BEIJING: Liu Xuezhou, a 17-year-old from Hebei Province, committed suicide in Sanya, Hainan Province, in January 2022. Liu, who had been sold by his parents at birth, was reunited with them, respectively, in December 2021 and January 2022, only to be abandoned by them again soon after.
Liu posted a long suicide note in the early hours of January 24 last year on the Sina Weibo microblogging platform, then swallowed pills to end his life on a beach in Sanya before dying later in hospital.
In the note, Liu said he was sold at birth by his biological parents, and at the age of 4 his adoptive parents died. After finding his parents, he asked them to buy or rent a house for him, since he had been staying in others’ homes. His parents then cut off contact with him, with his mother even blocking him on Weixin, the social platform also known as WeChat.
He explained in the note that he later suffered from cyberbullying after exposing online his conversations with his mother. Many netizens criticized him for repeatedly requesting his parents buying him a house and others judged him by his clothing style, which Liu explained was made up of counterfeit brands which he bought with income from his part-time job.
Liu’s death has once again drawn attention to online violence and underlined the urgent need for legislation to prevent and respond to it.
At a press conference explaining a white paper titled China’s Law-Based Cyberspace Governance in the New Era on March 16, Li Changxi, an official from the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top Internet regulator, vowed to make more effort to help create and improve rules concerning cyberbullying.
Since November last year, 28.75 million pieces of information related to cyberbullying have been removed from digital spaces, with holders of 22,000 online accounts being punished for cyberbullying, according to Li. There are provisions on cyberbullying in existing laws and judicial interpretations, such as the Civil Code, the Criminal Law and the Law on the Protection of Minors. “However, the effectiveness of the legal system has failed to meet the expectations of the people,” he added.
“Therefore, we will focus on establishing and improving relevant regulations and work with other authorities to make the laws in this area more complete,” he added.
China has formed a cyber legislation framework with the Constitution as the foundation, supported by laws, administrative regulations, departmental rules, local regulations and local administrative rules, according to the aforementioned white paper, which was released by the State Council Information Office.
“Since 1994, when China became fully connected to the Internet, it has accelerated legislation of cyberspace and introduced more than 140 relevant laws,” Cao Shumin, Vice Minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, said at the press conference.
–The Daily Mail-Beijing Review news exchange item
