Following rare mass protests that broke out in the city of Jiangyou in Sichuan province earlier this month in response to the bullying of a 14-year-old girl, CDT Chinese editors have tracked unusually intense online censorship of related videos, photos, hashtags, articles, comments, and other content.
The protests were sparked by a July 22 incident of verbal and physical abuse against a girl by three other teenaged girls in an abandoned building. Footage of the abuse taken by bystanders spread online, and although the incident was reported to city police the same evening, it was not until August 2 that police finally brought the girls in for questioning. Two days later, the police issued a statement announcing that two of the bullies had been sent to correctional school and that another, along with some of the bystanders, had been given formal reprimands. The slap-on-the-wrist punishment for such a serious assault—along with the fact that the girl, whose mother is deaf and whose father is a migrant worker, had been frequently bullied beforehand—provoked public outrage.
Hundreds of local residents gathered in front of Jiangyou City Hall to support the family and protest officials’ callous handling of the case. Protest videos shared online showed the crowd arguing with local officials, singing the national anthem, shouting slogans such as “No to bullying” and “Give us back democracy.” As the crowds grew, a large number of police were dispatched to “maintain order.” The police used batons and pepper spray on the protesters, many of whom were arrested and carted away in red trucks usually used to transport pigs. Videos shared online showed people bloodied, beaten, and being removed from the protest site. Suppression continued until the following morning, and military trucks equipped with cell-phone signal jammers appeared on the scene. (For additional Chinese-language video content, see below for CDT Chinese’s CDTV compilation about the protests, and “The Jiangyou Incident,” a YouTube documentary from @YesterdayBigcat.)
A “Sensitive Words” post from CDT Chinese lists many of the hashtags that were censored on Weibo, including those that were scrubbed from the trending topics list, banned outright, or muted by being search- or comment-blocked:
On August 5th, the Mianyang City Public Security Bureau issued a statement saying that they had punished two people for spreading rumors online, and refuting some online rumors claiming that the bullies had parents who were, variously, “a lawyer,” “a deputy director of the Jiangyou Public Security Bureau,” or “a Jiangyou city police supervisor.”
CDT Chinese editors noted that many hashtags about the bullying case emerged but quickly disappeared from Weibo’s trending topics list, particularly between August 4-5. Among these were: “#Two bullies who beat 14-year-old girl sent to correctional school,” “#Jiangyou bullying,” “#Lawyer responds to after-school beating of 14-year-old girl,” and “#Jiangyou officials refute rumors that bullies were officials’ kids.”
Some hashtags have been banned, such as “#Jiangyou bullying,” “#Police report after-school beating of 14-year-old girl,” “#Minor assaulted in Jiangyou was frequently bullied,” and “#Jiangyou bully taunts, ‘It’s not like I’ve never been to jail before!’”
According to Teacher Li’s X account (@whyyoutouzhele), several other hashtags have also been banned on Weibo: “#Jiangyou police beat people,” “#Jiangyou campus bullying,” and “#People beaten in Jiangyou.”
At least two other hashtags (“#Bullied Jiangyou girl’s mother is deaf,” “#Bullying of a minor in Jiangyou, Sichuan”) appear to have been search-blocked on Weibo, with queries displaying only one or two results from verified user accounts.
Other hashtags show high readership numbers but suspiciously low numbers of reader comments, suggesting that comments on them have been restricted. These comment-restricted hashtags include: “#Two bullies who beat 14-year-old girl sent to correctional school,” “#Police respond to online rumors about the occupations of Jiangyou bullies’ parents,” “#Two punished for fabricating rumors about Jiangyou bullying incident,” “#Jiangyou officials refute rumors that bullies were officials’ kids,” “#Minors who beat 14-year-old girl detained,” “#Still no apologies from Jiangyou bullies’ families,” and “#It’s time to end lenient punishments for minors who commit crimes.” [Chinese]
CDT Chinese editors have also archived nine articles and essays—at least two of which have since been censored—about the bullying case and subsequent protests. A now-deleted WeChat article from Li Yuchen describes scenes of protesters being shoved or dragged away by “black-clad police officers,” and is harshly critical of both the violent crackdown and the assuaging statements issued by the police. Another post concerns a now-deleted Zhihu question asking users their opinions on the bullying incident and the subsequent protests. Among the Zhihu user responses: “Are they [the police] really trying to bring the situation under control, or are they simply trying to take advantage of the situation by escalating the conflict?” and “There’s nothing unusual about the protest. It’s just that this time, they were a bit slow to censor news of it.” CDT has also translated a portion of an excellent long-form article from the “Aquarius Eras” Substack that includes interviews with a number of local residents explaining why they felt compelled to join the protests in support of the bullied girl Lin Yu and her family.
