Last month, a serious retaliatory social incident occurred in Zhuhai, resulting in at least 35 deaths and 43 severe injuries. Recently, Zhuhai Mayor Huang Zhihao and Deputy Mayor cum Director of Public Security Xie Rensi are suspected to have stepped down as a result.
According to the official WeChat account of “Zhuhai People’s Congress” in Guangdong on December 8, the Standing Committee of the Zhuhai Municipal People’s Congress held a meeting that day, where they decided to accept the applications for resignation from Huang Zhihao as the Mayor of Zhuhai and Xie Rensi as the Deputy Mayor, and relieved Xie Rensi of his position as the Director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau. At the same time, Wu Zetong was appointed as the Deputy Mayor and Acting Mayor of Zhuhai, while Qiao Lei was appointed as the Deputy Mayor and Director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau.
The official statement did not elaborate on the reasons for these personnel changes.
Wu Zetong, 44 years old, previously served as the Director of the Economic and Trade Division of the Guangdong Provincial Development and Reform Commission, the Director of the Comprehensive Division, the Deputy Mayor of Meizhou, and a member of the Standing Committee and Executive Deputy Mayor of Yunfu before taking up this new role.
Qiao Lei, 54 years old, previously served as the Deputy Mayor and Director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau of Dongguan City, Guangdong Province.
On the evening of November 11 last month, Zhuhai was struck by a vicious incident where a car plowed into a crowd. A 62-year-old man surnamed Fan drove his car into the public square of the Zhuhai Sports Center and indiscriminately rammed into the crowd, resulting in 35 deaths and 43 injuries according to official reports. Online, it was rumored that over a hundred people were either dead or injured.
Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping made a rare directive regarding the incident, calling on all regions and relevant departments to “draw inferences and strengthen the prevention and control of risks at the source, timely resolve conflicts, and strictly guard against extreme cases.”
However, French current affairs commentator and independent filmmaker Wang Longmeng stated to Radio Free Asia that, “Xi Jinping’s directive to focus on risk prevention is ironic, because isn’t he the source of the problem himself? He has implemented policies that have led to the decline of private enterprises, the flight of foreign companies, and the collapse of the entire Chinese economy, leaving the people in despair, hence the repeated incidents of extreme violence (referring to indiscriminate killings as retaliation against society).”
He expressed that to change the current situation, political and economic reforms should be initiated to restore economic development and people’s confidence in the future, in order to possibly alter the current rampant violence plaguing society.