Several videos of a mob in China attacking and overturning a police car have gone viral on social media, marking another incident of civil disobedience that broke through the country’s digital censorship wall.
A large group of people gathered in Luyi County, Henanon January 2, where it is understood that frustrations over a fireworks ban escalated to push an officer and attack a police cruiser.
Some threw fireworks at the then-empty vehicle, smashed its windows and climbed onto the roof of the car to trample and dance on it.
Social media users have linked this action against local authorities to the unusually large protests that took place in China last year, known as #WhitePaperRevolution or #A4Revolution to reflect how protesters have held up blank sheets of paper during their action.
Although there is little evidence that the incidents are formally linked, online commentators drew comparisons by posting videos from Monday tagged #FireworkRevolution.
One of the online articles comparing the 2022 protests to the January 2 incident
Incidents like the attack on the police car are not that unusual in China, according to Professor William Hurst, Chong Hua Professor of Chinese Development at the University of Cambridge. However, he said the amount of Monday videos that have surfaced online is sparse.
“Protests of this magnitude and intensity happen very often. [and] the government doesn’t necessarily view that as a big deal,” he told Sky News, adding that “there is a context where the Chinese government believes that any resistance or mobilization, however slight, automatically poses a threat existential for the regime”.
This type of content is often quickly removed from Chinese social networks. That it appears on sites outside of China’s influence, such as Twitter and Instagram, on this scale is striking.
Professor Hurst said: “I think it’s actually a new trend that we’ve been seeing over the last few months. It’s something new and different.
“Somehow it seems like more and more of these contentious episode videos have made their way onto Chinese social media platforms like Douyin (known as TikTok outside of China) and stayed there long enough that someone could take down videos from Chinese social media platforms and repost them on other social networks in China and internationally.
“Either the people posting the videos have become much savvier about how to evade internet scrutiny and censorship and other restrictions, or the state is relaxing a bit in terms of what is allowed to be released and how long it’s allowed to stay and what’s allowed to leak internationally. It could be both.
The Luyi County Public Security Bureau released a statement on Chinese social media saying eight people are under investigation and six have been arrested following the attack on the police car.
Posts sharing the police comments and criticizing the incident remain on Chinese social media, but comments praising the crowd for their rebellion against authorities appear to have been largely deleted.
Fewer than 300 results appeared when searching for “Luyi” on Weibo on January 4. The messages that appear there are uniformly critical of the incident.
And although many videos have been posted on Douyin, almost all of them seem to have been deleted.
Videos do not prove whether the police car was attacked in response to officers’ attempts to enforce the fireworks ban, which is in place due to fire hazards and air pollution .
Many wanted the ban lifted to celebrate the end of three years of COVID-19 restrictions in the country.
China backed away from its controversial zero COVID policy after the largest demonstration of opposition to the ruling communist party for decades has been observed in late November and early December.
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