China is suppressing coverage of deadly attacks. Some people are complaining online

Volunteers relocate flowers laid outside "Zhuhai People's Fitness Plaza" to a barrier leading into the area where a man rammed his car into people exercising at the sports center, in Zhuhai in southern China's Guangdong province on Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

BEIJING — Late last month, a car struck children near an elementary school in an outlying district of Beijing, according to a Chinese news report.

A four-sentence police statement said a 35-year-old male driver hit pedestrians due to “improper operation” of the car. It didn’t mention the school or that the victims included children. Photos of the aftermath, which showed a half-dozen people lying in the street, were scrubbed from China’s closely controlled internet.

“We need the truth,” said one post on Weibo, a leading social media platform similar to X.

The ruling Communist Party has expanded information control since leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, seeing it as a way to prevent unrest. More and more topics, from negative news about the economy to LGBTQ2S+ identity, have become subject to some form of censorship. In the past half year, mass attacks — in which a person kills or injures multiple people with a vehicle or knife — appear to have been added to the list.

Some people in China are pushing back, complaining online in at least two cases in recent months after drivers hit pedestrians.

The government may be trying to prevent copycat crimes, experts have said. Another motivation could be local authorities wanting to cover up when they fail to do so.

A deadly case in November sparked a government reaction

There was a spate of attacks last fall, but it’s difficult to gauge whether they are increasing, given the dearth of information.

The attacks weren’t always a taboo topic. In the past, authorities released the basic details. Typically, the assailant was described as taking out their anger on society, often over financial losses.

That appears to have changed following a particularly horrific case in November that killed 35 people in Zhuhai in southern China. Authorities said the driver was upset about a divorce settlement. Orders came from the very top — from Xi — to take steps to prevent similar attacks.

Eight days later, an SUV hit students arriving at an elementary school in Hunan province. The number of injured — 30 children and adults — wasn’t made public until nearly a month later when the driver was sentenced.

The clampdown on information has tightened further since. In April, reports circulated online that a car had run into people outside a primary school in Jinhua city. At least three provincial state media outlets posted stories — but they were quickly taken down. To date, authorities haven’t released any information.

Censorship makes some people hungry for information

Twelve days later, a fast-moving car veered off a street and into people at a bus stop in the city of Tengzhou in eastern China.

Authorities said nothing. Videos of the May 4 crash were taken down from social media. The next day, online criticism of the silence began to appear. People said the police should release basic information such as the driver’s identity and the number of casualties. A few defended the police, saying it happened on a holiday.

“If a few such precedents are set, and more local governments follow this way in the future, the rules of information disclosure may not be upheld and may be compromised,” Hu Xijin, the former editor of a state-owned newspaper, warned in a social media post.

Local governments want to cover up news that reflects badly on them or their polices, said Jennifer Pan, a Stanford University professor who researches how political censorship and information manipulation work in the digital age. The central government sometimes has other priorities.

“When the issue gains attention despite local censorship efforts, the center has an incentive to preserve the legitimacy of the overall system through responsiveness and acknowledgement of the event and underlying issues,” she said in an email response.

The details came out 48 hours after the crash. Six people had died, and it had not been an intentional attack: The driver was drunk, a state media report said.

Police respond with quick statements that are short on details

Since then, local authorities, at least in two cases in Beijing, seem to be taking a new approach: Issue a report quickly but with scant details.

Eleven days after the drunk driving case, a car hit people outside an elementary school in Beijing on May 15. The Beijing Traffic Police issued a report within a few hours but left out that the location was near a school. It said only that four people had been injured when a car sideswiped pedestrians on Jian’an West Road, and that the driver had been detained.

Authorities appeared to impose an information shutdown that evening. Police were stationed along the stretch of road and a person who appeared to be a neighborhood watch volunteer cautioned people in a nearby residential compound not to speak to strangers.

Six weeks later, posts appeared online on June 26 saying a car had hit children in Miyun, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of central Beijing. One well-reputed media outlet, Caixin, reached area shop owners who said that children had been hit, and a hospital that confirmed it was treating some child victims. Whether it was an intentional act remains unclear.

Associated Press journalist Emily Wang Fujiyama contributed to this story.

Ken Moritsugu, The Associated Press