In mid to late February, WuChuan Third Senior High School exposed a heinous bullying incident. The victim was a middle school boy with an intellectual disability who had been subjected to long-term bullying by several male and female students from the same school. The abuse and harassment he endured were extremely severe, simply appalling. The incident gained widespread public attention mainly due to a widely circulated online “bullying video.” The video was shot by the bully himself, lasting an astonishing twelve minutes as a record of “bullying achievements.” In the video, the intellectually disabled boy sat in his seat, while the bully next to him performed various extreme and malicious acts of bullying, including but not limited to public humiliation (sexual humiliation), punching and kicking, and forcibly inserting unknown foreign objects into his mouth. They used brooms, mops, and other tools to poke and hit his chest and head, even breaking his nasal bridge bone!
Once the video was exposed, it attracted widespread attention. Contrary to the perception of those who see the bullies as mere caricatures, the majority of students, parents, and other grassroots people did not regard these malicious acts as “minor mischief” or entertainment, but instead felt deep sympathy for the bullied child and harbored intense hatred for the bullies. The incident immediately fermented. On platforms like Douyin and Weibo, “WuChuan Third High School” became a trending keyword, with the public condemning the despicable and shameless bullies, exposing their accounts and personal information; some students from the same school also revealed more internal details. For a time, public opinion was in an uproar.
However, at this moment, the teachers who often boast about morality and righteousness in Chinese society, and the schools that pride themselves on teaching and nurturing children, what are they doing? In response to this, students from the same school launched a justified and forceful expose: after the incident, the school not only failed to make any public statement or self-reflection but also forcibly required students to delete the “bullying video” stored on their devices and sign a so-called “Video Deletion Record Investigation Form” (distributed to each grade, executed and signed by class teachers; the form asked students about their awareness, sharing, and deletion of the video). Moreover, the principal secretly contacted the cyber police, colluding to delete related videos online, and used various methods such as “suppressing hot searches” to reduce the incident’s visibility. Shortly afterward, the school further intensified its control over students—monitoring and restricting their use of mobile phones on campus, even tracking uploaders of related videos or requiring students to sign “confidentiality agreements.” These are the actions of school officials who claim to be “benevolent and righteous” towards students!
But, the anger of the people cannot be suppressed by the despicable tricks of the exploiting class. Soon, hundreds of students, parents, relatives, and other grassroots people gathered in front of WuChuan Third High School on the evening of the twenty-first, protesting against the school and the bullies, calling for severe punishment of campus bullying and justice for the victimized boy. They hoped to expand the social impact of the incident through online live broadcasts. Unfortunately, the police, as agents of the imperialist regime, quickly arrived to maintain order and suppress this potentially growing movement. As a result, the incident did not reach the scale or intensity of the “Pu Cheng incident.” It is likely that, after the Pu Cheng incident, the Chinese government increased surveillance and stability measures on school protests. Moreover, since the incident occurred in Guangdong—a province with extremely sharp class contradictions and highly radical class struggle—the police and stability forces deployed there were substantial. Due to the stark disparity in power between the two sides, the movement ultimately failed to develop. Of course, the spontaneous and unorganized nature of the action itself was also an internal reason for its failure.
The bullying incident at WuChuan Third High School, like all other campus bullying cases, fundamentally stems from class issues and should be analyzed from a class relations perspective. The bullied boy’s family is extremely poor; his mother works as a sanitation worker, and he has three siblings—all deaf and mute. Paradoxically, the bullying perpetrators live very comfortably and prosperously. Some are obsessed with eating, drinking, playing, and enjoying fashion as “internet celebrities,” while others are wealthy and considered “spiritual young men.” Even if they are not directly from the bourgeoisie, they deeply accept fascist ideas of harming and abusing others for personal pleasure. Punching, kicking, using weapons, insulting… only those who harbor deep hatred for the oppressed groups like the bullied boy could do all this. This fascism is a natural response of the fascist system maintained by the current Chinese imperialist regime—an ideology spread and ingrained into students’ minds by the exploiting class in all aspects of society. Whether spoiled children or hooligans, they act as loyal defenders of the Chinese imperialist rule—persecuting the grassroots and the weak! “Drawing the knife on the weaker.” These people form gangs in schools, bullying poor students; in society, they form circles of second-generation rich, hooligan groups, oppressing poor workers and farmers. Many recent social incidents of second-generation discrimination, insults against delivery workers or street vendors, or factory workers and thugs oppressing and currying favor with leaders and bosses are direct proof of this logic. So, how are these bullies different from those who uphold the “order of the rich” or directly support factory owners and bosses in society and in workplaces? They are simply maintaining the school hierarchy consciously or unconsciously.
Maintaining school order! Yes, “bullying” is actually a byproduct of the various fascist school hierarchies in China—a natural result of establishing such order, which in turn reinforces it. Chinese schools do not rely on “education” or “benevolence” to sustain themselves but on bourgeois hierarchical order. It involves two aspects: one is establishing a “ruler-servant, father-son” relationship—bosses are superior to workers, teachers are superior to students, and students are the most powerless. This conclusion is based on the majority of students from working-class families. Since students are essentially commodities, entrusted to schools by their economically dependent parents to “increase value (improve academic qualifications),” their status in school is primarily determined not by their own economic position (most have little economic status as they depend on their families), but by their parents’ economic status. Additionally, differences in academic achievement reflect the class status of their families—wealthy children often have privileged or bribed ways to succeed, while poor children have only poverty as their means, often at the end of the line. Therefore, among students, there are also status differences determined by their family background. “Second-generation rich” have higher status than “poor second-generation,” making the former dare not “offend” the latter and often having connections with school authorities or teachers. On the other hand, schools try to promote a hierarchical “learning to become a scholar” ideology, encouraging students to dream of being “superior” and viewing their peers through a hierarchical lens, further deepening the school hierarchy.
If bullying is seen as oppression caused by unequal status, then in Chinese schools, the vast majority of students are under constant oppression by capitalist hierarchical order. The “bullying” we often oppose is just a distorted form of this oppression. Do principals, directors, or teachers not “bully” students? Is the humiliation, criticism, abuse, and unfair treatment by school leaders and teachers not bullying? Is physical punishment, beating, or even cracking students’ skulls with triangles not bullying (even murder!)? These school officials disguise their actions with nice words like “education”; students who bully others also disguise their behavior as “play”—but both are the same. Someone from WuChuan Third High School said, “The first bully is the teacher.” This is correct. Because students’ academic performance is a kind of reputation for the school and also linked to government subsidies, the school tends to expel or dismiss students it deems “useless.” The intellectually disabled student sitting at the back of the classroom on a broken desk—why? Because he is “intellectually disabled”? No, because he is a “useless” student who cannot bring achievements or reputation to the school! Isn’t this blatant inequality obvious?
“Rich people have their own tuberculosis, poor people have theirs; the rich recover, while the poor die.” The intellectual disability of the boy is, as Bethune said, like tuberculosis—a “poverty-related intellectual disability.” Conversely, children of the bourgeoisie are unlikely to suffer from such diseases; even if they do, their family status and wealth often allow for quick cures, and their later academic success may even be praised as model students. Some hypocrites online say that disabled people and ordinary people should not attend the same school, and that the boy should be sent to a special school. This view completely ignores the class differences reflected in this incident. Is the root cause of the boy’s unequal position in school not present in special or welfare schools? The boy’s bullying is not because he attends the wrong school or suffers from unfortunate diseases, but because he and his family suffer from a “poverty disease.” This disease is not a natural disaster but a calamity imposed by capitalist society—making his physiological ailments more painful and difficult to cure. Therefore, the idea that teachers bullying students is rooted in a deeper meaning: without teachers and school leaders establishing a capitalist hierarchy in schools, there would be no place for students to physically abuse intellectually disabled peers. When parents and students rise to overthrow such breeding grounds for bullying, the school is the first to oppose. Even if not directly defending “bullying,” it defends the root cause that produces bullying and sustains school rule.
The day after the incident, the victim’s grandfather received the handling result from the local police: each bully pays 1,000 yuan, and the school pays 20,000 yuan in compensation. The school imposed a one-week suspension on the bullies. How perfunctory this punishment is—almost everyone who stands with the victim can feel it. More infuriatingly, there are rumors that the victim was even expelled by the school! To this day, none of the bullies have publicly apologized; after the suspension ends, they can return to school as usual and continue bullying the poor student. In such a bourgeois hierarchical school, even expelling bullies cannot eliminate bullying of poor students, and not expelling them makes the idea of eliminating bullying even more impossible—it’s an insult to the victim. From this outcome, it is clear that the school is not genuinely solving the bullying problem. It is like imperialist regimes refusing to resolve wars because war is an inevitable product of imperialism. Bullying is precisely an inevitable product of such fascist school hierarchies rooted in strict capitalist order. Who protects the bullies in these fascist schools? Teachers, directors, principals… even the education bureau and police! But who protects the vulnerable students? Not seen in the fat bureaucrats. All students and parents opposing bullying and sympathizing with victims should understand: if they do not unite to defend the interests of the weak, no one will stand up for them. To defend the interests of the weak, they must oppose the school’s hierarchical order and demand equality among students and between teachers and students.
Students should unite because campus bullying is often based on divisions caused by competition among students from small bourgeois backgrounds. Many recent campus bullying incidents have been partly resolved because students and parents united in protests. The reason these incidents have not been fully resolved is because students or parents, considering their class interests, betrayed the movement (parents’ role is often more complex and crucial; this will be discussed in detail later). Therefore, students and parents who oppose bullying and sympathize with victims should support and persist in protest movements. Even if suppressed by reactionary police, they should continue to promote student unity and oppose the school’s hierarchy, rather than protect it for personal gain. To truly achieve equality in schools, it is necessary to overthrow the old school system altogether—this requires a social revolution. The “unity” we speak of is the first step in smashing the old school and eliminating bullying. Students and parents must realize this and push our movement forward.
https://yesterdayprotests.com/广东吴川：智力缺陷学生遭霸凌引发怒，学生网/