A knife-wielding man attacked a kindergarten class of 4-year-olds in eastern China today, slashing 28 children in what an expert said was a copycat rampage of two other episodes at Chinese schools in the past month.

A 47-year-old jobless man, Xu Yuyuan, burst into a classroom at the Zhongxin Kindergarten early Thursday, waving an eight-inch knife and stabbing a security guard who tried to stop him, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.