Gang members charged and police officers detained after violent attack on woman at Tangshan restaurant

A little more than two months after a brutal attack on several women in the northeastern Chinese city of Tangshan, local authorities announced Monday that they had filed charges against 28 people and detained eight police officers in connection with the violent assault that has triggered widespread outrage and made international headlines.

Earlier this summer, a group of men were caught on camera assaulting a woman and her female friends at a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan after she turned down unwanted attention from one of them. Although police were called to the scene as the violence unfolded, they failed to show up until the perpetrators had fled, leaving two of the women in hospital. 

When surveillance footage of the horrific incident — showing the main victim pulled by her hair, repeatedly kicked in the head, and hit with a chair — surfaced on the Chinese internet in June, it  immediately went viral, unleashing a wave of anger over the local police’s failure to respond promptly, and over the frequency of male violence against women in the country. 

In the following weeks, all nine suspects involved in the attack — including two female partners who were with the men but didn’t directly engage in the beatings — were apprehended. In response to calls for accountability, Tangshan authorities also sacked the city’s deputy police chief and five other police officers.

According to a statement released this morning by the People’s Procuratorate of Hebei province, where Tangshan is located, its investigation into the case had gone beyond the actual attack to encompass gangster activities and police misconduct. After gathering “reliable and sufficient evidence,” the prosecutors said that they would begin legal proceedings against 28 people, including the seven men who were directly involved in the assault. The suspects, who were found out to be members of an organized crime group, will face charges that include illegal detention of others, robbery, and intentional injury.

In a separate statement, the Hebei Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection said that an investigation involving 15 government officials suspected of various forms of misconduct is underway. The province’s party disciplinary body added that eight police officers had been detained for allegedly accepting bribes, providing “protection” for the gang, and abusing their power.

The procuratorate’s statement also devoted several sentences to clearing up rumors swirling around the attack, including that some of the women were sexually assaulted, pushed off a building or run over by a car. Such speculation gained traction on Chinese social media after people pointed out the surveillance camera ended with a woman running out of the frame, suggesting that the released footage only captured part of the attack. 

Further fueling the rumors was the lack of the voices from the victims and their families, who remain unidentified and have not spoken to the press at all since the assault, until today. 

According to the Hebei prosecutors, claims that the victims were in worse condition than reported are “false information.” To enhance the statement’s credibility, China Central Television (CCTV) released today an interview with one of the women. Sitting with her back towards the camera and voice altered, the woman recalled that the violence continued off camera after she ran into an alleyway adjacent to the restaurant. “They told us not to call the police or to ask anyone for help, or they would kill us. Then they ran away,” she said. 

In the wake of the latest statements, Chinese state media were quick to praise the prosecutors for bringing justice to the victims and making Tangshan safer for its residents. “I hope and have confidence that the final indictment on the Tangshan case will stand the test of time and become a landmark moment in the history of Chinese law,” said Hú Xījìn 胡锡进, former Editor-in-Chief of the nationalist tabloid the Global Times, on social media. China Women’s News, a publication run by the All-China Women’s Federation, published a social media post calling the prosecution evidence that “protecting women’s rights is what the nation strives for” and that “any behavior violating women’s rights will be severely punished.” 

But elsewhere on social media, a considerable number of people voiced their frustration and disappointment at the lack of transparency in the Tangshan investigation. “I know that it takes time to investigate, but given that it’s been two months, these results are really underwhelming,” one person wrote. Others said they felt that the investigation stopped short at exposing corruption among higher-level officials in Tangshan, which they believed was the root cause of the persistent, unpunished gang crimes in the city. “All the officials who have fallen from grace after the attack are small fish. You can’t convince me that they are able to keep those gang members out of trouble for more than a decade,” a Weibo user commented.