At least 35 people were killed and dozens more injured when a man plowed his car into pedestrians exercising around a sports center in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai on Monday night.
Footage showing bodies lying on the pavement appeared on social media in the hours after the crash, but had vanished by early Tuesday morning, and local police reported only “injuries.”
It took officials nearly 24 hours to reveal that dozens had died — in one of the country’s deadliest incidents in years.
Photo: AFP
China heavily monitors social media platforms, where it is common for words and topics deemed sensitive to be removed — sometimes within minutes.
On a social media site, videos and photos showing the bloody moments after the incident late on Monday night were swiftly deleted.
Videos of the aftermath posted to Xiaohongshu (小紅書), China’s equivalent to Instagram, were also taken down.
Chinese officials did not reveal that dozens had died until almost 24 hours after the attack, with state media reporting the 35 deaths shortly after 6:30pm on Tuesday.
Soon after, the hashtag “Man in Zhuhai rammed the crowd causing 35 deaths” jumped to the No. 1 trending topic on social media and reached 69 million views within an hour.
The fatal crash happened on the eve of China’s largest airshow, taking place in the same city, a showpiece event promoted for weeks by the country’s tightly controlled state media operation.
State media in China also acts as a government mouthpiece.
The state-backed Global Times newspaper yesterday morning published a short story on the “car ramming case” on page 3 — a stark contrast to the front-page feature on fighter jets at the airshow nearby.
The Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily included Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) instructions to treat injured residents and punish the perpetrator in a short block of text on its front page.
State broadcaster China Central Television’s flagship evening news program, Xinwen Lianbo (新聞聯播), on Tuesday spent about a minute and a half on Xi’s directive to “treat those injured” during the 30-minute show, but shared no footage from the city.
Agence France-Presse reporters on the scene in Zhuhai late on Tuesday night saw delivery drivers placing online orders of flower bouquets beside flickering candles to commemorate the victims.
However, just a few hours later, cleaning staff cleared away the memorial, with some saying that they were acting on an “order from the top.”
A handful of people at the site were blocked from taking videos by a police car and security guards shouting: “No filming.”
China has a long history of clamping down on the spread of information, sometimes leading to costly delays in response.
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