On Saturday, January 11th, several foreign media outlets reported on the incident of a 17-year-old student falling from a building at the Pucheng Vocational Education Center in Shaanxi Province, which sparked mass protests involving tens of thousands of people.
Due to dissatisfaction among local residents regarding the handling of the incident by the school and local government, tens of thousands of people gathered spontaneously at the school gate demanding the truth to be revealed.
International news outlets such as CNN, BBC, Reuters, and Deutsche Welle all covered the incident, while the news was strictly censored within China.
On the evening of January 2nd, 17-year-old student Dang Changxin fell to his death. Some reports suggested that the cause of death was related to campus bullying. However, the official statement released by the local government stated that the victim “died from falling from a height” and ruled out the possibility of a criminal case.
There were reports that the school did not allow parents to inspect the child’s body or examine the scene of the incident. Informed students online revealed that the deceased student was brutally killed due to campus bullying, implicating local elites. Other reports claimed that students who exposed the bullying were silenced and beaten by the school.
Dissatisfaction with the school and local government’s handling of the situation led many parents to gather at the school gate starting from January 4th to protest, demanding a thorough investigation and the truth to be publicized.
As one netizen commented, “Why is it so difficult for parents to find out the truth when such a big incident involving their children occurs?”
On the 5th and 6th, authorities deployed a large number of police forces for stability maintenance. During confrontations between the people and the police, violent clashes occurred, resulting in many injuries or arrests of civilians, as well as police and school staff being assaulted.
Videos circulating on overseas social media platform X showed dozens of police officers in riot gear retreating while protesters threw sticks and other objects at them.
In another video, several police officers grabbed a woman, while a few meters away another officer repeatedly beat a man with a baton. They were reportedly attacked as they were slow or left behind during the evacuation of the protest crowd.
On the 6th, the trending topic “#Shaanxi Pucheng reports a vocational school student falling from a building” was blocked on Weibo.
On the same day, the mother of the fallen student released a new video on social media stating, “Relevant departments are already involved and in communication; please do not believe rumors and gather at the school.” This video was quickly deleted from domestic platforms in China.
@YesterdayBigcat, who closely follows China’s human rights movements, pointed out that this is the largest demonstration in China since January 2023, with an estimated participation of 50,000 people.
The account released a full 28-minute video of the Pucheng incident, signed by the creator as “Yesterday Collective Resistance Incident Record Network,” which went viral on overseas social media platform X.
Chinese mainland netizens who bypass the Great Firewall commented, “There is so little information available inside the wall. Has everything been blocked? Where is the right to information for the common people?”
Some criticized the government for taking an adversarial stance against the people. One netizen wrote, “Revealing the truth and dealing with it appropriately would incur less cost than organizing police for stability. But they do the opposite; they choose to stand against the common people.”
Another netizen commented, “Stability maintenance has reached a dead end. Instead of maintaining stability, it creates larger-scale conflicts. Grassroots incidents happen frequently, and stability maintenance has become a mechanical, indiscriminate, and violent crackdown regardless of right or wrong, good or evil, against the people. The twilight of the regime is becoming increasingly clear.”
China expert Wu Guoguang wrote for Voice of America, saying that the new year doesn’t erase social crises, and 2025 is merely a continuation of 2024. Wu is a senior researcher at the China Economic and Institutional Research Center at Stanford University and a senior researcher at the American Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Analysis Center.
He believes that from bullying among students to violent incidents leading to the death of innocent people and the responses of the school and government, the Pucheng vocational school incident vividly reflects the social and political norms of contemporary China.
Wu stated that the core of the public’s dissatisfaction with the Pucheng incident lies in the fact that the person who allegedly pushed a classmate to their death not only faces no legal consequences but also there hasn’t been even a basic legal inquiry. Because both the school and government are trying to cover up the truth, from power cuts and confiscating phones to deleting photos and detaining parents, these are the stability maintenance methods the CCP government conventionally uses.
He wrote, “Neither the education authorities who are supposed to be role models nor the government authorities wielding public power can uphold basic social justice, hindering justice by all means and obstructing the realization of righteousness. Isn’t this precisely what rapidly escalated a suspected case of campus bullying into a social protest?”
A netizen commented on X, “The credibility of the (CCP) government has been almost depleted, and the economic downturn directly ignited long-suppressed social conflicts.”
Another netizen remarked, “The first big protest of 2025 has started on such a large scale; one wonders how it will end.”