“Growing up in a poor family without awareness of dental care, my inability to become a doctor and have my teeth extracted is not a reason to justify the removal of my other teeth. Afterwards, he forcibly pushed a fallen tooth into the position of my wisdom tooth without anesthesia. I cried and begged him to give me anesthesia, but he kept telling me that the tooth hadn’t fallen out, just a bit loose. I endured the pain as he used wire to work inside my teeth for an hour, trembling from the pain. Three people held me down there, and I felt like a slaughtered sheep. I endured this for an hour, overwhelmed by pain. Afterwards, I sat up, and the entire oral department was only me, with no explanation. He still denied it in front of the evidence. The angel in white, the guardian of the people, I live in this city but I want to leave here so badly. This was a profound lesson for me, and I felt…”
— Wu Fangfang’s heartfelt complaint about the cannibalistic hospital
On March 17, Wu Fangfang, with the online nickname “Against the Wind Flying,” jumped to her death from Anqing City People’s Hospital (hereinafter referred to as Anqing City Hospital) in Anhui Province. Once this news was disclosed, it attracted extensive media coverage, and countless netizens debated: some could not understand her suicide just because she was mistakenly told her good tooth was pulled; some expressed deep sympathy for her tragic fate; others shook their heads and shouted that the “failure of medical procedures” led to patients’ inability to defend their rights… Few paid attention to the fact that only three days after Wu Fangfang’s death, her relatives had already reached a “settlement” with the hospital, her media accounts used for voicing rights had been completely cleared, and the doctor responsible for her forced her to jump off the building was only given a “notification of criticism and a three-month suspension”—after which, the “March 17 Anqing woman’s death” event was like a mud cow sinking into the sea with no follow-up, a vivid murder crime was erased and buried under layers of lies and silence.
Wu Fangfang, who had been roasted by this cannibalistic capitalist society all her life, quietly died at her 34th year, leaving behind her son diagnosed with autism and her mother bedridden.
The cause of this incident can be traced back to nearly a month ago. On March 12, Wu Fangfang went to the oral department of Anqing City Hospital to remove her impacted wisdom tooth, and upon the doctor’s advice, she decided to extract two wisdom teeth in total. Originally, removing wisdom teeth was just an ordinary minor surgery, but after the operation started, the “doctor with a doctorate” at Anqing City Hospital failed to accurately identify the wisdom tooth, and as a result, a healthy tooth beside it was forcibly pulled out. After mistakenly extracting the healthy tooth, the doctor’s first thought was not to try to remedy the situation for the patient but to shirk responsibility, pretend nothing happened, and stuff the wrongly pulled healthy tooth into the wisdom tooth’s position, completely ignoring that such behavior would cause severe pain to the patient, not to mention that the wisdom tooth had been shattered and removed, and the wound might contain tooth fragments. Such behavior was akin to cruel torture, forcing countless blades into flesh and bone to grind.
Faced with such excruciating pain, Wu Fangfang could not bear the struggle, crying and begging the doctor to increase the anesthesia; however, the white devil, who only wanted to shirk responsibility, would not use extra anesthesia to avoid unnecessary trouble and additional costs for the department. So, he sent several assistants to hold Wu Fangfang down while she wailed, and also deceived her by claiming that the tooth loosening was “normal,” and without anesthesia, he used wire to firmly bind the broken tooth pressed against the alveolar bone and tooth fragments into the incision site of the wisdom tooth.
The truth could not be hidden. Confronted with the tortured patient and the ironclad facts, the doctor had to admit his mistake when trying to exonerate himself after the operation, claiming that “his mistake caused the adjacent tooth to fracture,” and that the “fractured tooth could be saved.” However, the beast, realizing his mistake when no third party was present, immediately began to counterattack after deceiving Wu Fangfang out of the hospital, shifting all responsibility and claiming that “before the operation, it was informed that there was a possibility of fracturing the adjacent tooth.” He then even tampered with the medical record, shamelessly stating “During the operation, resistance from the neighboring tooth might cause loosening or falling out, which the patient understood, as there was long-term inflammation, and she insisted on the extraction!”
Thus, the responsibility of the doctor and the hospital was completely shifted onto the patient. Under the dominance and guidance of the bourgeois hospital, Wu Fangfang went from being a victim to the main person responsible for the accident!
Wu Fangfang’s complaint on WeChat Moments against Anqing City Hospital. Her Douyin account used for exposing the truth was repeatedly banned.
Wu Fangfang, persecuted cruelly by the hospital, did not give up defending her rights. After being driven home, she actively contacted the local health commission and tried to seek treatment at other hospitals to remove the wire and tooth fragments. However, in capitalist society, hospitals are monopolistic machines for profit, not institutions to safeguard people’s lives. Seeing that Wu Fangfang’s reports would seriously damage the reputation of the “top-tier” Anqing City Hospital, and further treatment would confirm that Anqing City Hospital falsified patient records and concealed medical accidents, hospitals across Anhui Province refused to treat her, and the health commission ignored her blood and tears, even threatening her not to cause trouble again.
Thus, Wu Fangfang could only endure the inflamed and swollen cheeks, day after day, suffering from the pain of the wound like a knife, longing for treatment, justice, and to vent her accumulated grievances… but until her death, the “absent justice” she longed for did not arrive.
On March 17, Wu Fangfang, unable to eat due to severe pain for five days, finally entered Anqing City Hospital one last time to “negotiate” with the white devils. Before leaving, she posted on social media: “If this account is not updated, it means I am gone, the common people are suffering again, how long can I live, tomorrow there will be more corpses on the streets.”
Later that day, she leapt from the 11th floor, using her life and her final passive struggle to express her resistance against the capitalist society and monopolistic medical groups that persecuted her to death.
In today’s Chinese society, Wu Fangfang’s tragedy is repeated every day. It is not just a black-hearted hospital or a white devil that caused her death, but the entire cannibalistic capitalist system. In capitalist society, hospitals exist as institutions to maintain the health of bourgeois landlords and to extract the blood and sweat of the working class; doctors are “professionals” that keep these institutions running. Those who obtain medical licenses, especially so-called public hospitals and “top-tier” hospitals’ “official doctors,” are long detached from the laboring people and the three major practices, supported by high salaries from the bourgeoisie, influenced by bourgeois ideology and economic interests, fully turning into staunch defenders of the capitalist system. They profit from patients’ suffering, earn high salaries from tests and drug commissions, and maintain their status through project indicators.
These “white devils” do not uphold the class sentiment of “serving the people,” nor do they adhere to supra-class or abstract professional ethics, but only the “exploit the world for one’s own benefit” philosophy of the ruling class and an insatiable desire for profit. To this end, they are willing to ruin lives and even kill for money: doctors in the Liver Transplant Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University solicited bribes of 350,000 yuan before surgery; experts at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University demanded 5,000 yuan during surgery, negligently misdiagnosed and removed patients’ uteri; Liu Xiangfeng, chief physician at Xiangya Second Hospital, long deceived patients into removing their intestines for profit, leaving many to live lifelong with colostomy bags… such bloodshed is countless.
The “medical team” composed of such bourgeois doctors, and the “medical institutions” led by this “medical team,” are ultimately backed by China’s ruling class—the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie. To maintain their class rule, exploiters always implement counterrevolutionary tactics, trying to suppress all unfavorable news. In this case, before Wu Fangfang’s suicide, they tried every means to make her suffer and had no way to seek help; after her death, they quickly suppressed the news, threw out the illusion of a settlement, and attempted to make the people “completely forget.” Not to mention that the white devils responsible for her persecution had already begun to insult and slander her while she was still alive, claiming she was infected due to “poor oral hygiene,” and even instructed nurses to secretly harm her, treat her differently, and ultimately pushed her to death.
Wu Fangfang, with nowhere to turn and cut off from survival by capitalism, had to bury her grievances, shame, anger, and despair in her heart. Looking up at the vast sky, she hoped to find salvation there.
Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, New China once established the most thorough and extensive people’s medical system in the world. The three revolutionary movements deeply penetrated the medical field, requiring medical personnel to go to the countryside, factories, and units, participate in collective labor, accept re-education by poor and lower-middle peasants, and integrate with the working masses. At that time, it was a symbol of the people’s rule, a crystallization of the mass medical cause that guaranteed the health of the majority with minimal resources. They did not rely on drug sales commissions, tests, or hierarchical benefits, but served the people. Back then, workers could get free injections and medicine, enter and leave clinics freely, and not lose their chance to live because of poverty. After the capitalist restoration, all these revolutionary achievements were thoroughly destroyed. The medical system was privatized, turned into a tool to serve the bourgeoisie, and became a treasure machine for profit. Today’s hospitals, although they display “People” on their signs, actually serve the bourgeoisie. They wear clean white coats, speak humane words, but only recognize money and connections. Poor people must pay first for treatment, deposit money for hospitalization, and have connections, status, or “medical insurance quotas” to survive.
“In a class society, everyone lives within a certain class position, and all thoughts are stamped with class marks” (Mao Zedong, “Practice”). Capitalist hospitals are not sacred places for saving lives; bourgeois doctors are not noble saints with miraculous skills. The former is merely a “blood and sweat” place extracting the last coins and drops of blood from workers, and the latter are just bourgeois pets or part of the ruling class. They flatter the powerful, bark at the poor, and rarely tell the truth to the laboring people or provide cheap treatment.
When this incident first broke out and briefly shook public opinion, a few “moderates” began to defend the doctors, saying “doctors are also human, mistakes are inevitable,” and “we need to find the problem, improve the medical system, and prevent such tragedies from happening again…” However, as revolutionary Marxists and proletarians, we must say: “Mistakes are not solved by ‘improvement.’ This system is part of the class system that exploits the working people, a necessary tool for the reactionary ruling class to maintain its privileges. It constantly manufactures ‘experts’ and ‘standards,’ elevates doctors, and degrades patients. It does not allow doctors to obey patients but only the hospital and interests. As long as this system exists, there will be Wu Fangfangs, third Wu Fangfangs… generation after generation of poor, women, elderly, and disabled will be tortured, insulted, and destroyed in this cold system. If we only think about ‘improving’ this system, the working people will have no future for generations!”
Wu Fangfang was a mother, a daughter, a worker struggling to survive like hundreds of millions of comrades, an ordinary person. She should not have died. But society forced her to die, cornered her, pushed her onto the rooftop, and immediately silenced her after she fell, erasing her voice and covering her injustice. Confronted with this reality, we cannot say she “died in vain,” nor can we just shout slogans and pass by. We must say: Let her death be the bell that awakens the masses. We must turn her complaints into our complaints, shout her unheard voice, and transform her suffering into our struggle direction!
We must rebuild the people’s medical institutions in cities and countryside, bring doctors back among the people, train them through labor, and grow through struggle. We must make hospitals no longer profit-driven tools but social institutions serving the proletarian state. We must abolish hierarchical registration, drug markups, expert monopolies, and revenue targets, and turn doctors back into medical workers of the people, not agents of capital.
To achieve all this, we cannot rely on internal reforms or bureaucratic conscience but only on the masses organizing themselves, overthrowing the current exploitative system, and rebuilding the proletarian state. This is not a fantasy, nor a step back to the past, but the use of proletarian political power to build a future belonging to the working people.
Wu Fangfang is dead. But we cannot let another Wu Fangfang die.
