A day after the brutal killing of a female passenger using one of Didi’s car-hailing services made headlines in China, more details emerge about the circumstances of the homicide.
One of the most shocking details reported in Chinese media today is that the driver, the suspected murderer of the 20-year-old female, made her transfer an amount of 9000 yuan (±$1320) to his account before taking her life.
The driver reportedly had to drive to an area with better phone reception in order for the online transaction to succeed. Once the victim, a woman by the name of Xiao Zhao (小赵), had succeeded in transferring the money to his account via WeChat wallet, he raped her, stabbed her to death, and rolled her body off a cliff.
The incident took place during a so-called ‘Didi Shunfengche‘ (乘顺风车) ride, a car-pooling service from Chinese Uber-like company Didi Kuaidi, which was first introduced in 2015.
Chinese online news outlet The Paperreports that instead of choosing the highway – which would have taken around 40 minutes to her final destination -, the driver had taken a desolate mountainous route during the ride. At some point during this ride, he tied the hands and feet of Xiao Zhao so she couldn’t move, and taped off her mouth.
±13:00: The 20-year-old Zhao from Wenzhou arranges a Didi ‘carpool’ ride from Hongqiao Town to Yongjia to attend a birthday party.
14:09: Xiao Zhao sends a WeChat message to a friend, saying. “I’m scared, the driver has taken a mountain road, there’s no one here.”
14:14: Xiao Zhao sends her last words to her friends via Wechat, writing “Help” (救命) and “Save me” (抢救).
“Help me,” Xiao Zhao cried for help through message before her phone lost contact.
15:42: After Xiao Zhao’s friend has contacted the Didi help desk seven times within the time frame of an hour, she is told to “please wait patiently.”
16:22: The friend informs Yongjia police of the situation.
17:35: The family members also report the case to the Yueqing police.
17:42: Xiao Zhao’s friend asks Didi customer service for the details of the driver, but is denied this information.
18:13: Didi provides police with the vehicle and driver information.
August 25:
4:00: The criminal suspect, the Didi driver, is arrested by local police, and admits to raping and killing the female passenger.
±6:00: Police and rescue workers find the victim’s body in a mountainous area near the road.
For the past two days, this case has been one of the main trending topics on Chinese social media, with many condemning the company for failing to protect (female) passengers against such dangers.
The inadequate response of customer service has been a major topic of discussion; they did not only fail to respond to this case in time, but earlier this week, another woman claimed she was harassed by the same driver, and customer service also did not take action against him.
It now appears that Didi has been outsourcing its customer service, resulting in service workers not having the authority nor ability to see into more detailed information about Didi’s registered drivers and ride information.
For now, Didi has taken down its entire ‘shunfengche‘ carpooling service nationwide. The service is different from its regular Didi service in that it allows car owners to drive people to their destination while they are going there themselves (much like hitchhiking), making some money by sharing the ride.
Meanwhile, many Chinese news media outlets report more background details on the suspect. The 27-year-old Sichuan native was a high-school dropout and a ‘left-behind child’ (留守儿童) – meaning his parents are migrant workers who had to leave their child in their more rural hometown while going out to work in the city.
This is the second murder of a female passenger using Didi’s services within four months time. For more informarion on this case, please check our report here.
Manya Koetse is the founder and editor-in-chief of whatsonweibo.com. She is a writer, public speaker, and researcher (Sinologist, MPhil) on social trends, digital developments, and new media in an ever-changing China, with a focus on Chinese society, pop culture, and gender issues. She shares her love for hotpot on hotpotambassador.com. Contact at manya@whatsonweibo.com, or follow on Twitter.
Great summary as usual. Would it be possible for you to also include the pinyin when writing the Chinese characters? It’d make it much easier to learn the pronunciation any characters I don’t recognize. Some articles have it already (快狗 article for instance).
China’s central internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (国家互联网信息办公室), issued proposed measures relating to the development and use of AI chatbots and other AI tools in China to solicit feedback from the public during the initial legislative drafting process. People can send in their views and comments on the draft until May 10 of this year.
The current draft, published on April 11 (translation here), explicitly focuses on managing the “healthy development” of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, referring to any type of AI system capable of generating text, images, or other media in response to prompts. Over the past few months, ChatGPT in particular has become a widely used tool across the world to generate human-like responses to a wide range of questions and topics, but services such as Midjourney have also become popular to generate images.
In China, ChatGPT has also triggered a lot of online discussions on the ways in which it could be used, the effect it will have on the labor market, and issues related to privacy, copyright, and censorship in China (read ‘ChatGPT in China‘).
Although users in mainland China officially cannot sign up to use Open AI’s ChatGPT, many people do find ways to use the platform. Earlier this year, while discussions about ChatGPT were prevalent in Weibo’s trending lists, Chinese tech giants announced their own plans to develop similar ChatGPT-like services: Baidu has Erniebot, Alibaba is rolling out Tongyi Qianwen, while Bytedance, Tencent, and Netease are also working on their own LLM (Large Language Models) chatbots.
As 2023 is already the year of the chatbot, it is perhaps unsurprising for China’s internet authorities to lay out the rules surrounding generative AI technologies.
There are a total of 21 sections or articles listed in the document. Many of the proposed rules are quite general and are about AI-generated content and ChatGPT-like services having to be in line with China’s overall internet and privacy laws.
The draft suggests that AI-generated content should “reflect the core values of socialism” (“应当体现社会主义核心价值观”), should not undermine the state authority nor the socialist system, cannot be harmful to national unity or social cohesion, and it also may not promote terrorism, extremism, discrimination, violence, obscenities, nor spread false information (article 1).
AI-generated content should not just be true and accurate, it should also ensure that the legitimate interests of others are respected and prevent harm to their physical and mental well-being, as well as damage to their reputation, privacy, and intellectual property rights (article 4).
In accordance with the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China (中华人民共和国网络安全法), users of generative AI models should also register under their real name (article 9).
These kinds of AI service providers also should take clear and transparent measures to prevent users from becoming overly dependent or addicted to AI-generated content (article 10).
On Weibo, many comments relating to the proposed measures are supportive of them, as netizens especially express concerns over copyright issues and the problems surrounding ‘deepfake’ and AI services allowing users to swop faces or generate images using people’s faces.
But other people also think that when it comes to AI generated content, the rules are vague and hard to control – and comply with. How could AI-generated content always be “true and accurate” if the prompt given by a user, for example, is to create a fairytale or other fictional content? And how does one actually measure an “addiction” to AI services if they are part of a person’s everyday workflow? Some commenters fear that the rules could be arbitrarily applied because they are so broad and general.
Then there are those who think that AI services like the American OpenAI’s ChatGPT are developing so rapidly that China is already falling behind and that, especially in the light of these rules, ChatGPT will be much stronger than Chinese equivalents.
By having to embody socialist values and stay in line with strict Cyberspace rules, chatbot services will have to stay aligned with China’s traditional media and publishers. Some Weibo commenters discuss how ChatGPT also has bias and alleged anti-China sentiments. “We’ll have to add the ‘Party spirit’ to our AI,” one person replies.
“It’s the survival of the fittest,” another commenter wrote: “If there is no innovation, they’ll be eliminated.”
For a full translation of the “Measures on the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (Draft for Solicitation of Comments)”, check out China Law Translatehere.
By Manya Koetse, with contributions by Miranda Barnes
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A work-related group chat that may or may not be real has gone completely viral on WeChat, Weibo, and beyond, triggering new discussions on China’s overtime work culture.
This week, an explosive WeChat conversation in which a worker confronted his team manager after being asked to work during the Qingming holiday attracted a lot of attention on Chinese social media.
The story started when screenshots of Chengdu’s China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC/中国电子科技集团有限公司) work unit group chat allegedly leaked online and quickly spread on social media on the 4th of April. By nighttime, it had gone completely viral.
The group chat discussion was about a team manager who wanted his employees to work during the Tomb Sweeping (Qingming) Festival, which officially is a holiday.
“I need two people to work during Qingming, any volunteers? If not, I’ll appoint them,” the leader wrote. When nobody responded, the manager appointed a worker named Chen Zhilong (陈志龙) as one of the people who needed to work during the holiday.
Qingming, which was celebrated on Wednesday, is a Chinese festival when people traditionally visit ancestral tombs to sweep them and pay respects to ancestors and departed loved ones in other ways, such as by burning paper. It’s been an official public holiday since 2008.
Chen Zhilong then reacted angrily to the request in the group chat and refused to work overtime, saying staff members were already working long hours, some working from 8am to 11pm, and he asked the manager: “Did we sign a labor contract or a slave deed?” Chen, who called out the company out for illegal overtime and temporary work practices, resigned from his job and was supported by the other workers in the group chat.
As the story fermented online, CETC soon responded and denied that the group chat belonged to one of their work units and that the person named Chen Zhilong did not work for them. CETC also emphasized that the persons spreading this kind of fake news could be held accountable.
A related hashtag received over 230 million views on Weibo on Thursday (#中电科称痛批加班员工非集团公司员工#), while one Xinhuanews post about the issue received one million (!) ‘likes.’
CETC denies the group chat is related to them.
So, are the screenshots fake or not? Some commenters think they have been photoshopped, while other sources – including Sichuan’s labor union – claim the incident actually happened last year already in a different city. Many commenters think the CETC is just trying to silence the topic.
Another document that supposedly was proof of Chen Zhilong working at CETC was officially debunked on Weibo.
Despite discussions over whether or not the group chat is real, many say it does not matter since the main issue is about the problem of being asked to do overtime work or work during holidays – which is a common issue within many Chinese companies.
“My company is rotten like this, they also made me fight for my free time during Qingming Festival to go and see my grandparents,” one commenter wrote, with another person replying: “Art comes from real life, and overtime work culture is very real. But virtually nobody has the courage to go against it.”
“It does not matter [if it’s real or not], I am still rooting for the guy scolding [the manager],” another popular comment said.
Over the past two to three years, there has been an increase in online discussions surrounding the strenuous work culture that is part of everyday life in many Chinese companies, especially tech and finance ones.
The topic has become especially newsworthy since 2021, when the deaths of two Pinduoduo employees sparked discussions on ‘996’ working culture. Later that year, Chinese authorities emphasized that the practice of ‘996’ (working 9am-9pm, six days per week) is illegal and that employers are obliged to obey the national working-time regime.
Although these kinds of overtime practices are technically prohibited by law, many companies still enforce the hours informally and in online discussions, many workers revealed that they were still assigned job tasks that exceeded the prescribed working hours.
The Wechat work group conversation atrracted so much attention because it resonated with many netizens, and also because it was suggested to be about CETC, a Chinese state-owned company.
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Alex
August 27, 2018 at 12:58 pm
Great summary as usual. Would it be possible for you to also include the pinyin when writing the Chinese characters? It’d make it much easier to learn the pronunciation any characters I don’t recognize. Some articles have it already (快狗 article for instance).