BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police on Tuesday shot and wounded a man in downtown Beijing who resisted arrest after killing one person and injuring several others with a kitchen knife, the city's police said on their official microblog.

They identified the suspect as a 29-year-old man surnamed Song from the northeastern province of Heilongjiang and said the motive for the knife attack on a street in Beijing's Chaoyang district was under investigation.

The suspect and the victims were taken to hospital, police said. His injury was not critical, they said without giving further details.

Public sensitivity to knife attacks in China has been heightened by a series of incidents, including a mass stabbing at a train station in March 2014 in the southwestern city of Kunming that left 31 dead.

Last month, a lone attacker stabbed a French man and a Chinese woman in a popular Beijing shopping complex, killing the woman.

Violent crime is rare in China, compared with many other countries, but there has been a series of knife and axe attacks in recent years, many on school children.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Shanghai; Editing by Nick Macfie)