities to draw lessons from the case, and to strengthen their prevention and control of risks at the source," the article said.

Li Qiang, China's Premier, "urged coordinated risk prevention and control efforts to ensure social stability," the report added.

The attack has shocked Chinese society, which takes pride in its public security, and has prompted questions on social media about what a rise in reports of violent crimes in large cities says about the state of their country.

In October, a knife attack in Beijing left five people wounded outside one of the city's top primary schools. A month earlier, a Japanese student was fatally stabbed outside his school in Shenzhen.

"Imagine if China had guns. We would all be killing each other," one person wrote on Chinese social media on Tuesday evening in a post that was removed by censors by Wednesday morning.

The candles and flowers that had been laid at the scene on Tuesday evening at the sports centre's west gate had all been removed overnight, a Reuters reporter on the scene said.

The area close to the west side of the sports centre had been blocked with metal barriers with security standing around it.

Police said the 62-year-old driver, surnamed Fan, had been upset about the split of assets in a divorce settlement

"How can someone use such a bloody and violent way to vent their emotions because of a personal grudge and use innocent people as the object of revenge," one person asked on social media.

"(The attack) is the embodiment of the complete degeneration of human nature," they added.

Others questioned whether the institutions in China that govern public life were up to the task, such as whether the driver's divorce had gone to arbitration and if the process had then taken too long or been unfair in some way.

As China's top officials urged local cadres to take steps to prevent such attacks from happening again, other people talked up the prospects of autonomous vehicles.

"This incident has taught us a lesson: stone pillars should be erected in public places like stadiums to prevent vehicles from entering... then there is the promotion of smart driving," one Weibo user wrote.

"The car will stall when it detects a deliberate collision."