“Going Xianzhong Mode”: Can Local Governments Stop “Revenge Against Society” Attacks?

Patricia M. Thornton CLM Issue 84 June 2025.pdf

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Indiscriminate mass attacks have been increasing in China since at least 2000, with 2024 clocking in as the bloodiest year on record. So-called “revenge against society” attacks have become so common that the notoriously bloodthirsty late Ming rebel, Zhang Xianzhong, has reemerged as an online meme. Beijing has responded by pressing local governments to double down on the “Fengqiao Experience for a New Era,” an updated Mao-era model for containing social conflict that involves “sinking police” down to the grassroots and working more closely with a range of actors, including micro grid-workers and public security “volunteers.” However, while the intensification of “preventative repression” may secure a semblance of stability in the short term, many have argued that such practices are counterproductive, and they may serve to increase social cleavages by increasing the marginalization and stigmatization of vulnerable groups in Chinese society over the long term.

Shortly before 7:40 pm on November 11, 2024, a 62-year-old pensioner named Fan Weiqiu drove his brand-new SUV to the Zhuhai Sports Center. He had purchased the 200,000 RMB vehicle the previous week and had taken delivery of it a day earlier, when he also added a specially modified, heavy-duty off-road bumper bar to the front of the vehicle.[1] Fan then made the thirty-minute drive from his home in Jinwan district to the sports center, but he turned around after seeing a large group of dancers practicing in front of the turnstiles at the south gate. When he returned to the complex the following evening to find the area free and clear, he floored the SUV’s accelerator, smashing through the bank of turnstiles at the entrance to the compound. At 7:48 pm, Fan’s vehicle circled the perimeter of the stadium before entering the National Fitness Plaza through the north gate.[2]  Fan then turned directly onto the fitness plaza’s paved jogging track, reaching a speed of 80 km/h and mowing down several groups of recreational runners and hikers in a bloody rampage that left at least 35 people dead and another 43 seriously injured.[3] First responders to the scene reported that Fan had slashed his throat and stabbed himself repeatedly with a knife while still behind the wheel. He slipped into a coma and was rushed to the hospital, but he managed to survive.[4] Days later, police reported that Fan had planned China’s deadliest civilian attack in over a decade because he was dissatisfied with the division of his marital assets in a pending divorce.[5] Six weeks later, he was sentenced to death and executed on January 20, 2025.[6]

Five days after the mass killing in Zhuhai, eight people were stabbed to death and 17 were seriously wounded in Wuxi city by a 21-year-old former vocational and technical college student who had been denied a diploma due to poor exam results and who was disgruntled about paltry remuneration for his internship.[7] Three days later, 30 people were seriously injured when a car rammed into a crowd waiting outside a primary school in Hunan’s Changde prefecture. Eighteen of the victims were schoolchildren. The driver, 39-year-old Huang Wen, was motivated by investment losses and family conflicts.[8]

Unofficial surveys of so-called “revenge against society” (报复社会) attacks in China demonstrate an alarming rise since at least 2000, with 2024 the bloodiest year on record. A comparative survey of 138 mass stabbings throughout the world between April 2007 and 2017 found that nearly one-half—or 45 percent—occurred in China, including one 2009 episode that claimed a staggering 250 victims.[9] Of those incidents that ended with the perpetrator committing suicide, 86 percent occurred in the PRC.[10] Another recent study found a total of 141 publicly reported mass attacks in China since 2000, claiming 629 lives and causing 1,621 casualties, with the historical high of 17 mass murders in 2024 edging out past the previous peak of 16 in 2018.[11] Another study uncovered at least 171 indiscriminate mass attacks that claimed at least 1,799 lives in the decade leading up to the Zhuhai tragedy. The perpetrators of the attacks were overwhelmingly male (90 percent), and the majority of the victims were female. Many were children. As in cases elsewhere, a significant number of the perpetrators were under the age of 30 (18 percent); however, in China, a second significant cluster of perpetrators included those between the ages of 50 and 55 years old, with economic hardships, social marginalization, and losses of significant relationships frequently appearing in their backgrounds.[12]

“Revenge against society” attacks have become so common in mainland China that the phenomenon has spawned a popular social media tag resurrecting the legend of the bloodthirsty late Ming-dynasty rebel, Zhang Xianzhong (张献忠), who is fabled to have slaughtered 600 million people in a series of rampages during the Ming-Qing transition. In chatspeak online, to go “Xianzhong mode” (献忠学)—and to “kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill” (杀杀杀杀杀杀杀)[13]—is hailed by some Chinese netizens as an escape from the grinding, “involutionary” (内卷) pressures of the rat race on the one hand, and an alternative to the defeatist surrender of “lying flatism” (躺平主义) on the other.[14] The terms “Xianzhong mode” and “Xianzhong idiom” (献忠梗) were banned across the board on Chinese social media in 2021, with uses of and searches for “Xianzhong” (献忠), “Xianzhong incident” (献忠事件), and “Xianzhong behavior” (献忠行为) all tightly controlled on the major online platforms Baidu and Sogou.[15] On June 6, 2021, the “献忠bot,” which chiefly recirculated news of “revenge against society” attacks on Weibo, was shut down by censors after reposting parts of a manifesto penned by Wu Liang, a 25 year-old who was later convicted of knifing to death 7 people in Anhui’s Anqing city.[16] Given the close association between Xianzhong memes and accelerationist discourses mocking Xi Jinping as the “accelerator-in-chief” (总加速师),[17] the ban was hardly unexpected.

The policy response of state authorities to the spike in mass violence has not only been ineffective in curbing attacks but counterproductive as well, following what has become a well-worn playbook of censorship, punitive social control measures, and top-down enforcement of “distributed surveillance” by overstretched local governments.[18] Beijing has been pushing the “Fengqiao Experience,” a Mao-era model of grassroots social control and stability preservation that was recently updated for Xi’s “New Era,” as a solution to the rising grassroots violence. Its contemporary form makes extensive use of cutting-edge technologies to enhance the capacity of local governments for “preventative repression,” but it does little to redress the underlying causes of the sudden mass violence, and arguably only exacerbates them. In the immediate aftermath of the Zhuhai tragedy, local authorities seized and whitewashed the fitness center site, discouraged expressions of public mourning, and imposed a reporting ban by roughing up journalists near the area. Those seeking to leave flowers at the gate to the stadium were filmed or photographed, and the bouquets were swiftly whisked away, allegedly to an indoor memorial hall that was not open to the public. Journalists, including the BBC’s Stephen McDonell, were roughed up by local thugs.[19] Online public discussion was largely impossible: “Delete posts, close comments, reduce popularity, [Chinese flag emoji] is really safe and free,” one frustrated netizen commented the following afternoon.[20] As sociologist Sun Peidong has observed, “Public attacks are often reactions to repression; the irony is that government generally responds to them with even more repression.”[21]

The day after the Zhuhai attack, Xi Jinping, for the first time, acknowledged that an indiscriminate mass killing had taken place, “attaching great importance to it and issuing important instructions” (高度重视并作出重要指示指出). While his acknowledgment did not overtly recognize the incident as part of a broader pattern of events, Xi called upon “all regions and relevant departments to learn profound lessons, draw inferences from this instance, and to strengthen risk prevention and control at the source” (各地区和有关部门要深刻汲取教训、举一反三，加强风险源头防控).[22] The following day, when the Party Committee of the Ministry of Public Security met to study Xi’s important instructions and consider methods of implementation, its orders were both swift and definitive: the lesson to be learned and inference to be drawn was that all locales must “adhere to and develop the ‘Fengqiao Experience’ for the New Era, adhering to prevention and mediation first, using the rule of law, and solving problems on the spot” (坚持和发展新时代“枫桥经验”，坚持预防在前、调解优先,运用法治、就地解决).[23]

Fengqiao, From Mao to Now

Named for Fengqiao township in Shaoxing prefecture, Zhejiang province, the so-called “Fengqiao Experience” (枫桥经验) first came to the attention of central leaders in a report delivered by Minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi to the 1963 National People’s Congress on the progress of the Socialist Education Movement’s “Four Cleans Campaign.” In the course of mobilizing the masses, clearly demarcating “friends” from “enemies” and targeting the “four reactionary elements” (四类分子),  Xie claimed that Fengqiao eschewed the more “violent methods” in use elsewhere. Instead, it relied “on the masses classifying and listing the enemy,” and chose to “struggle through education, review, and explanation”; the township looked to the revolutionary masses to “carry out monitoring and rehabilitation locally.” By the end of the campaign, it was said that “not one person was rounded up, but still the vast majority of enemies were dealt with,” “transforming the vast majority of ‘four reactionary elements’ into new people” (把绝大多数“四类分子”改造成新人). Mao quickly endorsed the experience as a model to be disseminated through pilot programs capable of educating and organizing ordinary people to take on public security work—the surveillance, assessment, and correction of individuals designated as enemies—at the social grassroots, without remanding the majority of perpetrators to higher levels.[24]

In theory, the Mao-era Fengqiao model sought to empower local residents to engage in social discipline through the broad application of ideological critiques and non-violent verbal struggles instead of relying on formal state organs. Arguably a form of mass participatory governance,[25] the model sought to embed class struggle into the fabric of rural administration by displacing the decision-making authority of party elites with non-violent forms of mass mobilization such that conflicts would be contained “as they emerge at the community level” and “small matters don’t leave the village, big things don’t leave the township, and contradictions are not handed up to the higher authorities” (小事不出村，大事不出镇,  矛盾不上交”).[26]  Yet, save two brief mentions of the “Fengqiao Experience” in People’s Daily in the year or so following Mao’s death, the Maoist model faded into obscurity after the 1981 Resolution on Party History thoroughly repudiated the Socialist Education Movement and the Cultural Revolution.[27]

Xi Jinping unexpectedly issued new “important instructions” on the fiftieth anniversary of the “Fengqiao Experience” in 2013, when he called upon “party committees and governments at all levels” (各级党委和政府) to “uphold and develop” (坚持和发展) the model. He cited the example of provincial authorities in the construction of the “Safe Zhejiang” (平安浙江) project who had adopted the practice of mass participation in public security work with respect to “rule of law methods and rule of law thinking” (法治思维和法治方式).[28] Xi’s 2013 “important instructions” quickly triggered a cascade of efforts to update and institutionalize the “Fengqiao Experience” and to fully update the experience in time for the party’s sixtieth anniversary.

The “Fengqiao Experience for a New Era” (新时代的桥经验) that debuted at the sixtieth-anniversary conference in November 2023 [29]  shed its predecessor’s association with “social management” (社会管理) in favor of a new discourse emphasizing the hypothetically more expansive and participatory practices of “social governance” (社会治理),[30] aimed at “co-construction, co-governance, and sharing” (共建共治共享)[31]—three emerging concepts in Xi Jinping Thought. This shift has been partly institutionalized since the 2019 pilot of so-called one-stop Social Governance Centers (社会治理中心) under the leadership of county-level Political and Legal Affairs Committees (县政法委). These ambitious facilities focus on the use of mediation, and they play a front-line role in conflict management, citizen legal education, and non-confrontational policing.[32] On paper, they seek to merge several party and state offices as well as various social organizations at the county level and below. The new Social Governance Centers are designed to facilitate cross-departmental communications among urban street-level and rural township governments, administrative rural villages, and urban community residents’ committees, and to reach down to and interface with grassroots “grid management”[33] units at the lowest levels. They also provide legal and policy advice to local residents and businesses,[34] and they work closely with retooled “Fengqiao-style police stations” (枫桥式公安派出所) that “unswervingly promote the downward shift in the center of gravity, the sinking down of the police force, and the downward tilt of [public] security” (坚定不移推动重心下移、警力下沉、保障下倾).[35]

In addition to this new discursive and institutional wrapper, the “New Era” adaptation of the “Fengqiao Experience” includes a vast digitalization initiative that facilitates the exchange of data among various agencies and front-line workers, with an eye to preventing the escalation of minor conflicts into major conflagrations. Two weeks after the November 2023 “New Era Fengqiao Experience” conference, a national symposium of Public Security Bureau directors was held in Alibaba’s home turf of Hangzhou to further elaborate high-tech practices of social control. On display by the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau was its new digitalized, cloud-based service, nicknamed a “Public Security Brain” (公安大脑), which is said to “make full use of cutting-edge technologies, such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence” (充分运用大数据、云计算、人工智能等前沿科技), to break down “‘system barriers’ and ‘data islands’” (打破“系统壁垒”“数据孤岛”). The Hangzhou Public Security Bureau promised that the service would “develop various algorithmic models and application scenarios to empower and improve the efficiency of various police tasks, such as risk prevention and control, combating crime, and social governance” (开发各类算法模型和应用场景，为风险防控、打击犯罪、社会治理等各项警务工作赋能增效) in order to fully usher the “Fengqiao Experience” into Xi Jinping’s “New Era.”[36]

Back to the Future?

Hangzhou’s “Public Security Brain” may be among the latest cutting-edge innovations in the technologically sophisticated surveillance system of local governments, but implementing the “Fengqiao Experience for a New Era” still relies upon the low-tech, labor-intensive practices that shaped the original Mao-era model.[37] In fact, many observers suggest that it is the extreme indebtedness of the localities in the post-pandemic period[38]—including the fact that many local governments are no longer capable of covering the wages of grassroots grid-workers and other local security personnel[39]—that is partly fueling the apparent wave of enthusiasm for the return of Fengqiao-style policing. Ramping up tech surveillance would require considerable expenditures from the already depleted local government coffers in order to purchase the cutting-edge technologies, such as big data tools, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, that Beijing favors. However, government spending on security — the bulk of which comes from the already massively indebted localities — grew by just over 3 percent in 2023 according to the latest annual yearbooks, which is the lowest increase in public security spending over the course of the Xi era, excluding the pandemic years.[40] “New Era Fengqiao Experience” policing, with its heavy reliance on citizen volunteers and informal organizations, like the “Red Maple Vigilantes” (红枫义警) and the “Chaoyang Aunties” (朝阳群众),[41] to carry out tasks such as routine surveillance and information gathering,[42] in recent months has been promoted as a potentially expedient, cost-saving alternative.[43]

Notwithstanding the integration of artificial intelligence, surveillance cameras with facial recognition software, and high-tech policing tools in those areas that can afford them, “New Era” Fengqiao security work still bears clear hallmarks of its revolutionary Maoist roots in at least three ways: the persistent reliance on campaign-style security “dragnets” over more institutionalized forms of policing; the targeting of “key populations” (重点人口) for surveillance and control; and the frequent deployment of extra-legal means and practices in order to reduce markers of conflict and social instability.

On November 21, ten days after the Zhuhai attack, Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong told local public security chiefs participating in a national video conference that, in keeping with Xi’s “important instructions,” it is critical that they prepare to carry out “Operation Winter” (冬季行动) to a depth sufficient to “resolutely ensure social security from this winter to next spring” (坚决确保今冬明春社会安全稳定) and to “strictly prevent the occurrence of ‘extreme cases’” (严防发生极端案件) like that which occurred at the Zhuhai Sports Center.[44] The following day, the Public Security Bureaus in Chongqing, Guangxi, and Yunnan each held meetings to kick off local implementation of the dragnet.[45] A few days later, in language strongly reminiscent of Mao-era campaigns, Beijing municipal public security forces were mobilized to “go all out to deter crime with powerful momentum” (全力以赴以强大声势震慑犯罪) by placing “Operation Winter,” as one of the bureau’s central tasks (全局中心工作之一)  alongside development of the “Fengqiao Experience,” in a front-page article in People's Public Security News,[46] drawing on social groups and organizations to participate in information gathering and reporting.

In the Mao-era “Fengqiao Experience,” the masses were mobilized to identify and label local members of the so-called “four reactionary elements” (四类分子) according to party-defined criteria and to carry out on-site monitoring and rehabilitation.[47] Likewise, the “New Era Fengqiao Experience” relies on a broad range of para-professional agents (城管), civilian volunteer groups (红枫义警,朝阳群众), grid-workers (网格员), and other marginal actors, dubbed by Ong as “thugs-for-hire,”[48] in order to identify potential risks at the grassroots following the loose guidelines set by superordinate bodies within the party-state. In light of the steep rise in indiscriminate mass attacks during the Xi Jinping area, both the range of actors recruited to assist public security forces in surveillance as well as the categories of “key populations” targeted for a form of “enforced control” (管制 ), have surged in numbers. “Gridded community management” (管理网格), which made its debut in Shanghai in 2004, has been rolled out at the social grassroots levels with increasing vigor during the course of the Xi era,[49] such that it is now common to encounter references not only to “grid-workers” (网格员), but, increasingly, to “micro grid-workers” (微网格员), and, since at least 2023, “mobile micro grid-workers” (微网格员), as part of local government efforts to deepen and develop the “New Era Fengqiao Experience.”[50]  Although Public Security Bureaus in Guangdong and Shandong—among other places—had to consolidate the number of local police stations in operation through layoffs and mergers in 2023 due to the ballooning debt[51] and grassroots grid-workers in some locales have gone unpaid for six months or more,[52] superordinate pressures to meet stability maintenance benchmarks have not decreased. Financially beleaguered local governments have ramped up the “outsourcing” of public security tasks,[53] including recruiting food delivery drivers to serve either part-time or on a voluntary basis as “mobile micro grid-workers” in exchange for access to free food and drink from street-level rest stations[54] or by promising them that their service will be counted as part of their performance appraisals for probationary party membership.[55] In Heilongjiang’s Daqing city, alongside more routine duties., sanitation workers have reportedly been recruited to collect information to assist local police.[56] In other cases, out-of-work university graduates who end up returning to “gnaw the bones of the elderly” (啃老) by living with their parents have been persuaded to join the ranks of community and grid- or micro grid-workers with relatively modest stipends or as unpaid interns who may use the experience to later qualify for higher-level posts.[57] With the youth unemployment rate at historic highs amid the post-pandemic economic downturn, such schemes are becoming attractive options for under-employed or unemployed youth, who are sometimes willing to fill these low-status posts, either because of the access they gain to local government employee benefits or to entry-level positions for eventual civil-service careers.[58]

Like its Mao-era cousin, the “New Era Fengqiao Model” continues to target “key populations” for surveillance and control, with shifting numbers of people classified as potential social stability risks and targeted for surveillance as a result of the spike in “revenge against society” attacks. Immediately after the Zhuhai tragedy, the Guangdong government called upon grassroots grid-workers and others to investigate the so-called “people with eight losses” (八失人员, 八失人群), referring to those who may have recently experienced investment or job losses, life or emotional frustrations, relationship failures, mental imbalances, mental disorders, or losses of supervision (for youth), as well as the “three lows and the three fews” (三低三少), referring to people with “low income, low social status, low social prestige, and few interpersonal contacts, few opportunities for social mobility, and few opportunities for counseling.” Based in part on the profile of perpetrator Fan Weiqiu, after the mid-November 2024 tragedy, local authorities in Zhuhai called for the screening of the “four no’s and five losses” (四无五失人员); “no spouse, no child, no job or stable income, and no real estate or other assets”; and “investment losses, life frustrations, discord in relationships, psychological imbalances, and mental disorders.”[59] These categories are both broad and poorly defined: the Canglang street-level office in Suzhou’s Gusu district dispatched 3,800 community cadres and police, grid-members, and others to investigate 21 communities, and it registered 81,000 residents according to the above criterion. It discovered a total of 83 “people with five losses,” a ratio that slightly exceeds one in a thousand residents living on Canglang Street. Of that 83, two were found to have experienced “life frustrations,” four had experienced breakdowns in close personal relationships, 14 had mental imbalances of one kind or another, and 15 were suffering from a diagnosed mental disorder. But the highest number—48 of the 83—had found their way into such a designation by way of failed investments, which accounted for 57.8 percent of the total.[60] Due to updated door-to-door survey and data collection methods, the recent stock market fluctuations, increasingly competitive job market, and other economic pressures have swelled the ranks of the newly minted target population beyond the surveillance and control capacities of many local governments.

The Mao-era model relied upon extra-legal measures to carry out the on-site monitoring and rehabilitation of the “four reactionary elements.” Notwithstanding Xi Jinping’s injunctions that the “New Era Fengqiao Experience” is to be conducted in strict accordance with the law, the actual legality of enhanced surveillance over “key populations” is tenuous at best. The 2017 “Specifications on Grid-based Services and Management for Urban and Rural Communities” task grassroots grid-workers chiefly with the collection of information relevant to public security, public opinion, and with “investigating, teasing out, and handling unstable factors of all sorts” (排查、梳理、处理各种不安定因素). Conflicts and disputes are to be “resolved and dealt with as soon as possible” (第一时间予以化解和处觉), either by the grid-workers themselves or in consultation with local mediation services.[61] Yet, despite the impressively broad mandate grid-workers appear to have been accorded in Xi’s “New Era Fengqiao Experience,” because the grid management system remains parastatal to the party-state, its role in managing social stability is largely quasi-legal: technically, grid-workers can compel but cannot command social compliance from residents, as People’s Daily acknowledged at the start of the pandemic lockdown.[62] As one popular legal information blog recently pointed out, grid- and micro grid-workers rarely have or can produce documentation that authorizes them to collect information or to confiscate items from local residents, and, frequently, the information they seek violates personal privacy regulations. Furthermore, most such workers lack professional training to carry out the ambitious duties with which they are entrusted.[63] For example, one recent study of the nearly 50 grassroots conflicts in one county that were referred on by grid-workers and other local security personnel to the county’s Social Governance Center for mediation in accordance with the “New Era Fengqiao Experience” found only 14 successful mediation agreements, in part because none of the involved grassroots actors (grid-workers, stability maintenance workers, or volunteer mediators) had either judicial or prosecutorial powers.[64]

However, in the aftermath of the Zhuhai tragedy, the lack of legally enforceable authority has by no means prevented grassroots grid-workers, micro grid-workers, and party-organized volunteers from engaging in enhanced control and management—often to an extreme degree—focusing on newly designated potential high-risk “key populations.” In Guangdong’s Huicheng township, for example, 39 members of the “key population” involved in stability incidents or in petitioning the authorities were thoroughly investigated after mid-November 2024, including 15 who were further designated as “five losses people.” Four hundred and sixty “key population” targets previously known to have used illegal drugs were visited again, and 65 of them were put under corrective scrutiny by the year’s end.[65] Tianjia township in Chongqing promised to carry out “full coverage” (全覆盖), “dragnet-style” (拉网式), and “rolling” (滚动式) inspections of the “five losses people,” leaving “no blind spots” untouched; in addition, it carried out a “Sister Sha Guard” (莎姐守未) action targeting 567 youth whom the township authorities had designated as being “five losses people”(五类人员). Three community drug rehabilitation specialists brought 115 recreational drug users under control, and they registered another 128 residents with mental health issues with designated caseworkers on a per case basis (一人一档).[66] In Licheng district of Shandong’s Ji’nan city, grassroots grid-workers, in cooperation with auxiliary police personnel and party activists, conducted door-to-door investigations on known “key populations” to determine who also qualified as “eight losses people.” They conducted on-the-spot mental health assessments and confiscated knives, sharp objects, and household chemicals from those whom they determined might pose a security risk.[67] In implementing the “New Era Fengqiao Experience” more than a year before the tragedy in Zhuhai, Nanchang municipality in 2023 took even more draconian steps against so-called “five losses people.” Nanchang mobilized 5,441 grid-level party branches and party groups, 60,000 party members, 3,380 social organizations, and 3,660 social workers to enter communities and grids to achieve “zero-distance services from the masses,” implementing a color-coded system for “dynamic management” of local members of “key populations.” Those with major criminal records, or who threatened extremism or caused trouble, or who were not in compliance with mandatory routine supervision visit requirements were color-coded red; retirees and “five losses people" were marked orange; and general “key population” members were coded yellow. “Key population members” deemed to pose no risk to the public had their records coded green. “Red” high-risk residents had their data flagged on the Nanchang SkyNet CCTV system, and their faces were scanned every half-hour to ensure 24-hour management and control. Nanchang’s Jingdong Police Station proudly reported that, following implementation of the new color-coded system, alongside their efforts to “sink police officers down [to the grassroots]” (警力下沉), there had been zero loss of control, zero non-visits for mandatory supervision, and zero trouble involving designated “key population” members in the jurisdiction.[68]  

Control, But at What Cost?

In a 2019 article published in Jiangsu Normal University Journal analyzing 20 “typical cases” of indiscriminate mass killings that took place in China from 2015 to 2019, Ma Ziqi and Zhao Yunting conclude that the critical factor motivating “revenge against society” incidents is rooted in the experience of social exclusion shared by marginalized and vulnerable members of society, which over time, fosters feelings of extreme resentment. The authors identify four types of marginalization among the perpetrators of recent indiscriminate mass attacks: exclusion from markets (economic exclusion), political exclusion (exclusion from participation in public affairs), exclusion from public welfare services, and social exclusion, caused by an inability to maintain personal significant personal relationships. The perpetrators of the 20 mass attacks under review were also victims of overlapping forms of exclusion, in addition to being targeted members of recognized “vulnerable groups” (弱势群体) in their communities. The acts of performative violence in which they engaged were, at one level, part of a human “struggle for recognition” in a “society in which inequality and violence are pervasive [but] occluded in daily life” (社会中充满了隐匿于日常生活中的不平等与暴力).[69] Wu Guoguang argues that China is degenerating into a “society of mutual harm” (互害社会), the root cause of which is the “unrestrained political power” (不受制约的政治权力) of the party-state under Xi Jinping.[70] Sun Peidong largely concurs, arguing that “violence underpins China’s social order, and “revenge against society” attacks should be understood in part as a response to structural violence perpetuated by the state itself, including the silencing of dissent and other strategies for control.”[71]

Xi’s “New Era Fengqiao Experience,” like its predecessor, serves to protect central government resources in the short term by assigning responsibility for managing conflict at the social grassroots directly to local governments, where, since the pandemic,  human and budgetary resources have been stretched beyond their limits. The fact that the longer-term impacts of this policy may prove counterproductive, or even harmful, has hardly been missed by Chinese netizens. Online responses reflect the collective skepticism and frustration of netizens and commentators, many of whom have pointed out that the practice boils down to “using labels to stigmatize entire groups of people” (用标签去羞辱整个群体), especially  members of society’s most vulnerable groups, and, furthermore, it “may expose them to social prejudice, making it even more difficult for them to integrate into society” (这些个体可能面临社会偏见，甚至更难融入社会).[72] Former human rights lawyer Teng Biao has reflected that the “New Era Fengqiao Experience,” when viewed from below, appears to be more of a form of persecution, tantamount to “treating marginalized groups and victims as the source of the contradictions” (把社会的边缘者、社会的受害者当作矛盾的源头), “basically putting the cart before the horse” (根本就是倒果为因).[73]  Shortly after the Zhuhai attack, an official notice calling on urban district governments (社区) to immediately survey so-called “four no’s” (四无) and “five losses” (五失) types of people to “provide targeted assistance and support” (针对性地提供帮助与支持) was met with online scepticism, if not outright derision: “Awesome,” responded one netizen. “They’re labeling people for the convenience of [social] management. People who are supposedly innocent and living honest lives are suddenly listed as criminal suspects, what a joke” (牛逼，为了方便管理先给人贴标签，人家所谓的四无五失好好生活着突然被列入犯罪嫌疑人了，真搞笑), while another netizen asserted that such “labels were generated for quick screening, [but] in essence, these people should just be called ‘social exiles’” (按照本质而言，这些人更应该被称作“被社会流放之人”). Some posted either a laughing emoticon, or the phrase “what a joke” (搞笑).[74]

The overt cynicism expressed by wary netizens implicitly questions whether “Fengqiao-style” policing, with its blunt methods for identifying potential security risks and its reliance on parastatal agents for surveillance and control, can restore social stability in the face of the ongoing wave of indiscriminate attacks. Despite a recent finding that Chinese citizens perceive an omnipresent, intrusive state as safe and reassuring rather than as simply repressive,[75] data from a nationally representative probability sample survey carried out in China in 2018 shows that “zero distance” community-style policing negatively colors citizen perceptions of the police, diminishes trust in community political institutions, and can make Chinese citizens feel less safe overall.[76] Suzanne Scoggins finds that although a state’s ability to ensure ground-level security matters for regime durability, decentralized control over the lower levels of China’s security apparatus “actually opens up frontline forces to competing interests that sabotage enforcement efforts,” and broadening “discretionary space for street-level agents causes more trouble than it solves.”[77] Nevertheless, as long as Xi continues to cite the “Fengqiao Experience” as evidence that the party is responsive to the people’s needs and desires, his regime may continue to erode the very legitimacy it is assiduously attempting to project.

About the Contributor

Patricia M. Thornton is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Dickson Poon China Centre, and Fellow of Merton College, at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Disciplining the State: Virtue, Violence, and State-Making in Modern China, co-editor (with Vivienne Shue) of To Govern China: Evolving Practices of Power, and many peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals. She is also the former Acting Editor-in-Chief of The China Quarterly. Her research focuses on the Chinese Communist Party, party-building, civil society, and popular protest in transnational China.

Notes

[1] 朱加樟, “珠海車撞人疑犯借20萬買國產硬派越野車　案發前一日提車表現正常,” HK01, November 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/pPplP ; 王曉楠, 石步與, “珠海撞人事件之後，被噤聲的傷亡,” 端傳媒,  December 30, 2024, https://archive.ph/LnNeU 

[2] 槐荫, “珠海撞人事件后续：肇事车辆路线为何？ 居民、目击者看到什么？” 端傳媒  ,  November 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/rjqq5 

[3] 王曉楠, 石步與, “珠海撞人事件之後，被噤聲的傷亡,” 端傳媒,  December 30, 2024, https://archive.ph/LnNeU ; 央视新闻客户端, “珠海驾车冲撞市民重大恶性案件造成35人死亡 43人受伤,” https://archive.ph/WK3rK

[4] 艾达鸥, “珠海撞人事件致35人死，中国年内多宗恶性伤人事件引担忧,”端傳媒,   November 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/G15vv 

[5] 林艾瑞 ,卜榮奕 , “撞人事件後的珠海一週：焦點是怎麼被轉移的？” 端傳媒,   November 21, 2024, https://archive.ph/i3mY3 ; “China’s Deadliest Car Attack Shakes Trust in Xi’s Safety Record,” Bloomberg, November 12, 2024, https://archive.ph/xbcSN 

[6] 艾米, “中国宣布处决珠海致35人死亡汽车袭击案凶手,” RFI, January 20, 2025, https://archive.ph/K8CKR

[7] “Eight Dead After Stabbing at School in Eastern China,” BBC, November 16, 2024, https://archive.ph/ZLiPO 

[8]“湖南常德撞人案一审宣判 被告人黄文被判死缓,” 新华网, December 23, 2024, https://archive.ph/jgNqM

[9] The mass stabbings that occurred in March 2009 in Urumqi were attributed to Han-Uyghur ethnic tensions. One news report pegged the number of victims at more than 400. “China: Demonstrators Demand Security after Needle Attacks,” CNN, September 4, 2009, https://archive.ph/94OEy 

[10] Molly Amman, Anna Grace Burnette, and Brittany Crowley, “A Review of Mass Stabbing Attacks Between 2004 and 2017,” The Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 9:2 (2022), pp. 116, 121, https://doi.org/10.1037/tam0000177  

[11] 刘艺, “ ‘失意的中年人,’ 社会怨气,以及‘火速办案’和死刑—2000到2024，我们从中国的无差别袭击事件看到什么？” 外脑, March 21, 2025, https://archive.ph/RVPrj  The authors note that the efficiency of social media censorship in China suggests that the actual number of cases is likely to be considerably higher.

[12] 何野 Tuna 張君雅, “珠海撞人案已被「蓋棺定論」，我們為何還要討論無差別傷人事件？” 端傳媒,   April 11, 2025, https://archive.ph/QEcR4 

[13] 杀杀杀杀杀杀杀is a reference to the Seven Kill Stele (七殺碑) that Zhang is said to have erected to himself in Chengdu before he was killed by invading Qing dynasty soldiers in 1647. See 维基百科, “七杀碑,” https://archive.ph/geMxJ 

[14] 胡不归, “从‘加速’、‘躺平’到 ‘献忠学’：在审查系统下一个个消失的政治黑话,” 外脑, July 16, 2021, https://archive.ph/KgzCz ; 过桥土豆 , “ ‘张献忠’梗的流行,”  中国数子时代, June 12, 2021, https://archive.ph/Z9yIy

[15] 中国数子时代,“404档案馆第5期：血案频发与禁搜  ‘献忠学,’”June 17, 2021, https://archive.ph/QsSxX 

[16] “多起随机伤人事件后，网络迷因 ‘张献忠’为何被全网封杀？” 端傳媒,  June 22, 2021, https://archive.ph/8UKEk  Several weeks later, the 獻忠bot account was briefly resurrected on X, as 张献忠Bot@HienChumBot.

[17] 刘艺, “ ‘失意的中年人,’ 社会怨气,以及‘火速办案’和死刑—2000到2024，我们从中国的无差别袭击事件看到什么？” 外脑, March 21, 2025, https://archive.ph/RVPrj

[18] Minxin Pei, The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China  

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024), pp. 4, 156.

[19] “A Spate of Horrific Car-rammings Shakes China. They Are Known as ‘Revenge on Society’ Attacks,” The Economist, November 14, 2024, https://archive.ph/Z0Z0x ; Jamie Seidel, “Chinese Government Moves to Cover Up Deadly ‘Revenge Against Society’ Attacks,” news.com.au, November 30, 2024, https://archive.ph/H0AqA ; 水瓶纪元, “珠海凶案追踪：行车轨迹、伤心徒步团、疑凶已离异多年,”November 20, 2024, https://archive.ph/CjXub ; Stephen McDonell , “When Horror Hits China, the First Instinct Is Shut It Down,” BBC, November 12, 2024, https://archive.ph/GtiNi

[20] Helen Davidson, “As China Mourns, Some Question Delay in Release of Information About Deadly Car Attack,” The Guardian, November 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/qTUMQ 

[21] Peidong Sun, “The Roots of ‘Revenge Against Society’ Attacks in China,” Foreign Affairs, December 25, 2024, https://archive.ph/jDnfl 

[22] “习近平对广东珠海市驾车冲撞行人案件作出重要指示强调：全力救治伤员 依法严惩凶手 加强风险源头防控 严防发生极端案件,” 新华社, November 12, 2024, https://archive.ph/sF7om

[23] “公安部党委（扩大）会议召开加强风险源头防控 依法严打突出犯罪全力保障人民群众生命安全和社会稳定,” 中华人民共和国公安部,November 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/K9IXN

[24] David Bandurski, “Xi Jinping Plays with Fire,” China Media Project, October 17, 2013, https://archive.ph/U6RqQ 

[25] Zhou Lingxiao, “Mediation and Grassroots Policing in China: Conflict Resolution or Social Control?” China Information, 37:2 (2023), pp, 165–184, https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X221121716 

[26] “枫桥旗正红—浙江坚持和发展新时代‘枫桥经验’ 纪实,”新华网, November 14, 2023, https://archive.ph/iwQB3

[27] David Bandurski, “Xi Jinping Plays with Fire,” China Media Project, October 17, 2013, https://archive.ph/U6RqQ 

[28] “创新群众工作方法关键是要依法办事,” 法制日报, October 14, 2013, https://archive.ph/DGxO5 ; “习近平指示强调：把‘枫桥经验’坚持好、发展好,”新华社,  October 11, 2013, https://archive.ph/WZvmw

[29] “推动新时代  ‘枫桥经验’ 在实践中取得新的更大成效,”法治日报,  November 9, 2023, https://archive.ph/W7DCi ; “陈文清在纪念毛泽东同志批示学习推广‘枫桥经验’ 60周年暨, 习近平总书记指示坚持发‘枫桥经验’20周年大会上强调, 坚持和发展新时代 ‘枫桥经验’ 提升矛盾纠纷预防化解法治化水平,”新华网, November 8, 2023, https://archive.ph/tCoew ; and “以’基层之治’夯实 ‘中国之治’ —坚持和发展新时代 ‘枫桥经验’综述,” 人民网－人民日报, November 5, 2023, https://archive.ph/E5Fl9  

[30] I flag this discursive shift as a hypothetical change because, as Holly Snape astutely notes, “In spite of a common assumption that ‘social governance’ replaced ‘social management,’ this is not true as a basic category of government functions.” Furthermore, both terms have been used in official discourse in an ambiguous and sometimes contradictory manner, and their usage over time “proves to be multidirectional and multi-layered, rather than clear, consistent and following a unidirectional linear flow toward a new model of governance.” Holly Snape, “Social Management or Social Governance: A Review of Party and Government Discourse and Why It Matters in Understanding Chinese Politics,” Journal of Chinese Political Science, 24:4 (2019), pp. 685–699, doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-019-09605-2 

[31] “新时代 ‘枫桥经验’有何新经验,”新华网, January 14, 2025, https://archive.ph/OOv64

[32] The merged offices include the county-level Bureau for Letters and Visits, the Conflict Mediation and Resolution Center (矛盾纠纷化解调处中心), and the county-level People’s Court Mediation–Litigation Coordination Center (诉调对接中心) which have been brought together with personnel dispatched by the county Public Security Bureau and the People’s Procuratorate. Zhou Lingxiao, “Mediation and Grassroots Policing in China: Conflict Resolution or Social Control?” China Information, 37:2 (2023), pp.169–170.

[33] Pei Minxin, “Grid Management: China’s Latest Institutional Tool of Social Control,”

China Leadership Monitor, March 1, 2021, https://archive.ph/2jeGj ; David Bandurski, “China Under the Grid,” China Media Project, December 7, 2018, https://archive.ph/OCtxH ;  Jean Christopher Mittelstaedt, "The Grid Management System in Contemporary China: Grass-roots Governance in Social Surveillance and Service Provision," China Information, 36:1 (2022), pp. 3–22, https://doi.org/10.1177/0920203X211011565 

[34] Zhou Lingxiao, “Mediation and Grassroots Policing in China: Conflict Resolution or Social Control?” China Information, 37:2 (2023), pp, 165–184.

[35] 尹春吉, “创建‘枫桥式公安派出所’的实践与思考,” 中国警方在线, March 29, 2023, https://archive.ph/Lr18g

[36] 李攀, “全国公安厅局长齐聚浙江，为何专程考察这些地方？”杭州网, November 25, 2023, https://archive.ph/zR4et 

[37] Minxin Pei, The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China  

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024), p. 3; Zhuoran Li, “The Human Level of China’s Security State,” The Diplomat, July 13, 2023, https://archive.ph/mdzmc  

[38] 叶兵, “危机重重+财力不足 习当局回锅枫桥经验,”VOA, December 12, 2023,   https://archive.ph/IvX6Z

[39] Hannah Miao, “China’s Local Governments Hold Back Wages in Desperate Scrape for Cash,” The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2024, https://archive.ph/wJmFV ; “中国经济衰退 公务员欠薪成常态,” 品葱, May 10, 2024, https://archive.ph//jLzLr ; 乾朗, “地方财政告急：河南等地教师与公务员遭欠薪与减薪,” RFA, May 9, 2025, https://archive.ph/VpUAp

[40] “China’s Lone-Wolf Attacks Pose Challenge for Xi’s Security State,” Bloomberg, November 29, 2023, https://archive.ph/kDhf7

[41] 中华人民共和国公安部, “公安部党委（扩大）会议召开 加强风险源头防控 依法严打突出犯罪全力保障人民群众生命安全和社会稳定,”November 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/K9IXN ;陈子非, “公安部党委会议提 ‘枫桥经验’和‘朝阳群众’　探讨防范极端事件,”RFA, November 14, 2024, https://archive.ph/8KPCm  In 2023, China’s police announced a goal of establishing “18,000 social organizations for security involving 23.18 million people for collective prevention and control.” New volunteer participatory groups included the “Hongfeng Volunteer Police” (红枫义警), the “Shenjing Volunteers” (盛京义勇), the “Hangzhou Volunteer Police” (杭州义警), and the “Xiamen Common People” (厦门百姓), among others.

[42] “China’s Lone-Wolf Attacks Pose Challenge for Xi’s Security State,” Bloomberg , November 29, 2023, https://archive.ph/kDhf7 ; Jonghyuk Lee, “Xi Jinping’s Quest for Self-governance Without Democracy,” The Diplomat, February 22, 2024, https://archive.ph/0t8nI ;William Langley and Joe Leahy, “Zhuhai Reels After China’s Biggest Mass Killing in a Decade,” Financial Times, November 15, 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/74547922-2c26-4996-8a99-e1836e396d93 ; Vivian Wang, “Xi Jinping’s Recipe for Total Control: An Army of Eyes and Ears,” The New York Times, May 25, 2024, https://archive.ph/2J3PR ; 朱麗葉, “中國官方罕見承認網格員欠薪　社會監控體系或陷困境,” RFA, August 30, https://archive.ph/bJzMT 

[43] “China’s Lone-Wolf Attacks Pose Challenge for Xi’s Security State,” Bloomberg , November 29, 2023, https://archive.ph/kDhf 7 ; 叶兵, “危机重重+财力不足 习当局回锅枫桥经验,”VOA, December 12, 2023,   https://archive.ph/IvX6Z

[44] “王小洪在全国公安机关视频会议上强调 深入开展 ‘冬季行动’ 更好守护人民幸福和安宁,” 新华社, November 21, 2023, https://archive.ph/gqScT

[45] 周捷、蒙茜、马燕, “全力化解矛盾纠纷 严格整治安全隐患,” 人民公安报,November 24, 2024, https://archive.ph/ynM2a ; Arran Hope, “Winter Is Coming: Beijing Tightens Public Security,” China Brief, 24:23 (December 6, 2024),  https://archive.ph/EPqii 

[46] 吕品璋 “源头防范出实招 打击犯罪出重拳,”  人民公安报, December 24, 2024, https://archive.ph/H7EA6 ; Arran Hope, “Winter is Coming: Beijing Tightens Public Security,” China Brief, 24:23 (December 6, 2024),  https://archive.ph/EPqii 

[47] David Bandurski, “Xi Jinping Plays with Fire,” China Media Project, October 17, 2013, https://archive.ph/U6RqQ 

[48] Lynette H. Ong, Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China (London: Oxford University Press, 2022).

[49] David Bandurski, “China Under the Grid,” China Media Project, December 7, 2018, https://archive.ph/OCtxH 

[50] “从‘网格员’到‘微网格员’中国基层监控再升级,” RFA, October 16, 2023, https://archive.ph/TPOQt 

[51] 古亭, “广东、山东等地派出所撤并　辅警面临裁员,”RFA, November 14, 2023, https://archive.ph/OtFDU 

[52] 林乃绢, “中国无力支薪网格员 分析：但维稳力度绝不放松,” VOA, September 7, 2024, https://archive.ph/yKZ9H ; 朱丽叶  , “中国官方罕见承认网格员欠薪　社会监控体系或陷困境,” RFA, August 30, 2024, https://archive.ph/bJzMT 

[53] Gu Ting and Qian Zifei, “China Moves Ahead with 'Mass Policing' Plan for Local Communities,” RFA, November 14, 2023, https://archive.ph/2TXpe 

[54] Ray Chung and Lee Heung Yeung, “China Wants Its 12 Million Delivery Drivers to Work for the Party,” RFA, June 13, 2024, https://archive.ph/WScUw 

[55] See, for example, 温江融媒, “社区治理新力量！外卖骑手兼职 ‘流动微网格员,’”July 18, 2023, https://archive.ph/4Vkkj ; “外卖骑手变身 ‘流动微网格员,’” 濮阳网, October 25, 2024,

https://archive.ph/RSYCI ; 郭剑, “我们的节日 礼赞’流动微网格员,’”April 29, 2023, https://archive.ph/oulRt 

[56] Piao Junying, “Landlords, Garbagemen Enlisted to Spy for Government,” Bitter Winter, January 17, 2019, https://archive.ph/hYeQb 

[57] As in the 2024 case of Shen Junying, a recent university graduate who moved back to her parents’ home in Nantong to serve as a community grid-worker with hopes of sitting for the civil-service exam in the future. “一名25岁大学生之死,” 三联生活周刊, October 22, 2024, https://archive.ph/PkXGn ; “江苏南通25岁遇害网格员系家中独女，入职村委一年多,”极目新闻, September 25, 2023, https://archive.ph/aZmR7

[58] 刘文, “中共监视系统的利器：从‘维稳信息员’ 到 ‘社区工作者,’” VOA, April 24, 2024, https://archive.ph/gkya0

[59] 陈曦, “珠海惨案后中国排查‘八失人员’将社会不稳定归咎边缘群体被指本末倒置,” VOA, November 19, 2024, https://archive.ph/Dp6na  Some locales focused instead only on those with “five losses”  岳戈,  “经济低迷刺激‘五失人员’ 中国报复社会型暴力事件激增恐慌蔓延,” VOA, October 26, 2024, https://archive.ph/gORjz

[60] 溪云, “多地排查‘五失人员,’什么信号？”163.com, February 15, 2025, https://archive.ph/BnKzm ; 大学启明星,“多地排查‘五失人员,’背后信号太强烈了！”February 14,  2025, https://archive.ph/HUYOt 

[61] 中华人民共和国国家质量监督检验疫总局, 中国国家标准化管理委员会, “中华人民共和国国家标准: 城乡社区网格化服务管理规范 (GB/T 34300一2017),” August 31, 2017, https://archive.ph/t7zzJ (downloadable at http://www.orac.hainan.gov.cn/xgfybz/GBT34300-2017.pdf ). The national standards for grid-works are not legal instruments per se, enacted by either the national or local people’s congresses, but legal “norms” (规范). According to the chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in January 2011, in the codification of the “socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics” established in the PRC at that time, national laws (法律) supersede administrative regulations (行政法规);  local regulations (地方性法规) are of a higher legal standing than rules (规章); and norms (规范) enjoy an even lower rank of legal justification. See Zhang Qianfan, “Legalising Central-Local Relations in China,” in Andrew Harding and Mark Sidel, eds., Central-local Relations in Asian Constitutional Systems (Oxford: Hart, 2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474200981.ch-002

[62] “战斗在社区疫情防控第一线,” 人民日报, February 7, 2020,  https://archive.ph/xtnrO 

[63] “南通女村干部遇害案：网格员的职责是为民服务而不是制造矛盾,”律侠普法, September 25, 2024, https://archive.ph/BL9VT

[64] Zhou Lingxiao, “Mediation and Grassroots Policing in China: Conflict Resolution or Social Control?” China Information, 37:2 (2023), p. 178.

[65] “中共惠城镇委 惠城镇人民政府关于惠城镇2024年法治政府建设情况的报告,”惠城镇人民政府, February 13, 2025, https://archive.ph/pMeJ9

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[67] 济南市历城区人民政府全福街道办事处, “济南市历城区人民政府全福街道办事处关于印发《全福街道深入开展社会稳定风险隐患专项整治总体工作方案》的通知,” May 20, 2024, https://archive.ph/DfY0U 

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[70] 吴国光, “国事光析：从政权暴力到民间暴力的恶性发作,” VOA,  November 21, 2024, https://archive.ph/3psnY

[71] Peidong Sun, “The Roots of ‘Revenge Against Society’ Attacks in China,” Foreign Affairs, December 25, 2024, https://archive.ph/jDnfl 

[72] 雅酷原创, “ ‘八失人员,’ ‘三低三少’‘四无五失,’”文学城,November 20, 2024, https://archive.ph/2ICCv ; 陈曦, “珠海惨案后中国排查 ‘八失人员’ 将社会不稳定归咎边缘群体被指本末倒置,” VOA, November 19, 2024, https://archive.ph/Dp6na 

[73] 陈曦, “珠海惨案后中国排查 ‘八失人员’ 将社会不稳定归咎边缘群体被指本末倒置,” VOA, November 19, 2024,  https://archive.ph/Dp6na 

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[76] Viola Rothschild and Hongshen Zhu, “Never Meet Your Heroes: Community Policing in Contemporary China,” unpublished paper presented at the 2024 APSA Chinese Politics Mini-Conference with the title “Community Policing and Political Participation in Contemporary China,” https://hongshenzhu.org/uploads/rothschild_zhu_policing.pdf 

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