China’s decade-long nationwide fishing ban, introduced by Beijing as an environmental measure to restore river stocks, has turned local fishery enforcement into a confrontation machine. In Chongqing, officers tasked with clearing recreational anglers from rivers have generated repeated clashes with ordinary residents, while commercial-scale illegal fishing using nets, electric prods, and explosives continues without interference.
According to The Epoch Times, on June 8, fishery enforcement officers in Chongqing’s Kaizhou District, a county-level area roughly 400 kilometers northeast of the city center, chased an 18-year-old away from the bank of the Pengxi River where he had been fishing with a rod and line. He jumped into the water to escape them, swam until his strength gave out, and drowned in full view of the officers on shore. They reportedly watched for several minutes before entering the water.
That night, hundreds of residents carried the teenager’s body through the streets toward the local government offices to demand accountability. Police intercepted the procession, beat back the crowd, arrested multiple participants, and took the body. Video footage was scrubbed from Chinese social media within hours.
Officers watched an 18-year-old drown
The Kaizhou Regulating Dam, a water-control structure on the Pengxi River, has long served as a popular fishing spot for local residents. According to eyewitness accounts and video footage circulated online before censors removed it, fishery enforcement officers arrived and began pursuing the young man. Cornered at the water’s edge, he jumped in and tried to swim to the opposite bank.
He made it partway across before his strength failed him. Video showed him struggling in the current while the enforcement officers remained on the bank. They neither entered the water to rescue him nor stepped back to give him room to swim to shore. Only after he disappeared beneath the surface did any of them enter the river.
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A Chongqing resident wrote on social media: “My father just called to tell me the 18-year-old is the grandson of the woman who sells braised food in our building. He said special police had been chasing people until nightfall and he jumped in the water. I think it was the fishery officers.”
Another commenter wrote: “How much ecological damage can one fishing rod do? The people using nets and electric prods to catch eels never get touched.”
The Kaizhou Regulating Dam section sits within a designated fishing ban zone. Local fishery enforcement officers have made repeated sweeps of the area, driving away recreational anglers and confiscating their equipment. Party-controlled fishery enforcement, nominally justified by ecological protection rules Beijing has promoted as part of its conservation policy, functions in practice as a harassment operation against ordinary citizens while commercial-scale illegal fishing continues undisturbed.
One local angler put it plainly: “The ones using electricity, nets, and explosives to fish never get caught. They only go after the people with rods.”
Police seized the teenager’s body and arrested mourners
The night of June 8, the dead teenager’s family, his fishing companions, and hundreds of local residents gathered near the dam. They carried his body, freshly recovered from the river, toward the district government offices. Police intercepted the procession, dispersing the crowd by force, detaining multiple participants, and taking the body.
The government has not publicly acknowledged the incident. Footage uploaded to Chinese social media platforms was deleted by censors almost immediately; the account “Zuotian” (Yesterday) on X, which tracks incidents of collective resistance inside China, documented the episode on June 15, a week after it occurred, because domestic circulation had been suppressed entirely.
“He was only 18 years old,” one commenter wrote. “All these people watched him drown. He only wanted to fish. What was his crime? A living person, gone.”
Another wrote: “These fishery officers should face the law.”
A third wrote: “History shows that every revolution requires sacrifice.”
One X user offered a sardonic gloss on the Party’s foundational slogan: “So this is the people’s government, where all power belongs to the people.”
Another posted: “It looks like the first fire will eventually be lit somewhere in the southwest.”
READ MORE:
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- Chongqing Animal Cruelty Case Triggers Street Protests and Dozens of Arrests
Days earlier, Chongqing police beat volunteers who protested animal abuse
Li Meng, a 39-year-old man known online as the “Sam’s Packaging Guy” after videos of him obsessively sampling food for hours at a Chongqing Sam’s Club went viral, has been accused by animal protection advocates of running a fraudulent pet adoption scheme.
According to the claims, Li posed online as a caring adopter, took in cats and dogs from well-meaning donors, and then killed the animals using brutal methods. Neighbors and online users repeatedly reported him to police, but officers took no action.
Between June 7 and June 10, hundreds of Chongqing residents and animal rescue volunteers gathered in protest. Police moved in to disperse the crowds, arresting dozens of people and injuring several others. A foreign man who had joined the demonstration in support was also detained and forcibly removed.
Video from the early hours of June 10 showed officers dragging protesters away while one demonstrator shouted at the police: “You beat 100 people tonight, and tonight there are 500. If you dare beat 500, tomorrow there will be 5,000.”
A source who identified himself as a Party insider wrote online: “We just finished a meeting. The propaganda department has intervened and ordered the three major platforms to delete content and suppress coverage of police beating volunteers as much as possible.”
An animal welfare volunteer who goes by the name Xiaowan told the Hong Kong media outlet HK01 that residents had started with simple demands: stop the fraudulent adoption scheme, rescue whatever animals remained in Li’s apartment. “But their anger got no response,” she said. “Chongqing police pushed them into the streets, step by step.”
“They’re not interested in the dog abuse or the people opposing it,” one commenter wrote. “What they cannot tolerate is any gathering of people. What they fear most is the Chinese people organizing themselves.”
Another wrote: “Every time they insist on suppression, they push every small incident closer to a white paper revolution,” a reference to the November 2022 protest movement in which Chinese citizens held up blank sheets of paper in opposition to state censorship.
By June 15, both incidents existed online only on servers outside China’s censorship firewall. Inside the country, the official record has been censored.
