Remember the thugs that beat four young women eating in a restaurant in the middle of the night? We covered that story in our newsletters 69 and 70, with the viral video showing a group of men threatening to sexually harass young women eating in a restaurant and when the women refused to go along, the men beat them up savagely. The public was outraged and the discussion on the situations of the victims and the background of the criminals dominated social media, until the government put it out, as usual.
Unlike the protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, in China people don’t know who the four young women are and how they are doing. Rumours were spread on social media that some of them are dead. But no one has any first hand information on their health. Officially, two were lightly injured and did not stay in the hospital, and two stayed in the hospital for a few days and fully recovered.
Nine men were arrested by the police, on September 16th, Chinese media reported that they were tried in court on the 13th.
The costume impressed many people. No one can see the faces of the criminals!
On 23rd, the sentencing came. The lead criminal got 24 years in prison. People were shocked, obviously, 24 years is way too severe for two lightly injured women and two others a few days in the hospital. Many speculate that they were sentenced this way because they were part of local organized crime. Despite many women considering the case as one example of gender violence that is on steep rise in China, the government treated it as gang violence.
The media reported that upon hearing their sentencing, the lead criminal cried and said that he “does not deserve Tangshan, does not deserve the country.” Many readers asked, what about the victims? So the media added “does not deserve the victims” in their subsequent report. In Chinese, “does not deserve” is similar as saying “feels sorry to”.
Meanwhile, Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun were sentenced to death. Their death sentence is suspended for two years, and after two years, the sentence can/will be commuted to life in prison, with no possibility of parole.
Fu was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Public Security and Deputy Communist Party Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security in March 2013. Since 2015, Fu has served concurrently as the head of the 610 Office. He was also appointed as the Minister of Justice in 2018.
The 610 Office was a security agency in the People’s Republic of China. Named for the date of its creation on June 10, 1999, it was established for the purpose of coordinating and implementing the persecution of Falun Gong. In March, 2018, the office was reorganized and its functions delegated to the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission and the Ministry of Public Security.
Sun served as vice-minister of Public Security and vice-president of the China Law Society. Prior to that, he served as director of the First Bureau of Ministry of Public Security, handling domestic political security. And he served as the ministry’s director of the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs Office and a deputy director of the 610 Office.
Fu and Sun are both infamous for arresting human rights lawyers in 709 crackdown. They were the left and right arms of Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign. Last year when they fell, it was a big surprise to everyone. Of course, they were charged with corruption. But there is a more menacing charge: “Political Gang.”.
The “Sun Lijun Political Gang”, or “Sun Lijun Gang” for short, refers to the corrupt criminal group and political gang within the Party headed by Sun Lijun, former member of the Party Committee and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China, which was destroyed during the 19th CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping as the core. The documentary “Zero Tolerance” broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV) made public for the first time the gang and the crimes it was involved in.
The 5 episodes of “Zero Tolerance” are available on YouTube. Sun was accused of having too big political ambition. The gang has 6 members including Fu.
Xi went to Kazakhstan for the Shanghai corporation meeting to see Putin. When he came back, he did not show up in public for ten days. Chinese twitter went crazy with rumours that he was toppled by military coup. (#chinacoup was trending)
On the 27th, Xi showed up on state media. Of course, conspiracy lovers were quick to point out that itwas not real Xi, just one of his many doubles.
I really love this comment from Ms. Wang Yaqiu, a researcher at Human Rights Watch,
10 years ago when Xi came to power, it was the wishful thinking that he was going to be a reformer; now it is the wishful thinking of a coup. To my fellow Chinese: 天下没有不劳而获的好事. For any fundamental change to happen, it will require courage and sacrifice, a lot of them.
While Iranians are risking their lives for freedom, many Chinese feel simply ashamed they can’t do anything.
A twit quoting a Weibo comment about the news of Iranian people’s protest
I weep my misfortune and hate myself for not fighting.
The movie “Return to Dust” (see Newsletter 90) has now been totally cancelled. All online platforms inside China have deleted the video. The movie itself has returned to dust.
Li Jiaqi, number one internet influencer in China in June (see newsletter 67), resumed his livestreaming career on September 20th. Without him, sales of Taobao have been really bad. Maybe he can still save Chinese economy single-handedly?
“Born to Fly”, the movie we talked about in newsletter 92, was to be released in cinemas on September 30th. On the 28th, it was cancelled.
People being driven by buses to quarantine centres is one of the major tools of the COVID-zero policy. On the 19th of this month, a bus carrying 47 people crashed on the road and 27 people died. This has sparked an online protest:
It was a moment of collective grief and anger, with a heavy dose of shame, guilt and despair. After nearly three years of constant lockdowns, mass testing and quarantines, people asked how they could give the government the power to deprive them of their dignity, livelihood, mental health and even life; how they could fail to protect their loved ones from the “zero COVID” autocracy; and how long the craziness would last.
There is one joke that I saw on Twitter that quite well summarize this month of September:
Three brothers:
One is arresting those who don’t want to go to war.
One is arresting those who don’t want to wear hijab.
One is arresting those who don’t want to have PCR tests.