On Sept. 11, 37-year-old Chinese actor Alan Yu (于朦朧) reportedly died after falling from a building in Beijing. However, many Chinese online were skeptical about the cause of death, collecting videos, photographs and messages about Yu’s mysterious death. They do not believe the local police, who quickly ruled out the possibility that he was murdered and said that Yu “accidentally fell because he was drunk.”
Chinese online believe that the police were pressured to cover up the case. They questioned whether Yu was a victim of pressure in the entertainment industry to drink or sleep with the rich and powerful, and demanded that the truth be revealed.
Chinese authorities responded by suppressing public opinion, deleting posts on social media that question the official pronouncement of Yu’s death. That sparked further suspicion of top officials’ involvement in the incident.
When Hong Kong artist Daniel Chan (陳曉東) posted a message of support for the online commentators on Chinese social commerce platform Rednote, he received many positive responses, while some people expressed concern about his own safety.
Public opinion about the issue has continued to heat up on the social networking service X, with some commenting that no matter how “glorious” China’s Victory Day Parade might have been, it was an empty show. This expression of public dissent is rare.
From the female student in Sichuan Province’s Jiangyou City (江油) who was bullied by three other students, to Yu, who has more than 20 million followers on Sina Weibo, as long as they do not have a strong backer, they are just prey under China’s law of the jungle.
From the 2022 Sitong Bridge (四通橋) protest and the 2022 COVID-19 white paper protests to this year’s “toilet revolution” — where Chinese wrote protest messages in bathroom stalls to evade surveillance — the Jiangyou bullying case and calls for an investigation into Yu’s sudden death, such incidents have become more frequent in recent years. These show that Chinese are not indifferent to the judiciary’s long-standing inability to bring social justice. However, everyone knows that “freedom of speech” in China comes at a cost and the majority remain silent.
The Chinese economic downturn after the COVID-19 pandemic has weakened the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) regime, causing political instability. As more unexpected “black swan” events keep popping up, the situation is becoming more unpredictable. This could also pose a risk to Taiwan, as the CCP could try to shift the internal focus outward by invading Taiwan.
Official declarations of “there were no suspicious circumstances regarding the deaths” were repeatedly seen during Hong Kong’s anti-extradition bill movement, as the CCP used its guns to control politics, reaching its hands into the judiciary, leading to the collapse of the judicial system and the rise of injustice.
These incidents serve as a warning to Taiwan. Bizarre deaths such as falling from buildings or drowning often occur in Taiwan too, but they receive little media attention. When police claim there are “no suspicious circumstances regarding the deaths,” they are not convincing to the public.
If such cases continue to accumulate, they are likely to erode trust in public authority and undermine confidence in the judiciary. Add in the Taiwan People’s Party’s continuous slandering of the judiciary and groundless attacks on the government, the ruling party should be alert to this CCP-like maneuver of “repeating the same attacks year after year, month after month, day after day.”
Hong Tsun-ming is a policy specialist in the Taiwan Statebuilding Party.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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