Factory Employee Kills 6 in China HONG KONG - A factory employee in Shanghai bludgeoned a colleague to death and shot dead five other people in a spasm of violence apparently set off by a business dispute, the city's police authority said Sunday. It was a rare instance of a gun rampage in China, where few civilians own firearms. On Saturday, the employee, identified by only his last name, Fan, is said to have used a tool from the chemical plant where he had worked to fatally beat a colleague, and then grabbed a hunting rifle hidden in the factory's living quarters, the Shanghai Bureau of Public Security said on its Web site. Mr. Fan got into a private vehicle - the statement did not specify what kind - and killed the driver, and then a soldier who was guarding army barracks. Mr. Fan returned to the factory and killed three more people. Four people were injured. Police officers who had gone to investigate the initial killing at the factory caught Mr. Fan there near midnight. The episode was rare and alarming enough to prompt the national Ministry of Public Security to convene an emergency video meeting and demand a nationwide check on the availability of firearms. China is not immune to crimes of violent rage, despite the sweeping powers wielded by the police. But few civilians have permits to own firearms, and shooting rampages are rare. Meng Jianzhu, the secretary of the Communist Party committee that runs the legal and police apparatus, and Guo Shengkun, the minister of public security, issued orders for the case to be promptly investigated and to "resolutely strike hard against violent criminal activities that seriously menace public safety, ensuring overall social stability," the Ministry of Public Security said on its Web site. The official statements did not give details about the business dispute involving Mr. Fan, who is in his early 60s. One former employee at the chemical factory said Mr. Fan was embroiled in a conflict with the owner, according the Xinmin Evening News, a newspaper in Shanghai. The official statements and news reports did not say whether Mr. Fan had admitted responsibility for the shootings. In 1995, in the country's worst mass shooting by civilians in recent memory, two men in northeast China killed 32 people. Many cases of violent outbursts in recent years, however, have involved men wielding knives or cleavers. In 2008, a Shanghai man, Yang Jia, stabbed six police officers to death and was subsequently convicted and executed. Some people sympathetic to Mr. Yang said he was mentally ill and was the victim of beatings and abuse by the police.