A knife-wielding man killed three people and injured four in central China on Thursday following a work dispute, police said, the latest in a series of knife attacks in the country.

A 40-year-old worker named Wang Xiang slashed three people with a kitchen knife at an office in the city of Wuhan and then fled by car, hitting four bystanders at an intersection.

"Police were immediately dispatched to the scene, where they decisively opened fire, hitting Wang who was then subdued," Wuhan police said in an official microblog post.

Three people died of their wounds and four were receiving treatment. The attack was under investigation, police said, without giving further details.

The official Xinhua news agency said Wang had just been fired.

Violent crime is rare in China compared with many other countries, and gun ownership is strictly controlled. But there has been a series of knife attacks in recent years, many targeting children.

In May, two people were killed in southwest China by a knife-wielding man suspected of suffering mental illness. Another man with a knife killed two people and injured nine in a Wal-Mart supermarket in the southern city of Shenzhen earlier this month.