Beijing (AP) – A car attacked children near an elementary school in Beijing late last month, according to Chinese news.
Four sentences police said a 35-year-old male driver hit a pedestrian due to “inappropriate actions” in the car. It does not mention that the school or the victim includes children. Photos of the consequences show six people lying on the street, scrubbed by China’s controlled internet.
“We need the truth,” said an article on Weibo, a leading social media platform similar to X.
Since leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the ruling Communist Party has expanded information control, a way to prevent turmoil. From negative news about the economy to LGBTQ+ identity, more and more topics have been subject to some form of censorship. In the past six months, large-scale attacks, in which one person kills or injures multiple people with a vehicle or knife, seem to have been added to the list.
Some in China are pushing back, and at least two cases have been complaining online in the months after the driver hits a pedestrian.
Experts say the government may be trying to prevent imitation crimes. Another motivation may be that local authorities want to cover up when they don’t.
A fatal case in November triggered a government response
There were a series of attacks last fall, but due to the lack of information, it was difficult to measure whether they were increasing.
Attacks are not always a taboo topic. In the past, authorities have released basic details. Often, attackers are described as anger at society, often economic losses.
This situation seemed to have changed in a particularly terrifying case in November, which killed 35 people in Zhuhai, southern China. Authorities said the driver was dissatisfied with the divorce settlement. Orders come from the top of XI to take steps to prevent similar attacks.
Eight days later, an SUV hit a student who arrived at a primary school in Hunan Province. The number of injured people (30 children and adults) was not disclosed until one month later after the driver was sentenced.
Since then, the information substitute has tightened further. In April, the report was distributed online that a car hit someone outside a primary school in Jinhua City. At least three provincial media published the stories, but were quickly deleted. So far, authorities have not released any information.
Censorship makes some people eager for information
Twelve days later, a fast-moving car turned from the street to the people at the bus stop in Tengzhou City, eastern China.
The authorities said nothing. The video of the May 4 crash was removed from social media. The next day, online criticism of silence began to emerge. Police should publish basic information such as the identity of the driver and the number of casualties, people say. Some defended the police, saying it happened during the holidays.
“If some such precedents are set and more local governments will follow this approach in the future, the rules for information disclosure may not be maintained and may be compromised,” Hu Xijin, a former editor of a state-owned newspaper, warned in a social media post.
Stanford University professor Jennifer Pan said local governments want to cover up news that bad things are for them or their policies, and he looked at how political censorship and information manipulation work in the digital age. The central government sometimes has other priorities.
“When the issue is being reviewed locally, the center is motivated to maintain the legitimacy of the overall system through responsiveness and recognition of events and fundamental issues,” she said in an email response.
48 hours after the crash, details appeared. A state media report said six people died, not intentional attack: the driver was drunk.
Police responded with short details
Since then, in at least two cases in Beijing, local authorities seem to be adopting a new approach: a report is being released quickly but with few details.
Eleven days after the drunk driving case occurred, a car was cracked down on people outside a primary school in Beijing on May 15. Beijing traffic police released the report within a few hours but missed the location near the school. It said only one car was injured when pedestrians were tied up on Jian’an West Road, and the driver was detained.
Authorities appeared to have imposed a message closure that night. Police stationed along the road, and a person who appeared to be a neighborhood observer volunteers warned people in nearby residential compound not to talk to strangers.
Six weeks later, a post published online on June 26 said a car hit a child in a miyun about 60 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of central Beijing. A well-received media store Caixin arrived at the local store owners who said the child was hit and a hospital confirmed that some child victims were being treated. Whether it was intentional behavior is not clear.
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Associated Press reporter Emily Wang Fujiyama contributed to the story.
