On the morning of March 11, 2022, after the conclusion of the Fifth Session of the NPC, Li Keqiang attended a press conference in the lobby on the third floor of the Great Hall in Beijing.
Li Keqiang said that this year is the last year of the current government and his last year as prime minister.
Li Keqiang answered 13 questions at the press conference, which lasted two hours and 10 minutes. It was the longest and most frequently asked question in recent years.
The big foreign propaganda media Duowei.com reported on March 11 that, just as it was said in 2020 that there are 600 million people in China with a monthly income of about 1,000 yuan, at this press conference, Li Keqiang also revealed a lot of people’s livelihood sufferings he personally experienced, such as 8 In this month, many employees advanced their wages to the company to pay their children’s tuition fees. A farmer in the northwest said that he could not afford his two children to go to college or high school with only a few acres of land.
The report said, in particular, when Li Keqiang took the initiative to respond to the “Iron Chain Girl” (mother of eight children) incident in Feng County, Jiangsu Province, he said, “Recently, serious violations of women’s rights have occurred in some places, and we are not only saddened by the victims, but also Very angry.”
Previously, the top officials of Zhongnanhai had remained silent on the incident, and Li Keqiang’s words seemed to confirm the previous rumors that the “Chain Girl” had caused anger among the senior officials of Zhongnanhai.
In February of this year, Li Muyang, a well-known commentator, mentioned in a live broadcast that an anonymous netizen discussed the “Yang Xia” (Iron Chain Girl) incident with someone familiar with the high-level CCP. According to the person familiar with the matter, the top Chinese Communist Party officials were rumored to be furious.
Li Muyang analyzed that the high-level officials here are likely to be referring to Xi Jinping.
Hot events such as the Winter Olympics, the Russian-Ukrainian War, and the CCP’s Two Sessions failed to overshadow the public’s attention to the “Chained Women”
Earlier this year, a woman in China’s Jiangsu province was chained to a windowless shack sparked public outrage. After experiencing the Beijing Olympics, the crisis of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the CCP’s two sessions and other hot-button events that the media have paid attention to, and the CCP’s censors have been trying to delete relevant online discussions, the “Iron Chain Girl” incident in Feng County, Xuzhou, Jiangsu still attracts the attention of the Chinese people. Unabated. At the same time, more incidents of abduction and trafficking of women have been exposed by the public, showing that under the rule of the CCP, the “chain girl” is not an isolated incident, but a common crime.
On Weibo, the top three most popular searches for “Tie Chain Girl” have been viewed more than 10 billion times, no less than the Beijing Winter Olympics, which has been vigorously promoted by Weibo and state media. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the topic continued to attract attention online, and the Chinese private sector also conducted a spontaneous investigation into the incident.
The New York Times reported on March 2 that the public believes that a government that does not tell the truth about her identity and tacitly approves of forced marriages that sell people cannot be trusted.
On Chinese social media, users dug up a photo of a marriage certificate showing a woman identified by the government as a “chain girl” who looked different from the actual “chain girl.” They dug into court documents that revealed the area she lived in had a dark history of human trafficking.
The long-retired investigative reporter went deep into a village in Dashanli, knocking door-to-door to test the government’s claim that she grew up there.
A user named “Xu Earth Resource Library” wrote on WeChat, “There has never been an incident like the iron chain girl incident”, “Shengsheng has forced netizens into: detectives, analysts, AI restorers, excavators. , Holmes…”
This is one of the biggest credibility challenges Beijing has faced in recent years: The Chained Woman has become a symbol of injustice, bringing together liberals, nationalist digital warriors and apolitical moderates. Many of them fear that the chain around her neck, both literally and figuratively, might fall on themselves or their loved ones.
Alumni and current students of Peking University, Tsinghua University, Renmin University of China, and Zhejiang University jointly signed a petition calling on the CCP’s top authorities to thoroughly investigate the “Chain Girl” incident, but the open letter was deleted immediately. An entrepreneur from Henan and a professor from Peking University publicly denounced the CCP Women’s Federation for being insensitive and inactive, and called for the women’s federation to be dissolved; then the Peking University professor was banned from Weibo.
Representatives of the “two sessions” concerned about the crime of trafficking in women
As the recent cases of abduction and persecution of women, such as “Chained Women” and “Iron Cage Women”, aroused public anger, during the Two Sessions, several CPPCC and National People’s Congress deputies put forward proposals to revise the criminal law to severely punish trafficking in women and children.
According to media reports, Jiang Shengnan, a representative of the National People’s Congress of the Communist Party of China, proposed to amend Article 240 of the Criminal Law, and proposed to increase the prison term for those who bought women and children for the crime of abducting and trafficking in women and children, so as to realize the same crime of buying and selling. Zhang Baoyan, a representative of the CCP, suggested that the buyer’s sentence should not be lower than the crime of abduction and trafficking. “The minimum sentence should be at least ten years with reference to the crime of kidnapping.”
Zhu Zhengfu, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is going to submit the “Seven Recommendations on Severely Combating the Crime of Abduction and Trafficking, Buying Women and Children” this year. shall be regarded as a joint criminal act of abduction or purchase. Xie Wenmin, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, suggested that the statutory sentence for the crime of buying abducted and trafficked women and children should be the same as that of the crime of abducting and trafficking in women and children, up to the death penalty.
On March 8, the work report of the Supreme Procuratorate of the Communist Party of China stated that the prosecution of crimes of human trafficking will continue to be strict, and the crimes of buying, not rescuing, or obstructing the rescue of abducted and trafficked women and children will be severely punished.
On March 5, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also stated in the “Government Work Report” that “severely crack down on the crime of abducting and trafficking in women and children, and resolutely protect the legitimate rights and interests of women and children.”
Zhang Xiaozhou, an overseas independent writer, wrote that the CCP’s autocratic dictatorship is the main cause of events like the “Iron Chain Girl” (the mother of eight children). As long as the dictatorship of the CCP does not end, the endless tragedies of the “Chain Girls (Mothers of Eight)” will be repeated.
Sheng Xue, a Chinese-Canadian writer, pointed out that the “Chain Girl” incident touches human nature. The Chinese people increasingly understand that if they turn a blind eye to such crimes, they are likely to be the next victims. Therefore, there will be more and more People choose to abandon the CCP.
Xie Tian, chair professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, believes that the “Chain Girl” incident opens a new chapter that may eventually lead to the downfall of the CCP.
Wen Zhao, a current affairs commentator, said on his self-media program that the “Chain Girl” incident has driven people’s sympathy and empathy, and has formed a strong wave of social accountability, from elites to grassroots, from students to Entrepreneurs are all involved, and the people have already shouted “Dissolve the All-China Women’s Federation”, and maybe tomorrow they will be able to shout “Dissolve the Communist Party.”
He believes that the anger that erupted from the “Chain Girl” incident has become a systematic torture of the CCP. It has been suggested that this could be the first black swan event the CCP encounters in 2022, with unintended consequences.