Five have been killed by a driver who mowed his car into a crowd before getting out and throwing banknotes in the air.
Another 13 people were injured during the rush hour incident in Guangzhou on Wednesday evening.
The crash, which was filmed and shared widely on Chinese social media, has sparked outrage as the man is accused of deliberately targeting pedestrians.
In the clip, the driver can be seen opening the door, getting out of the vehicle and chucking a stack of banknotes into the air.
A 22-year-old man has been arrested.
Speaking with local outlet Hongxin News, an eyewitness said: "He deliberately drove into the people who were waiting for the traffic light. He rammed the car into them maliciously.
"After that, he made a U-turn and hit people again."
"He wasn't driving too quickly, but some people couldn't run away in time because they wouldn't have known he was hitting people deliberately," they added.
One witness wrote on Weibo: "There was a collective wail. Everyone ran."
The head of Guangzhou police added: "The driver... was taken in for questioning by police and the accident is currently the subject of a thorough investigation."
During the vehicular rampage, he also drove into a traffic cop who was on his motorcycle. Thankfully, the officer managed to escape, BBC reports.
In another clip, a young girl is seen lying on the ground after the crash. Her distraught mother can be seen crying and wailing beside her.
Posting on Weibo, another eyewitness described the aftermath.
They said that it took an hour for traffic police and ambulances to gridlock the busy section of road in the southern city.
They wrote: "They had not moved all the injured and the bodies from the scene [in that time]."
"The scene was too tragic and I couldn't bear seeing it. I felt so sad that I wanted to throw up whenever I heard the siren of the ambulance," the person said.
Many lamented the fact that the incident happened so close to the start of the Chinese New Year.
"The victims could be a girl who dressed up meticulously to go on a date… It could be a food deliveryman who earned five yuan after rushing an order.
"It could be a father who wanted to go home and have dinner with children. It could be a child who was happily shopping," one social media user wrote.
Many focused on the fact that the man was driving a luxury car. They wondered whether he came from a rich family.
In February last year, a mini truck driver killed three and injured nine when he ploughed into a crowd in Fujian, in the south of the country.
And this week, a hotel guest slammed his car into the lobby of a Shanghai hotel after a row with staff, but no one was injured.
