In the 13-year-old boy’s final recorded moments before his death, a surveillance camera captured him sitting on a scooter, surrounded by three of his classmates. An hour later, his phone died and relatives began a frantic search.
The next day, officials in a village in central China made a sickening discovery: the boy’s body was buried in an abandoned vegetable greenhouse and covered with a tarp.
Now three of his teenage classmates are in custody on suspicion of murdering the boy, a case that has captured China’s attention, sparking outrage and wild debate over the suspects’ ages and raising questions about bullying and society in rural China. Reflection on Responsibility.
Police in Feixiang District, Handan City only revealed the boy’s surname: Wang. They said in a brief statement on Sunday that the boy was killed on March 10 and the suspect was detained the next day.
Wang’s relatives and their lawyers said in interviews with local media and in social media posts that the boy had long been the victim of bullying and was forced to give money to one of his classmates before he was killed. They said police identified the suspected killer after reviewing surveillance footage and interviewing his classmates.
“He was beaten to death and his body was mutilated beyond recognition,” Wang’s father wrote on Chinese social media platform Douyin. “I hope the government will be fair, open and just, punish them severely and make the murderers pay with their lives!”
Wang’s father, aunt and grandmother did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A person who answered the phone number for the attorney’s law firm told The Associated Press they were waiting for comment, saying they had been flooded with interview requests.
Both Wang and the suspect are under 14 years old. Local media reported that they were “left-behind” children, a term commonly used in China to describe rural children who are often left with their grandparents because their parents work in distant cities.
As details of the tragedy emerge this week, concerns have been renewed about the social and psychological welfare of these children, their exposure to violent content online and the ability of the country’s social services to care for them.
“Too little attention is paid to the mental health of minors in rural areas,” said one commenter on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. “I think this kind of thing may happen again.”
The perpetrator’s unusually young age attracted widespread attention in China, with posts and videos by Wang’s relatives receiving millions of views and thousands of comments. Zhang Dongshuo, a Beijing-based defense lawyer not involved in the case, said Wang’s death was the latest in a series of teenage murders in China that have sparked debate about how old a child should be held responsible for a crime.
“Generally speaking, such cases involving minors are rare,” Zhang said. “But recently, more and more such cases have been reported by the media, triggering discussions in Chinese society about changing the age of criminal responsibility.”
In 2019, a 13-year-old boy admitted to sexually assaulting and killing a 10-year-old girl in a northeastern coastal city, but escaped criminal charges because Chinese law at the time stipulated that only those over 14 years old could be detained for criminal responsibility. Two years later, the government lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 12, but stipulated that prosecutions could only be brought with the approval of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, China’s top prosecutorial body.
Zhang added that parents’ lack of guidance for “left-behind” children is a long-standing social problem, but the issue of how “left-behind” children are raised has not yet been fully resolved.
“Many people believe that schools and the government should be responsible for children’s education, but this means that if relevant government departments and schools cannot educate them effectively, the minor is likely to fall into an educational vacuum,” he said.
Wang’s death was widely reported by state media, but there are signs that Chinese authorities are closely monitoring public sentiment given its sensitivity. On Sunday, the Wang family’s lawyer, Zang Fanqing, said in a live broadcast that he and Wang’s father were not allowed to see the boy’s body before it was suddenly cut off. The next day, Zang said on social media that they were allowed to see the body.
Calls to the Hebei Provincial Propaganda Department went unanswered, and a faxed request for comment went unanswered because the line was busy. Calls to the principal of the boy’s school went unanswered, as did calls to relatives of the two suspects.
Local police issued a public statement on Sunday asking the public not to “spread rumours” to protect the victim’s privacy and “avoid further harm” to the boy’s family.
The statement said that relevant departments have made every effort to comfort the families of the victims and do a good job in the aftermath, and all aspects of work are being carried out in an orderly manner.
After seeing Wang’s body, his family has expressed its intention to pursue criminal charges. In a video posted by Wang’s father on Monday, he said the sight of his son was “more brutal than I imagined.”
“Your father is not afraid, he is just upset and angry,” Wang’s father wrote to his son. “Wait for your father to avenge you!”
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