Chapter Dive

No Tolerance for ‘Wild Imams’ in China – But ‘Weibo Imams’ are Thriving

This week, Weibo netizens voiced their anger about what they deemed an unfair trial for a Xinjiang imam by the District Court. Although Chinese authorities have no tolerance for what they call ‘wild imams’, online imams are thriving on Weibo.

Published

10 years ago

March 15, 2016

Manya Koetse

This week, Weibo netizens voiced their anger about what they deemed an unfair trial for a Xinjiang imam by the District Court. Chinese authorities have no tolerance for what they call ‘wild imams’ – but online imams are thriving on Weibo.

In November 2014, Chinese media and Reuters reported that China was targeting ‘wild imams’, jailing almost two dozen people who preached illegally in the western region of Xinjiang, where the government is countering violent campaigns by Islamist Uighur militants who want to establish a separate state, also referred to as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

This week, Weibo netizens voice their anger about the trial procedures for one imam case. According to one netizen‘s post, the convicted imam’s lawyer did not show up in the Xinjiang district court for the appeal as he would not “defend the guilty”.

China’s Campaign against Religious Extremism

China has implemented several measures the past few years to keep religious expressions to a minimum after a string of attacks allegedly committed by Chinese Muslim extremists. Xinjiang authorities became extra strict about the ‘promotion of religious extremist ideology’. The wearing of the burqa was banned in February 2015, along with the wearing or using of religious badges, artifacts, memorabilia and symbols. This also meant no niqabs, hijabs or large beards in buses.

As part of China’s crackdown on ‘terrorist criminals’ and campaign against ‘religious extremism’, 22 people from Xinjiang were sentenced to jail in November 2014. They were sentenced from 5 to up to 16 years in prison for three different types of religious crimes. The first crime category was that of people engaging in ‘illegal preaching’ – also referred to as ‘wild imams’. The second type was that of people who were still engaged in illegal religious work after being removed from their post, and the third was that of people committing illegal acts while working as a religious person (China News 2014).

40435030 The ‘mass sentencing’ of ‘religious offenders’ in 2014, image via China News.

The case that received attention on Sina Weibo this week was referred to as the “imam teaching Koran case”, and involved an imam from Xinjiang who was reportedly arrested for illegally teaching the Koran to 17 students in the mosque.

This Weibo post, by a user nicknamed Nuh Zam Zam, was first spotted by PhD researcher Tricia Kehoe (see tweet below). She also tweeted the court case document that was uploaded by the original Weibo poster. The document states that the Yili court is reexamining the case because of “inappropriate original punishment” (“原判量刑不当”).

On Weibo: Much anger among Uyghur netizens about blatantly unfair trial of Iman arrested for teaching Koran pic.twitter.com/eQEXw4R2aY

— Tricia Kehoe (@triciamkehoe) March 14, 2016

Netizen Nuh Zam Zam, who describes himself as a Muslim “fighting for constitutional rights, defending freedom of religion”, writes on his Weibo page:

“[Yili Prefecture in Xinjiang reinvestigates the ‘teaching-Koran case’:] When one imam in Huocheng County taught Koran lessons to 17 citizens in the mosque, he and the mosque Rector were sentenced to five and four years in prison for ‘gathering a crowd and disturbing public order’. The Yili middle court already rejected their appeal before, and affirmed the original sentence. The other day, Yili court hurriedly re-examined the case again because of “inappropriate sentencing”, but the lawyer did not show up because he would “not defend the guilty”. Yili has more similar ‘trials’.“

This post was shared over 60 times and attracted dozens of comments that were filtered by Weibo censors. “It’s not like they were lecturing about stoning or whipping, that would’ve really deserved punishment,” one Weibo user responds.

Another netizen says: “If you’re guilty, you’re guilty – that’s the law.” One Weibo user responds: “This is a typical case of policies exceeding the constitution. What a disgrace!”

Islam is permitted in China, as long as it conforms to state-approved principles. Instead of guaranteeing free exercise of religion, the Chinese constitution only guarantees freedom of religious belief. In other words; you can believe what you want, but how you engage with your religion in everyday life has to comply with what the state deems right (also read How Chinese are China’s Muslims?, 2015).

Amnesty International has reported harsh measures taken by Chinese authorities to suppress unrest in the northwest, including unfair trials. “The fight against terrorism is no excuse for repression,” says Amnesty.

Will the ‘Real’ Imam Please Stand Up?

A ‘wild imam‘ (野阿訇) is an ‘imam’ without an official position as a religious person. These imams are thus not appointed or approved by the government.

According to Wang Hong, director of China’s Research Center for National Security, there can be no place in China for ‘wild imams’ and their illegal preaching activities. The root cause of terrorism, Wang writes in Chinese media outlet Global Times, is its nature as an ideology. Wang suggests that Muslim separatist group ETIM uses “distortions of Islam” ideology to gain their followers, and that this is mostly done by ‘wild imams’. This explains China’s zero tolerance policy towards imams preaching in communities and ‘influencing people’ without the consent of (local) authorities.

Through social media, the Public Security Office of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region warns netizens for the dangers of underground lecture classes run by ‘wild imams’ who could potentially harm children both mentally, by influencing them with extremist ideas, and physically, such as the wild imam who allegedly beat a 4-year-old pupil to death for not knowing the scriptures (see featured image and image below, both by Xjgat.gov.cn).

xinjianggov

On the Xinjiang Review blog, Professor Ma Haiyun, specialised in Islam and Muslims of China, writes that China’s definition of ‘wild imams’ asks for new basic definitions of what an imam is, and calls for further investigation into the legal processes for becoming an official imam in China.

According to Ma, an imam basically is a Muslim religious worker and/or a Muslim theological intellectual. Although the “ideal imam” has both the career and the knowledge, an imam could also be a Muslim intellectual without the official post. But in China, Ma writes, this definition does not hold, as only those imams who have been officially appointed count as the ‘real’ ones. The so-called ‘wild imam’ arguably does have the knowledge and community leadership that can potentially influence people, but has no official job as religious worker.

Ma writes that the distinction between real imams and wild imams is problematic, as many Uighur Muslims might have more trust in so-called ‘wild imams’ than in the ‘real’ ones that are approved and appointed by government authorities.

But it is very likely that Chinese authorities, in their turn, have no trust in those powerful imams who are most respected by local communities. This triggers the question of who the ‘real’ imam is actually is.

Preaching Online: ‘Weibo Imams’

Although ‘wild imams’ are generally not tolerated in the PRC, ‘Weibo imams’ are. There are quite some imams who have verified Weibo accounts from which they post videos or microblogs about Islamic teachings.

imam

One of Weibo’s imams is Imam Mu Huaidong, a Beijing-based imam from the Deshengmen Mosque with over 8100 followers. Mu Huaidong uses his Weibo page to share different news items and to talk about the mosque’s charity work.

Li Haiyang from Henan has nearly 8000 followers. One of his most popular recent posts is about Islamic diet, titled “Raising some Awareness about Islamic Dietary Law” (“关于清真食品立法的几点认识“). The blog, that was posted on March 10, talks about imposing national standards on halal food in China. Li Haiyang writes that all Muslims should follow the classic rules and abide by their beliefs, of which Islamic dietary laws are an important part, and that the PRC cannot discriminate against Muslim ethnic groups by refusing to legally protect Muslim halal food.

The imam’s post was shared over 460 times and attracted many comments, also of many netizens who strongly oppose the imam’s views: “China is a secular country ruled by an atheist Party, and firmly boycotts Islamic laws!”, some netizens say. But others support the imam saying: “Please don’t let the nonsense here get to you, imam, just stand firm.”

Another example of a Weibo imam is Imam Ma Guangyue from Gansu, who has over 15400 fans on his Weibo account. His most recent post, that was shared 413 times, is a video where he addresses the question ‘is it allowed for Muslims to marry Han Chinese?’. In the video, he explains how Chinese Muslims are only allowed to marry other Muslims and should not marry Han Chinese who have not converted to Islam.

weiboimam

“Stoning people, beheading people and oppressing children and women – such an evil cult,” one netizen responds on the imam’s page. “No matter what religion or ethnicity,” another Weibo user responds: “There will be good and bad people everywhere.” The imam’s Weibo page is a collection of hundreds of comments of netizens discussing and arguing over Muslim religion, with many attacking it and others supporting it. The imam’s posts, nevertheless, are well-read and shared collectively by Weibo’s netizens.

There are more examples of Weibo imams, such as, amongst others, Han Daoliang from Zhengzhou, or Imam Yong Shengmu from Xi’an.

All of Weibo’s popular verified imams are from outside China’s muslim region Xinjiang. This is possibly because China’s strict religious policies are mainly aimed at the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, while there are softer approaches to religion in other provinces of China (Ma & Chang 2014). This status quo means that it’s uncommon to see news of ‘wild imams’ outside Xinjiang, just as it will be less likely to see a ‘Weibo imam’ from Xinjiang.

Except for ‘Weibo imams’, there are a myriad of Weibo accounts that support them and propagate Islam. Meanwhile, on the Weibo page of Nuh Zam Zam, the discussion on the trial of the Xinjiang imam continues. There may be no place for ‘wild imams’ in China, but these ‘Weibo muslims’ make the religion alive and kicking on China’s social media.

– By Manya Koetse
Follow @WhatsOnWeibo

Related Topics:Chinese social media islam in china religion in china Sina Weibo

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Manya Koetse

Manya Koetse is a sinologist, writer, and public speaker specializing in China’s social trends, digital culture, and online media ecosystems. She founded What’s on Weibo in 2013 and now runs the Eye on Digital China newsletter. Learn more at manyakoetse.com or follow her on X, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

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Chapter Dive

China’s CITIC Tower Crash: The Story That Never Trended

How information surrounding the CITIC Tower crash was managed, from a five-day media blackout to a sixth-day official narrative.

Published

2 weeks ago

July 2, 2026

Manya Koetse

🔎 Originally published in Eye on Digital China.
My premium newsletter covering the stories, memes, debates, and viral moments shaping online conversations in China. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

The story that never went trending was undoubtedly the biggest story of the week. On June 26, an incident at the Beijing landmark CITIC Tower (aka China Zun 中国尊) in the Chaoyang central business district sparked disbelief online. At 5:55 pm local time, a small plane, a Sunward SA60L Aurora, crashed into the tower, after which wreckage from the small aircraft fell to the street below (video).

For those who immediately responded to the incident on social media, it seemed unimaginable that this had happened in the capital. Beijing is one of the most heavily defended airspace zones in China. Since May of this year, recreational drones are also banned in Beijing, with outdoor flights requiring prior approval from authorities.

“A small plane hit CITIC Tower??? How could something like this happen? What happened to the air defense capabilities in our core restricted zone???“ one Weibo commenter wrote on Friday night.

After videos and images of the incident spread, online discussions were swiftly and thoroughly censored. That same day, while media outlets around the world began reporting on the crash, it did not appear among the top 50 trending topics on Chinese platforms—in fact, it wasn’t reported anywhere at all. As related keywords and hashtags were taken offline, it quickly became clear that this was the “6.26 Incident That Shall Not Be Mentioned.”

Even the next day, when Chaoyang authorities issued a brief official notice, republished by state media, the name of the tower was never mentioned, just that “a single-engine, two-seat light sport aircraft collided with a high-rise building during flight,” and that an investigation was underway. The one person on board, the pilot, died in the crash. Thirteen others were injured.

Later, flight tracking data revealed that the aircraft had taken off from Shifosi Airport, northeast of Beijing, and had come close to a Hainan Airlines passenger jet, forcing at least two commercial flights to abort their landings.

For the five days following the incident, little to no official information was available on the highly unusual incident. Meanwhile, Chinese authorities reportedly ordered a nationwide suspension of most general aviation activities, including recreational flying.

Why the CITIC Tower Incident Triggered an Information Blackout

But why has the censorship surrounding this incident been so intense, leading online censors to scrub all footage and discussion of it from the internet?

This has to do with the nature of the incident.

It is not uncommon for major incidents to be heavily censored, especially when the details surrounding them are still unfolding. But this kind of information “blackout” generally occurs only when incidents are considered particularly sensitive, and the regular toolkits used to manage and control information are no longer deemed sufficient.

Some examples include:

▪️The 2011 Wenzhou Train Crash, which happened at a time when the prestige and reliability of China’s high-speed rail system was celebrated as a flagship national project.

▪️The 2013 Tiananmen SUV ‘Suicide Attack’, which happened in a tightly guarded, already politically sensitive public space and the symbolic heart of the state.

▪️The 2022 Anti-Party Protest Banner at Sitong Bridge, which happened just before the opening of the 20th Party Congress that confirmed Xi Jinping’s unprecedented third term.

▪️The 2024 Beishan Park Stabbings of American Tourists, which happened just as China’s inbound tourism was beginning to recover in the post-COVID era and “China is safe” narratives were playing an increasingly important role in official messaging.

All of these incidents are different in nature, but what they have in common is not just that they are examples of bad news being suppressed, but that they reflect a specific pattern in which news that is bad for the Party-state is suppressed. In their own ways, these incidents—and the discussions and speculation surrounding them—challenge one or more foundational narratives about the competence of China’s leadership, its modernization, its security, its stability, and its capacity to maintain social order.

📌 The 6.26 CITIC Tower incident is particularly sensitive because it touches on several of these core narratives. It immediately opened the door to a flood of politically sensitive questions: How could this happen in the capital? Were the authorities really in control? Were the security systems adequate? Was it a deliberate attack? This all directly contradicts the logic of “Safe China” (平安中国), a grand strategy for governance in the Xi era that seeks to project an image of a closely monitored society in which risks are anticipated and prevented through the integration of efficient public security, surveillance, and Party leadership (see Trevaskes & Lin 2024)¹. A small aircraft striking Beijing’s tallest building—located in one of the country’s most tightly controlled airspaces—challenges precisely this claimed capacity to maintain order, guarantee security, and keep China safe.

📌 Another reason why incidents like the 6.26 one are censored so heavily is that they have the potential to snowball or even trigger copycat behavior. What begins as an isolated accident can quickly evolve into broader discussions about political dissatisfaction, which might spiral into social unrest – and protecting domestic stability is central to the Party-state’s legitimacy and maintenance of power.

📌 A third factor is the symbolic significance of the location. Unlike an ordinary office building, the CITIC Tower is a symbol of Beijing’s cosmopolitan skyline and of China’s economic rise and state-led modernization. Situated in the heart of the capital’s central business district, next to CCTV headquarters and visible across much of the city, it is one of Beijing’s most recognizable landmarks. An incident involving such a building inevitably carries far greater symbolic weight than one occurring in a less prominent location.

⮕ Taken together, these factors make the 6.26 incident unusually sensitive in political, social, and symbolic terms. It is not just a random aviation accident; it touches upon national security, state competence, political control, social stability, and the protection of one of the country’s most symbolic urban spaces. Rather than threatening a single Party narrative, as some of the other aforementioned incidents did, it threatens several at once. This helps explain why it was treated not as an ordinary censored event, but as one requiring an almost complete information blackout.

A Familiar Censorship Playbook

Although these top-censored news incidents are all unique, they follow a similar whack-a-mole-style playbook in suppressing discussion of these events, even though they had only just happened.²

The main playbook is always more or less the same: Sensitive incident occurs → News disappears from front pages and trending search lists → Popular videos and images are taken offline → Incident-specific keywords and hashtags are scrubbed → Censorship expands to generic category-level terms (such as “Beijing,” “Chaoyang District,” or “small plane”) that could lead users back to the incident) → State media remain silent while shifting attention to other news.

(This week, the distraction might have been an otherwise arguably uninteresting controversy involving Chinese singer Han Hong.)³

Offline, the same pattern often plays out through physical scene control: bystanders are asked to delete their footage, journalists are kept away from the scene, or even entire street signs are removed (as happened after the protests on Wulumiqi Road and following the Sitong Bridge protest).

Meanwhile, selected commentary from permitted voices is sometimes allowed to appear online—for example, from former Global Times editor Hu Xijin—although even those posts are not immune from later deletion, as happened following the Beishan Park stabbings. This is often the first step in shaping the official narrative.

A brief authoritative news report may then be released, often ending with a statement that “the incident is under investigation,” which also buys time. Sometimes, however, no meaningful official explanation ever follows. After the 2022 China Eastern MU5735 crash, for example, authorities never released a full public investigation report, even though reports emerging in 2026 claimed the crash, which killed all 132 people on board, was deliberate.

Nevertheless, an official narrative and investigation outcome do usually follow. The 2013 Tiananmen attack, for example, was officially labeled a premeditated terrorist attack orchestrated by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), with Chinese authorities presenting it as evidence that Xinjiang-linked militancy had become part of a broader international terrorist threat. In doing so, the incident was reframed from a local security failure into part of a global fight against terrorism.

Finally, arrests often follow, and people are held accountable. At the same time, those accused of “spreading rumors” online may also face consequences, while foreign media are often criticized for biased reporting or double standards. These counterattacks further reinforce the official narrative while simultaneously shifting attention away from the original incident.

How AI Chatbots Are Part of the Censorship Ecosystem

For the 6.26 incident, the main narrative for the first five days after it happened was that nothing really happened. Even Hu Xijin posted nothing about the incident.

On Weibo, the hashtag “The Story Behind the CITIC Tower Crash Incident” (#中信集团大厦被撞事件始末#) was taken offline, along with many others.

Five days after the crash, Weibo’s Qwen-3 chatbot (powered by Alibaba) claimed it knew nothing about any incident involving CITIC Tower.

The Weibo chatbot responds to a question about the CITIC Tower incident, saying it knows nothing (July 1st).

Six days after the incident, on July 2nd, DeepSeek’s chatbot went a step further. Rather than simply claiming no information was available, it described reports about the crash as fake news, stating that there were no official records or media coverage and that such rumors originated on “overseas social media platforms.” Kimi refused to answer questions about the incident altogether, while Baidu’s ERNIE Bot said it had no information about the incident and warned users not to believe or spread unverified rumors.

[caption id="attachment_76508" align="aligncenter" width="484"] DeepSeek responded to what happened at CITIC Tower, claiming it’s “fake news” (July 2nd)

The 6.26 CITIC Tower incident illustrates a broader development in China’s online information ecosystem. A great deal has changed since the 2011 Wenzhou train crash. Social media control has become far more sophisticated—not only through better automated filtering, but also through platform regulation, agenda-setting, distraction strategies, and increasingly coordinated narrative management.

Now, AI chatbots have become part of that ecosystem.

Integrated AI assistants (LLM-powered chatbots embedded in platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and other Chinese apps since 2025) are not merely additional tools subject to censorship. They have become an integral part of the online information environment and increasingly play a role in the handling of sensitive incidents.

Unlike Grok on X, these AI assistants are deeply integrated into the user experience and actively encourage people to ask questions, search for information, and receive summaries of ongoing events and controversies. What makes them particularly powerful from the perspective of propaganda and information control is that they can centralize official narratives at the platform level. Previously, that role was distributed across state media, government accounts, and other official actors.

Because these chatbots do not present themselves as state media or government authorities, they can appear more neutral and objective. Users may perceive them simply as AI-generated summaries with less media bias and greater factual accuracy.⁴ In the case of the 6.26 incident, they effectively conveyed a state-ordered message to social media users: that really, nothing happened, and that if something happened, it must be fake news.

“A Public Security Incident Caused by Personal Factors”

On July 2nd, Beijing Chaoyang’s verified official account issued a second short statement via its WeChat channel. This time, providing more details about what had happened on June 26.

According to the statement, the pilot was 66-year-old Mr. Liu (刘), a Beijing resident who was self-employed and lived alone. He obtained a sport pilot license in 2021 and a private pilot license in 2024.

Authorities said Liu deliberately deviated from his flight route, subsequently lost contact with the airport, and then intentionally crashed into the building, killing himself. They added that he had suffered from depression in recent years and that his diary contained multiple references to wanting to “end his life.” The incident was officially described as “a public security incident caused by personal factors” (个人原因造成的危害公共安全案件).

The second, July 2nd, statement.

It is noteworthy that such a short statement includes details about the pilot’s age, marital status, pilot licenses, mental health, and even diary entries, yet provides virtually no information about the building itself, the security response, or the broader circumstances of the incident. The statement never mentions the CITIC Tower by name, referring only to “a high-rise building near the East Third Ring Road.” It likewise omits any mention of the aircraft entering restricted airspace, the reported disruption to commercial air traffic, or the obvious questions the incident raises about security failures.

On Weibo, the statement was widely shared, but comment sections beneath those posts remained either hidden or only contained a selection of replies.

And so, six days after the incident, there is a slight opening in the media blackout—just enough to establish the official narrative. This framing reduces a wide range of sensitive questions to the story of one troubled individual. It is not about broader questions of public safety or governance, but about a lonely man’s suicide; it is not about the Party-state, but about personal circumstances; it minimizes a news event that received maximum attention and turns a possible mass attack into an isolated incident. And so the message subtly shifts from “nothing happened” to “it’s time to move on.” The playbook is complete. It’s almost as if nothing really happened.

By Manya Koetse

With contributions by Miranda Barnes

See: Susan Trevaskes and Delia Lin, “Integrating Stability Maintenance into Comprehensive Governance: The Burgeoning ‘Safe China’ Behemoth,” Modern China 50, no. 6 (2024): 671–701. https://doi.org/10.1177/00977004241254709.
Some might say the 2015 Tianjin explosions also belong here, but that disaster was so large and witnessed by so many people that, while the official narrative was tightly controlled, it did not receive the same near-total information blackout.
This controversy involved Han Hong (韩红), a popular Chinese singer and philanthropist, who recently urged Beijing audiences in the local dialect to show up at the box office for the underperforming latest Feng Xiaogang film Catch the Spy (《抓特务》), for which she is the music producer. She used the colloquial expression zǒu ge miànr (走个面儿, roughly “show your face”), and was accused of inappropriately putting moral pressure on people to buy tickets, which also led to criticism of her charity work. She made the remarks at a June 17 premiere, and it didn’t become a dominant story until eleven days later.
See also: Yan Li, “The Impact of Automated Journalism on Media Bias, Accuracy, and Public Trust: Evidence from Young Chinese News Consumers,” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 13 (2026): 688. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06612-6.

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China Brands, Marketing & Consumers

Quack Like a Goose: Why Beijing Street Vendor “Auntie Goose Legs” Sparked a Nationwide Debate

After the first complaints surfaced, Auntie Goose Legs admitted the truth about her business: she ha been selling duck legs all along.

Published

4 weeks ago

June 20, 2026

Manya Koetse

🔥 Originally published in Eye on Digital China.
My premium newsletter covering the stories, memes, debates, and viral moments shaping online conversations in China. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might still be a goose – or the other way around. That, at least, is the takeaway from two stories that recently went viral on Chinese social media.

The woman at the center of it all is Beijing street-food vendor Chen Xiufeng (陈秀凤), better known as “Auntie Goose Legs” (鹅腿阿姨). Over the years, she became something of a local celebrity in Beijing’s university district. Originally from Jiangsu, the migrant vendor had been selling her famous roasted goose legs to students since 2011.

She skyrocketed to national fame in 2023 , but became the target of widespread criticism last week after it was revealed that her celebrated goose legs – sold for 16 yuan ($2.20) per piece – were actually duck meat all along.

The controversy came up after the vendor ventured beyond the university area into Beijing’s business district. At the universities, she enjoyed a loyal customer base and dedicated WeChat groups. In her new market, however, customers proved more skeptical. Some noticed that the meat looked suspiciously duck-like; others complained that the color seemed off.

In the university district, Auntie Goose Legs she enjoyed a loyal customer base and dedicated WeChat groups.

After the first complaints surfaced, Auntie Goose Legs admitted the truth on WeChat on June 9.

“The ingredients I originally used were goose legs,” she wrote, “but they have been out of stock for more than fifteen years. The current ingredient is duck legs.”

It turned out that she had only sold goose legs, the product that made her famous, for two months back in 2011 before switching to the much cheaper duck. “Did geese become extinct without us knowing?” some netizens joked.

The revelation quickly exploded online. The hashtag “What Auntie Goose Legs is Selling Turns Out to be Duck Legs” (#鹅腿阿姨卖的是鸭腿#) became the top trending on Weibo for an entire day, with millions of people discussing the topic.

Why did millions of people become so outraged over a single Beijing street vendor selling duck instead of goose?

Piggybacking on the debate, Anhui-based commentators pointed out that a beloved regional specialty has the exact opposite ‘problem.’ Wuwei smoked duck (无为板鸭) is branded as duck, but is usually goose. According to local standards, however, goose products may be sold under this name, prompting discussions about “hanging up a goat’s head, while selling dog meat“ (挂羊头卖狗肉): advertising one thing while selling another.

Because geese are more expensive than ducks in China, and generally considered tastier, the Anhui duck-is-goose story, unlike the Auntie Goose Legs controversy, did not provoke online anger. Instead, many people saw it as an example of sellers prioritizing flavor over cost. Auntie Goose Legs is seen as doing the exact opposite.

But why did millions of people actually become so outraged over a single Beijing street vendor selling duck instead of goose, especially when there were no indications that anyone became ill? The answer has little to do with poultry and everything to do with trust.

Auntie Goose Legs during the prime time in Beijing’s University District in late 2023 (image via Lianhe Zaobao 联合早报).

Food fraud and mislabeling have been longstanding concerns in China. Earlier surveys found that food safety worries even outweighed concerns about public security and environmental issues, and while China’s food safety record has improved in recent years, public trust remains fragile.

Part of these concerns are immediate and practical. Major scandals in the past involving melamine-tainted infant formula or recycled “gutter oil” have posed serious risks to public health. But the issue goes beyond health risks alone.

If a goose can be a duck, then what exactly is the duck?

Whereas food safety concerns in many Western countries often focus on contamination, Chinese consumers are frequently just as concerned with economic deception. It is unfair to pay for a more expensive goose and receive a duck. Even if no one gets sick, Chinese consumer law still treats it as fraud.

More important, however, is what such deception does to confidence in the broader food system. If a goose can be a duck, then what exactly is the duck?

As a major 2023 college canteen scandal demonstrated, the build-up of deceit can reach a breaking point among the public. During that somewhat Kafkaesque “rat head or duck neck” (鼠头or鸭脖”事件) controversy, officials insisted a rat head found in a student’s rice was merely a “duck neck,” even though everyone could clearly see the snout and teeth of a rodent.

This kind of gaslighting shatters social trust and reinforces a generalized sense that, as a consumer, you are entirely on your own. When regulators fail to step in honestly, even a seemingly isolated incident comes to symbolize more dangerous forms of systemic food fraud.

And this is where the Auntie Goose Legs story stings the most.

People did not come to her simply because her food was good. Over the years, she had become part of local student life, and she felt safe and authentic. Her pink scooter helmet, which she continued to wear while working, became an iconic symbol of her no-nonsense and humble image. Her success was built on word of mouth and, above all, on the trust her customers placed in her.

That this particular “auntie” deceived her customers by selling a different product than the one she advertised is no longer really about her. If duck is goose, goose is duck, and your local auntie has deceived you for years, then who can you trust anymore?