Check this out. It was posted a couple weeks ago on Chinese social media. This three-year-old kid picks up a steel pipe, like he’s gonna fight off a bunch of police officers. What a riot! Even the police officers are filming it.
The video is so cute that China’s state-run People’s Daily posted it to their YouTube channel. Wait, the People’s Daily has a YouTube channel? YouTube is blocked in China. But I guess there’s no harm in showing the rest of the world how cute Chinese toddlers can be, right?
But these police, aren’t really police. They’re called “chengguan” or “urban management.” Chengguan are the taskforce that’s supposed to enforce city laws related to street vendors, traffic, and so on. But they have a reputation for being corrupt. And brutal.
Like that time in 2011 when chengguan beat a one-legged fruit vendor to death.
Or in 2013, when chengguan killed a watermelon vendor with his own measuring weights.
Or in 2014, when chengguan assistants killed a 70-year-old man simply for criticizing them.
But clearly, a three-year-old couldn’t have read those articles. No, he intrinsically understands that these chengguan are the bad guys. And if they’re after his grandma, it’s worth taking the most extreme action to stop them.
And the videos of this kid have become online sensations in China, getting millions of views. Although there’s not much info on who this kid is or what the chengguan were doing to his grandma, it seems every netizen has an opinion.
There was even an online survey that got more than 100,000 responses.
- 47% said “The kid’s just protecting his family, that’s all”
- 35% said “First, I need to know if the chengguan had roughed them up prior [to the video]” And
- 18% said “It’s a bit troubling a child this young is resisting the law”
I feel like this survey might be more a reflection of what Chinese people think of standing up to authority in general.
So what do you think? Leave your comments below.
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