These days have been filled with tension and anger in the city of Jiangyou (江油市), Sichuan, after a rare, large-scale protest broke out following public outrage over a severe bullying incident and how it was handled.

The bullying incident at the center of this story happened outside school premises in Mianyang on the afternoon of July 22. Footage of the assault, recorded by bystanders at the scene, began circulating widely online on August 2, sparking widespread outrage among concerned netizens, many of them worried parents.

The violent altercation involved three girls between the ages of 13 and 15 who ganged up on another minor, a 14-year-old girl named Lai (赖).

After Lai and a 15-year-old girl named Liu (刘) reportedly had a dispute, Liu gathered two of her friends—the 13-year-old also named Liu (刘) and a 14-year-old named Peng (彭)—to gang up on Lai.

The three underage girls lured Lai to an abandoned building, where they subjected her to hours of verbal and physical violence. The footage showed how they took turns in kicking, slapping, and pushing her.

At one point, after Lai said she would call the police, one of the bullies yelled: “You think we’re scared of you? It’s not like we haven’t been to jail before. I’ve been in more than ten times—it doesn’t even take 20 minutes to get out” (“你以为我们会怕你吗？又不是没进去过，我都进去十多次了，没二十分钟就出来了”).

That same night, the incident was reported to police. It took authorities until August 2 to bring in all involved parties for questioning, and a police report was issued on the morning of Monday, August 4.

Police report by Jiangyou Public Security Bureau, confirming the details of the incident and the (legal) consequences for the attackers.

Two of the girls (the 15- and 14-year-old) were given administrative penalties and will be sent to a specialized correctional school. The younger Liu and other bystanders were formally reprimanded.

 
“Parents Speak Out for the Bullied Girl”
 

The way the incident was handled—not just the relatively late official report, but mostly the perceived lenient punishment—triggered anger online.

Many people who had seen the video responded emotionally and felt that the underage girls should be stripped of their rights to take their exams, and that the bullying incident should forever haunt them in the same way it will undoubtedly haunt their victim.

Especially the phrase “It’s not like I haven’t been taken in [to jail] before” struck a chord, as it showed just how calculated the bullies were—and how, by counting on the leniency of the Chinese judicial system for minors, they made the system complicit in their determination to turn those hours into a living hell for Lai.

China has been dealing with an epidemic of school violence for years. In 2016, Chinese netizens were already urging authorities to address the problem of extreme bullying in schools, partly because minors under the age of 16 rarely face criminal punishment for their actions.

Since 2021, children between the ages of 12 and 14 can be held criminally responsible for extreme and cruel cases resulting in death or disability—but their legal prosecution must first be approved by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP).

It has not done much to stop the violence.

Discussions around extreme bullying like this have repeatedly flared up over the years, such as in 2020, when a 15-year-old schoolboy named Yuan (袁) in Shaanxi was fatally beaten and buried by a group of minors.

Last year, a young boy named Wang Ziyao (王子耀) was killed by three classmates after suffering years of bullying. His body was found in a greenhouse just 100 meters from the home of one of the suspects, and the case shocked and enraged local residents.

But the problem is widespread among girls, too.

In 2016, we already reported on how so-called ‘campus violence videos’ (校园暴力视频) had become a concerning trend. In these kinds of videos—often showing multiple bullies beating up a single victim on camera—it’s not uncommon to see girls as the aggressors.

Girls often form cliques to gang up on a victim to show that they are in control or to gain popularity. They also tend to be more inclined than boys to make cruel jokes or stage pranks meant to embarrass or humiliate their target. This may partly explain why there seem to be more campus violence videos on Chinese social media showing girls bullying girls than boys bullying boys.

In the case of Lai, she appears to have been particularly vulnerable. One of her relatives posted online that her mother is deaf and mute, and her father allegedly is disabled. This fact may have contributed to why Lai was repeatedly targeted and bullied by the same group of girls, who reportedly took away her phone and socially isolated her at school.

In response to the incident, netizens started posting the hashtag “Parents Speak Up for the Bullied Girl” (“#家长们为被霸凌女孩发声#), not only to support Lai and her family, but to demand harsher punishments for school bullies and for stricter crackdown on this nationwide problem.

 
From Online Anger to Offline Protest
 

While many people spoke out for Lai online, hundreds also wanted to show up for her in person.

On August 4, dozens of people gathered in front of the Jiangyou Municipal Government building (江油市人民政府) to demand justice and support Lai’s parents, who had come to express their grievances to the authorities—at one point even bowing to the ground in a plea for justice to be served for their daughter.

Footage and images circulating on social media showing the parents of Lai, the victim, bowing on the ground to demand justice from authorities.

As the crowd grew larger, tensions escalated, eventually leading to clashes between protesters and police.

The arrests at the scene did little to ease the situation. As night fell, the mood grew increasingly grim, and some protesters began throwing objects at the police.

Images of the protest, posted on Weibo.

Near the east section of Shixian Road (诗仙路东段), more people gathered. Hundreds of individuals filming and livestreaming captured footage of the police crackdown—officers beating protesters, dragging them away, and deploying pepper spray.

Netizens’ digital artwork about the bullying incident, the parents’ grievances, and the public protest and its crackdown in Jiangyou. Shared by 程Clarence.

Although the protests briefly gained traction on social media and became a trending topic on Weibo, the search term was soon removed from the platform’s trending list.

 
Lasting Mental Scars
 

On Tuesday, August 5, several topics related to the Jiangyou bullying incident began trending again on Chinese social media.

On the short video app Kuaishou, a collective demand for justice surged to the number one spot, under the tag “A large number of Jiangyou parents demand justice for the victim” (江油大批家长为受害学生讨公道).

As of now, none of the perpetrators’ families have come forward to apologize.

As for Lai—according to the latest reports, she did not suffer serious physical injuries from the bullying incident, but according to her own parents, the mental scars will last. She will need continued mental health support and counseling going forward.

Although many posts about the incident and the ensuing protests have been taken offline, ‘Jiangyou’s Bullying Incident’ has already become one more case in the growing list of brutal school bullying incidents that have surfaced on Chinese social media in recent years. The heat of local anger may fade over time, but the rising number of such cases continues to fuel public frustration nationwide—especially if local authorities fail to do more to address and prevent school bullying.

“Not being able to protect our children, that’s a disgrace to our schools and the police,” one commenter wrote: “I want to thank all those mothers who have raised their voices for the bullied child. Each of us must say no to bullies, and we must do all we can to stop them. I hope the lawmakers agree.”

By Manya Koetse

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🔥 Quick Take: Trending in China
This is a brief update from our curated roundup of what’s trending in China this week. A version of this story also appears in the Weibo Watch newsletter. Subscribe to stay in the loop.

The tragic death of six Chinese students during a visit to the Wunugetushan Copper-Molybdenum Mine (乌努格吐山铜钼矿) in Inner Mongolia has been trending on Chinese social media this week.

The students, who study mineral processing engineering at the School of Resources & Civil Engineering Northeastern University (东北大学), visited the site as part of their studies on Wednesday, July 23.

The facility, which operates under the state-owned China National Gold Group Corporation (中国黄金集团), includes a mineral processing plant where ore is crushed and processed using flotation cells to separate copper and molybdenum concentrate from waste rock.

The students were standing on a metal grate above a deep industrial tank used for mineral processing. The grate then suddenly collapsed, and they fell into the flotation tank, which was filled with mineral slurry (see this video to better understand the situation).

The tank was deep, and once inside, the slurry made it impossible to swim.

By the time the students were taken out of the tank, they had already drowned. They were all aged between 20 and 22. One of their teachers was injured in the incident.

According to Sohu News, citing a preliminary accident investigation report, the direct cause of the incident was a pre-existing crack in the grate above the tank, which caused the entire panel to flip and fall off. The grates had been replaced in February but were not properly tested. The site also lacked warning signs about load capacity and reportedly did not restrict the number of people allowed to stand on it.

Three people responsible for safety measures at the site, including the deputy general manager, have now been placed under criminal detention.

Besides the many questions surfacing online about how such a gruesome accident could have occurred, there is also criticism of how the media has reported on the incident. Some outlets mentioned that the 45 other intern students—presumably also present during the visit—were “emotionally stable,” and that the teacher who was injured was in a “good mental state.”

One blogger criticized these phrases, which are often used in media reports following similar incidents. While they appear to describe the psychological condition of survivors or bystanders, the author argued that they are more political than psychological: their real function is to signal to readers that—despite the loss of life—the situation remains under control.

After the online criticism, the Weibo hashtag “45 Intern Students from Northeastern University Are Emotionally Stable” (#东北大学45名实习学生情绪平稳#) has since been taken offline.

At the time of writing, the official website of Northeastern University has been changed to black and white.

By Manya Koetse

(follow on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram)

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