“Villager Killed After State Grid Improperly Energizes Power Line; Bereaved Family Suppressed While Seeking Answers in Hebei (July 9, 2026)”
A disused power line in Anzhong Village, Dongliang Township, Longyao County, Xingtai, Hebei Province, was recently energized without warning, electrocuting a villager who was carrying out construction work.
On July 9, the victim’s family went to the Longyao County power supply company to demand an explanation, holding a banner that read, “The power grid killed him—give us back our son.” They were subsequently blocked and suppressed by police.
The family said they had repeatedly tested the line before construction and confirmed that it was not live. However, electricity was suddenly restored while the work was underway, resulting in the fatal accident.
“The Plague God Cometh: A Million Merchants’ Nonviolent Noncooperation Movement in Heilongjiang (April–June 2026)”
From April to June 2026, China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang saw an unprecedented wave of “nonviolent noncooperation.” According to figures compiled by the “Yesterday” project, over 67 days between April 25 and June 30, merchants in 34 counties, cities, and districts across the province collectively shuttered their businesses, with total participation exceeding one million. The movement had no public organizers, no unified call to action, and no identifiable leadership, yet it spread through longstanding tacit understanding among merchants, becoming one of the longest-running and most geographically extensive collective actions in China in recent years. Facing this decentralized, large-scale movement, Chinese Communist Party authorities proved largely powerless, left to watch the wave of closures spread unchecked.
Prelude
The movement first surfaced in a small county in southwestern Suihua, Heilongjiang. On April 25, merchants across Qing’an County shut their doors in unison, with no public explanation offered by anyone and no official comment forthcoming. A day later, merchants in neighboring Wangkui County followed suit. Both closures lasted roughly three days, but they marked the opening act of what would become a large-scale campaign of nonviolent noncooperation.
Escalation
After a lull of more than ten days, on May 12 merchants in Nehe, roughly 300 kilometers from Qing’an County, closed en masse citywide. Over the following two weeks, the movement began spreading across regions. Between May 23 and 29, merchants in Baiquan, Yi’an, Kedong, Keshan, and Fuyu counties in the Qiqihar area joined one after another.
By June, following the sporadic spread of April and May, the movement erupted in full. From June 3 to 16, closures first swept across the Suihua region in succession — Beilin District, Anda, Zhaodong, Lanxi County, Qing’an County again, and Qing’an County. Daqing’s Sartu, Ranghulu, Longfeng, Honggang, and Datong districts, along with Lindian and Dorbod Mongol Autonomous Counties, soon joined as well.
Starting June 17, Qiqihar saw a concentrated outbreak. Within two days, merchants across Tailai, Longjiang, Gannan, Ang’angxi, Meilisi Daur, Fularji, Longsha, Tiefeng, and Jianhua — nearly every county and district in the city — shut down simultaneously, forming the largest regional surge of the entire movement. As Heilongjiang’s second-largest city, nearly all of Qiqihar’s urban districts and subordinate counties were swept into the wave of closures, a scale rarely seen in Chinese collective action in recent years.
Meanwhile, merchants in Daqing’s Zhaozhou County remained closed continuously from June 17 to 23; Nenjiang City in Heihe joined on June 20; and Zhaoyuan County saw two consecutive days of collective closures shortly after.
In late June, the movement continued spreading through the Suihua region. Hailun and Suileng County saw repeated closures over several days, with some areas cycling between opening one day and closing the next. On June 30, merchants in Suileng County closed their doors for the final time, bringing this large-scale noncooperation campaign to a temporary halt.
By that point, merchants across 34 counties, cities, and districts in Heilongjiang had collectively shut down at various points, spanning four prefecture-level cities: Suihua, Qiqihar, Daqing, and Heihe.
The Plague God Cometh
What, then, caused merchants across so many parts of Heilongjiang to shut their doors one place after another, with no unified organization and no public call to action? The answer lies in a term some local merchants use: “the plague god” (瘟神).
According to numerous local merchants and internet users, the movement’s direct trigger was word spreading among merchants — reportedly originating from inside the system — that a joint government inspection team was about to conduct sweeping checks of shops, supermarkets, and restaurants across the district. Inspections themselves are nothing new, so why did merchants close en masse to avoid them? The reason lies in a long-standing pattern: government departments frequently conduct centralized inspections under the banners of fire safety, security, hygiene, and market regulation, then issue steep fines. A single penalty can run from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan, and sometimes more than 100,000 yuan. For many small merchants, a fine like that can exceed an entire year’s earnings. During times of economic prosperity, merchants could recoup a fine through continued business over time. But with the economy now in a downturn, many merchants are already operating on the edge of profitability, and a single steep fine amounts to a death sentence for their business.
As for what actually counts as “passing” an inspection, officials cannot say and merchants do not understand — but once inspectors are inside a shop, they can always find some pretext for a fine. Fire exits, how food is displayed, hygiene details, licensing paperwork, product labeling: any single detail can become grounds for a penalty.
This uncertainty has left merchants on edge. Some say the inspection teams are more fearsome than COVID-19 — the mere sight of someone walking down the street with a serious expression is enough to raise suspicion that they might be an inspector. As a result, whenever word spreads that inspections are coming, more and more merchants choose to close preemptively for several days to avoid the risk; once one shop shows any sign of trouble, nearby stores tend to shut their doors in unison almost immediately. For merchants, losing a few days’ income is bearable — but a fine is often ruinous.
The fallout extends beyond merchants themselves. With so many shops closed at once, ordinary residents’ daily lives have also been disrupted: restaurants shut down, buying vegetables and household goods becomes difficult, and everyday services like haircuts become hard to find. Many residents have complained online about being unable to buy groceries or find an open barbershop, their routines thrown into disarray. Some have asked why authorities can’t apply this same swift efficiency to problems like food safety, healthcare, and corruption. Out of fear and resentment toward the inspectors, local residents have taken to calling the inspection teams “the plague god.”
Nothing Left to Fine, Authorities Rush to “Set the Record Straight”
With merchants shut down en masse, inspectors have found it difficult to enter shops and find pretexts for steep fines as they once did, and many inspection efforts have come away empty-handed. In an effort to get merchants to reopen, local governments have issued a series of public notices “debunking rumors,” with some areas even dispatching loudspeaker trucks to broadcast along the streets that online reports of merchants facing massive fines are “untrue,” insisting no citywide inspection campaign was underway. But for authorities who had already lost public credibility, these statements failed to ease merchants’ doubts — and in fact deepened their distrust, prompting many to keep their doors closed.
Indeed, during the movement some merchants who believed the official notices did reopen for business — and quickly paid the price. According to accounts circulating locally, fines ranged from tens of thousands to more than 100,000 yuan. Some penalties were reportedly issued over grounds as trivial as three spoiled potatoes found in a shop or a single ashtray left out. Many residents have mocked the fines online, saying it looks like the government is short on cash and “fundraising,” or bluntly, “just collecting money, pure and simple.”
Decentralized, Nonviolent, Noncooperative: A New Model of Collective Action
Over 67 days, this collective action — with no unified organization and no public leader — spread through longstanding tacit understanding among merchants, along with the circulation of information and mutual imitation, eventually reaching 34 cities, counties, and districts across Heilongjiang and forming a textbook case of “nonviolent noncooperation.” For most participants, closing shop began as a simple act of self-interest — avoiding inspections and steep fines. But as more and more merchants made the same choice, these scattered individual decisions coalesced into a mass collective action involving more than a million people.
One key reason the movement lasted more than two months is precisely that it had no fixed organizational structure, making it difficult for authorities to shut down the way they typically handle mass incidents. For years, the Party’s standard approach to mass incidents has relied on identifying organizers, cutting off communication networks, and summoning ringleaders for “talks” — dismantling the organization to end the action. But this movement had no public initiator from start to finish, no unified communication channel, and no jointly issued demands. Whether any given shop closed was, in form, simply an individual business decision. Faced with a spreading wave of closures, authorities found no organizers to arrest and no network to sever, and struggled to fit a widespread shutdown with no rallies, no slogans, and no organizational structure into their existing playbook. The main measures authorities could take during the movement were issuing notices debunking rumors, dispatching loudspeaker trucks, and urging merchants to reopen — all with limited effect.
This phenomenon is especially notable because it unfolded against the backdrop of an ever-tightening stability-maintenance apparatus in China. In recent years, grid-style social management, facial recognition, big-data early-warning systems, social media surveillance, and the close monitoring of “key individuals” have all intensified. In such an environment, large-scale collective resistance that depends on organization, coordination, and public assembly has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Data compiled by the “Yesterday” project and its predecessor, “Not the News,” bear this out: compared with a decade ago, both the number and scale of large-scale civil protests in China have declined markedly.
By contrast, the “avoiding the plague god” movement relied on almost none of these easily identifiable elements. Participants needed no organization among themselves, no fixed assembly point, and no unified list of demands. The movement spread mainly through longstanding tacit understanding among merchants and shared judgment of a common situation, rather than through formal organizational mobilization. As a result, many of the responses the stability-maintenance system has developed for organized action found little purchase against this movement.
At a time when large-scale marches, joint petitions, and organized resistance have all grown more difficult, this mode of action — centered on “noncooperation” and spreading through individual, autonomous decisions — deserves attention. Its barrier to entry is low: merchants need only choose not to open their doors; they need not reveal their identities or take on the risks of being an organizer. It is equally hard to stop, since what draws more people in is not a unified call but the same choice repeatedly made under similar circumstances.
Of course, decentralized action has clear limitations. Without unified organization or representation, participants struggle to form a common set of demands or enter into formal negotiation with the government. How long such a movement lasts depends largely on whether the underlying pressure persists. Once inspections ease and merchants reopen, the action tends to dissipate on its own, unable to sustain long-term pressure around deeper issues such as grassroots law enforcement or the fining system itself.
But in the current environment, this very limitation may be what allows the movement to endure. Without organizers, there is no one to target for a “targeted strike”; without unified demands, there is no single objective to suppress. In this sense, the “avoiding the plague god” movement may represent more than a single episode of merchants shutting their doors — it points to a mode of action gradually taking shape under high-pressure conditions: as space for organized resistance keeps shrinking, people can still express shared grievances through choices made independently yet in striking un
“Xi’an Sino-Gems Case, Continued: Citizens Defy Pressure to Attend Memorial, Heavy Police Presence Remains Outside Mall (July 5, 2026)”
On July 5, a memorial service for Yan Peng was held at the Xianning Hall of the Xi’an Municipal Funeral Home, with large numbers of citizens defying pressure to attend and pay their respects. Meanwhile, a heavy deployment of police and security guards remained stationed outside the Sino-Gems International Shopping Center. Amid the ongoing public boycott, the mall remained largely empty.
“Construction Workers Block Gate to Demand Wages at CSCEC Bureau 7 Site — Shenzhen (July 5, 2026)”
On July 5, in Futian District, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, workers at a project built by China State Construction Seventh Engineering Division — the southern headquarters building for Wumart Technology — blocked the site’s main gate, demanding the hard-earned wages owed to them.
Property Owners in Yantai, Shandong Protest Illegal Parking Fees, Tear Down Toll Barrier (July 4, 2026)
On the evening of July 4, at Jinhui Garden residential compound in Zhifu District, Yantai, Shandong, a property management company that residents had never hired installed a toll barrier at the compound entrance without authorization, intending to charge parking fees. The barrier had barely gone up before it triggered protests from residents, who tore it down on the spot. To defuse the situation, authorities deployed a large number of police to the scene to “maintain stability.”
Xi’an Sino-Gems Aftermath: Heavy Police Presence Continues as Boycott Empties the Mall (July 3–4, 2026)
On July 3 and 4, a heavy police and security presence remained outside Xiaozhai Sino-Gems International Shopping Center in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Due to a boycott by local residents, the once-bustling mall stood nearly empty even during Saturday peak hours. Even the influencer known as “Miss Sino-Gems,” who had long been a fixture at the mall, relocated to MixC.
On July 2 and 3 in Xi’an, Shaanxi, as residents continued arriving to lay flowers at the Sage Digital Mall, authorities treated the gatherings as a major threat, deploying large numbers of police to intercept people nearby. One delivery rider, found simply carrying flowers on a street far from the mall’s entrance, was surrounded by nine people — six police officers, two chengguan officers, and one unidentified man.
Workers Strike Over Unpaid Wages at Sichuan Highland Disease Research Project in Aba (July 1, 2026)
On July 1, in Mao County, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, workers went on collective strike over unpaid wages at the Sichuan University West China Hospital Highland Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Base project, being built by Huaxi No. 12 Construction Engineering Company.
“Petitioning New Regulations” Take Effect, Beijing Launches Mass Expulsion of Petitioners (July 1–3, 2026)
From July 1 to 3, following the formal implementation of so-called “new petitioning regulations” aimed at restricting petitioners from coming to Beijing, Chinese Communist Party authorities deployed large numbers of police over several consecutive days to arrest petitioners at sites including the Ministry of Public Security’s Public Complaints Reception Office and the National Bureau of Letters and Calls for Visits. Petitioners sleeping rough near bridges and along the Yongding River close to the Bureau of Letters and Calls were also driven out. More than a dozen petitioners from Dalian were seized in a coordinated operation by plainclothes police from their hometown and forcibly loaded onto a minibus.
Xi’an Sino-Gems Plaza Multi-Million-Yuan Fine Drives Company Chairman to His Death; Family and Employees Seeking Answers Suppressed by Police (July 1, 2026)
At midday on July 1, in Xiaozhai Sino-Gems International Shopping Center in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, Yan Peng, chairman of Xi’an Lihe Trading Co., Ltd., fell to his death from the seventh floor of the mall. After the incident, Sino-Gems staff removed the body without authorization, prompting anger from family members, employees, and online observers, who gathered for an extended protest in the plaza outside. Authorities eventually deployed a large number of police to forcibly clear the scene and detained several people.
