[Hundreds of Commuters to Beijing Block Road in Protest After Being Abandoned by Buses] On September 8, at the Baimiao checkpoint in Tongzhou, Beijing, hundreds of commuters traveling from Hebei to work in Beijing blocked the road to protest being abandoned by their buses, causing a traffic jam that left over 2,000 people stuck for several hours. According to informed sources, the incident began when an accident occurred on the highway that day. The buses, which normally take the highway, had to exit and enter Beijing through the Baimiao checkpoint instead. Because the inspection process at the checkpoint was very slow, some passengers chose to get off the bus and walk through the checkpoint before re-boarding. However, after they passed the checkpoint, the bus drivers refused to open the doors to let these passengers back on.
At around 11 p.m. on September 7, thousands of students at Weining County Secondary Vocational School in Bijie, Guizhou launched a collective protest against the school’s decision to ban students from using mobile phones. During the protest, students threw large amounts of burning paper, pillows, garbage, and other items from their dormitory buildings.
“Frequent Power and Water Outages at Guangzhou Vocational School Spark Mass Student Protest”
On Sunday evening (September 7), a student-led protest broke out at the male dormitories of Jiangnan Polytechnic Senior Technical School in Guangzhou, Guangdong. Thousands of students clashed with school staff after repeatedly suffering from frequent power and water outages, while the school still insisted on maintaining normal class schedules. The students broke through the dormitory gates, chanting “Refund our money!” across campus. Days of pent-up anger finally erupted in full force that night.
According to several students, the school engaged in false advertising during enrollment. Dormitories were promised to house six students per room but instead were overcrowded with twelve, and other facilities were outdated and poorly maintained. The immediate trigger for the protest was a series of recent blackouts. Since August 23, the school had experienced frequent power cuts, sometimes more than ten times a day. On Sunday, after enduring a full day of military training, students returned to find there was no hot water for showers, and at 9:15 p.m., the school turned off the lights, ordering them to sleep. Another power outage soon followed, shutting down the air conditioners in the sweltering dormitories. Students, unable to bear the heat, tried to go outside for relief, only to discover that the dormitory gates had been locked by school authorities.
In despair and anger, students chose to resist. They rushed out from different dormitory floors, gathering in the corridors and chanting for the school to refund their fees. At first, some expressed their dissatisfaction by throwing trash from the upper floors. The protest then escalated: some students smashed open the dormitory gates, stormed out of the building, and clashed with a teacher. Eyewitnesses reported that students armed with sticks even chased a teacher across the playground.
Later that night, following the large-scale protest, the school restored power, and students gradually dispersed. Police were called to the scene after the school reported the incident, but no students were arrested. As of now, the school has yet to issue a public response.
On September 7, in Tongyou Village, Pingtang Town, Luoding City, Guangdong, the local government, without reaching an agreement with the villagers or offering compensation, deployed a large number of personnel to forcibly seize land for the construction of the Shen-Nan High-Speed Railway.
On September 3, at Deya Senior High School in Jingyuan County, Baiyin, Gansu, a student named Song Chengcheng, who had long been subjected to bullying by dormitory roommates, was beaten to death at school after just 20 days of enrollment. After the incident, the family sought an explanation from the school but to no avail, and all related information posted online was deleted. (Compiled from submissions)
[Strike by Over a Thousand Workers at Hong Kong-Invested Appliance Factory in Shenzhen Over Unpaid Wages]
On September 5, more than a thousand workers at Shenzhen Yintu Electric Co., Ltd. went on strike to protest the company’s failure to pay wages and social insurance. That afternoon, the company reached an agreement with the workers, and the strike ended.
Subsequently, Yintu issued a statement saying that unstable overseas orders had led to financial difficulties, forcing it to delay wage payments. According to the agreement, Yintu will pay the delayed wages for July on September 15, but made no mention of the already overdue August wages or social insurance.
Public records show that Yintu Electric (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Hong Kong Yintu Industrial Co., Ltd., established in 1987, with a peak workforce of around 4,000 employees.
A fine arts and calligraphy training institution, Jin Yihui, located inside Aeon Mall in Wuzhong District, Suzhou, Jiangsu, recently absconded with funds. On September 6, hundreds of parents gathered at Aeon Mall demanding refunds.
On the evening of September 3, in Qingshan District, Wuhan, Hubei, the local government forcibly demolished the Industrial Fourth Road Hardware and Electrical Market, deploying a large number of government personnel, police, and security guards, even though the merchants’ contracts had not expired and no compensation had been provided to them.
On September 4, at the Qingyuan Education Bureau in Guangdong, students defending their rights played poker to pass the time. According to the parents of these students, they had moved into Shatian Village in Qingyuan 25 years ago, and their children had always been treated the same as the local children of Shatian Village, studying together at Shatian Primary School. However, after this year’s transition to middle school, the children of Shatian Village were able to attend the nearby Songgang Middle School, while their children, because they hold rural household registrations from outside the area, were assigned to a school 50 kilometers away.
Between September 3 and 4, three incidents of petitioners being intercepted took place on the streets of Beijing, two of which involved the participation of police officers.