The murder that shakes China – NRK Urix – Foreign news and documentaries

On March 11, the police find the body of a boy in an abandoned greenhouse in a village in the province of Hebei. They lift away a tarpaulin. The sight that meets the police officers does not just shake them. It shakes China.

The father shares the experience of seeing his dead boy.

– He was beaten while he was still alive. His body was mutilated beyond recognition, the boy’s father wrote on Douyin, which is the platform of TikTok’s owners in China.

– I hope the authorities will be fair and open, and punish them severely. That the murderers will pay with their lives, he added.

The autopsy report should be ready in two to three weeks. Three 13-year-old boys from the murdered boy’s school are arrested on the same day that the body is found. They have the status of suspects.

The police have so far only released the boy’s family name; Wang.

Wave of compassion and rage

Millions of Chinese have expressed their support on social media. Several post portraits of Wang. Some make illustrations of the crime itself. Parents of children the same age post videos of them digging graves – to the three boys who have now been arrested. They have the status of suspects.

According to the father, the three allegedly bullied his son for several weeks. To the state television channel CCTV, one of the investigators says that evidence suggests the murder was planned.

– In two rounds – the day before and on the day of the murder – they dug the hole where they dumped the boy, local police officer Li Yafeng told CCTV.

“Children left behind”

All the children, both the victim and the alleged killers, are under the age of 14. They are what are called in China “left behind children”.

That is, children who grow up with their grandparents in the countryside while their parents work in the bigger cities.

In China, 295.6 million people are migrant workers, according to the National Bureau of Statistics’ 2022 figures.

These are the workers who built the factories and infrastructure that made China the world’s largest exporting nation. These are the women and men who, from a young age, have worked in the factories that make mobile phones and PCs. Those who sew sneakers consumers in the West buy.

The discussions about the living conditions and upbringing of the children of migrant workers have been going on in China for decades.

This case has become a wake-up call.

Politically sensitive murder

It is rare for children to kill children in China. The teenage murder has started a intense debate about bullying and mental health in rural China.

– The three children in this case obviously lack sympathy and compassion which they should have learned through schooling, and which should have been the basis of their upbringing in adolescence.

That is what the independent psychologist and educator Wang Guorong, who works in the city of Suzhou, tells NRK about the suspects – should they be found guilty.

The attention surrounding the murder makes the case politically sensitive. Of the several researchers and lawyers NRK contacts, there are few who want to speak to a foreign media house.

But in background conversations, several paint a fairly similar picture: In China, you are measured from a young age by results at school, or how rich you are.

If you do not succeed at school, your family is not relatively wealthy, then you are behind, according to sources NRK has spoken to.

This applies to the whole of China, but it is reinforced in the countryside. The immediate environment is poorer. The schools are worse.

Children here are not just left behind. They are left out.

– The spiritual and moral education is completely paralyzed, Wang Guorong believes.

– Everyone should take responsibility

The psychologist is supported by the lawyer Jiang Zhaojun from Juntuo Law Firm in Shanghai. He says this if the three suspects are behind the crime:

– They did not become murderers overnight. They are teenagers. They grow up in this society, not in a vacuum. We have to reflect on this, and everyone should take responsibility, says Jiang to NRK.

Supposed to have been robbed for pocket money

Great pressure and a Chinese press that is more active than usual has meant that we know more than normal in Chinese crime cases.

The police are said to have found the three boys with the help of surveillance cameras and by questioning classmates.

The last sign of life is a surveillance video of the boy sitting on a scooter surrounded by the three boys. An hour later, his phone is said to have died. When the families couldn’t get hold of him, they started looking.

– My baby was still alive around 3:00pm on March 10th. All his money was transferred from his phone at 4:10 p.m. and his phone was turned off, the father told Beijing News.

The boy is said to have had 191 yuan, or NOK 280, on a Chinese app that corresponds to Vipps or Apple Pay. The money must have ended up on a corresponding app on the phone of one of the three boys. Even in rural China, this is not much more than pocket money or money for school meals for a few weeks.

Criminal minimum age lowered

In 2021, China lowered the criminal minimum age from 12 to 14. But the use of general criminal law against children as young as 12 must be approved by China’s Supreme Procuratorate, which is subject to the Chinese Supreme Court. This killing is seen as a test of the new law.

The authorities are watching closely. The courts in China are not independent of political control. How the authorities interpret people’s sense of justice can have an impact on the case.

Death penalty widely used

The death penalty is widely used and widely supported in China. Several also demand the death penalty for the three thirteen-year-olds, if they are found guilty.

– We cannot just blame these three children and ask for the death penalty. This is not the solution to such a problem, says lawyer Jiang about the three suspects.

Both the lawyer Jiang Zhaojun and the psychologist Wang Guorong says that bullying is a widespread problem in schools in China. Schools must be evasive in matters of bullying and do not always give children the security they are entitled to.

– Our schools do not take responsibility. They focus only on textbook education and totally ignore moral education and legal awareness. Schools place more emphasis on things like homework, says the lawyer.