Photo: Michael Zhang Agence France-Presse A worker blows out candles outside the Zhuhai Sports Center, a day after a car plowed into the site, killing dozens of people in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong province, Nov. 12, 2024.
Mary Yang – Agence France-Presse in Beijing
Published at 8:37
- Asia
It took nearly 24 hours for Zhuhai authorities to release a death toll from a car-ramming attack that killed 35 people in the southern Chinese city on Monday night, a delay that highlights Beijing’s efforts to suppress the release of sensitive information.
Images of bodies lying on the road surfaced on social media in the hours after the crash, but they had disappeared by early Tuesday morning, with local police reporting only “injuries.”
Authorities also removed flowers and candles left near the scene of the tragedy on Wednesday.
AFP has looked at how China has blocked information it did not want to be released about the most significant mass shooting in recent years on its soil.
The “cleaning” of social networks
China closely monitors its national social media platforms, where it is common for keywords or content deemed sensitive to be deleted, sometimes within minutes.
On Weibo, a microblogging site quite similar to X, photos and videos posted Monday evening, in the wake of the events, have quickly disappeared.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000The same goes for posts on Xiaohongshu, China’s equivalent of Instagram.
24 hours later
State media reported the 35 dead shortly after 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, nearly 24 hours after the attack.
Moments later, the hashtag “Zhuhai man drives into crowd, killing 35” became the top trending topic on Weibo.
The fatal crash occurred a day before the country’s largest air show, which has also been held in Zhuhai since Tuesday, a marquee event promoted for weeks by the country’s tightly controlled state media. country.
Photo: Hector Retamal Agence France-Presse Workers remove flowers from a makeshift memorial outside the Zhuhai Sports Center on November 13, 2024.
A State Narrative
In China, state media act as the government’s mouthpiece.
On Wednesday, the Global Times daily newspaper ran only a short article on the “ramming car case” on page 3—a stark contrast to the front-page story focusing on fighter jets at the nearby air show.
The Daily simply included Chinese President Xi Jinping's instructions to treat injured residents and punish the perpetrator in a short text on the front page.
On Tuesday, CCTV’s evening news program Xinwen Lianbo devoted about a minute and a half to Xi Jinping’s instructions to “treat the wounded,” without broadcasting any footage of the city.
“Orders from above”
AFP journalists sent to the scene of the attack Tuesday night saw delivery men placing bouquets of flowers ordered online near candles placed to commemorate the victims.
But a few hours later, teams came to dismantle the memorial. Some cleaners told AFP they had received “orders from above.”
Some people were also prevented from taking videos by police and security guards.
A long story
China has a long history of controlling the spread of information, sometimes leading to costly delays in disaster response.
In 2008, authorities tried to cover up a story about tainted milk that poisoned nearly 300,000 children just days before the Beijing Olympics.
In 2019, Chinese authorities delayed the response to COVID-19 by penalizing local health workers who warned that a coronavirus was spreading rapidly.