Uncategorized Archives • Who Is Fucked In China?

Chinese Parents Seek Refunds After Admissions Firms Close

Layered application folders, a payment envelope, disconnected chat bubbles and a path toward a university gate

Hundreds of Chinese families are seeking refunds after two education-planning companies linked to a popular livestream personality cut staff, closed or moved offices, and became difficult for customers to reach. The dispute has drawn attention to a fast-growing business built around a high-stakes family decision: choosing universities and preparing for China’s national college entrance examination.

Jiemian News reported on September 16 that more than 700 parents had registered complaints by mid-month, citing tallies by Red Star News and other outlets. The families had prepaid nearly RMB 20 million in total, according to those media estimates. The figure represents reported customer claims rather than a court judgment or a confirmed official loss calculation.

The services were promoted through accounts associated with Li Ze, an education influencer who markets himself as a “985 returnee professor,” a reference to China’s group of elite Project 985 universities and to his overseas academic background. Some families told Chinese media that his professional presentation, years of livestreaming and large online following made the offers appear dependable.

Long-term plans were sold through livestreams

Families reportedly paid roughly RMB 8,980 to RMB 10,980 for help with university application choices and related academic planning. One parent in Shanxi purchased a service intended for the 2031 admissions cycle while the child was still in the second year of middle school. The parent said the livestream repeatedly warned that prices would rise, making an early purchase seem economical.

That long lead time is central to the risk. A family may pay years before the promised advice is due, while the provider must keep enough staff, cash and records to deliver much later. If a company closes, changes ownership or loses its service team, customers can be left holding contracts whose practical value depends on a future operation that no longer exists.

The first visible disruption emerged in Wuhan in August. Citing reporting by The Paper, Jiemian said employees of Wuhan Xuecheng Siyuan Technology were removed from workplace communication accounts on August 16. Staff were allegedly asked to sign departure agreements without compensation, and the company’s Wuhan office closed two days later. Employees said more than 120 workers were affected and that unpaid July wages for full-time and part-time teachers exceeded RMB 3 million.

Beijing Qihang Xinweilai Technology later carried out another large round of layoffs, according to the same account. More than 100 employees were reportedly asked to give up compensation and commissions, after which the company moved from its previous office and its established contact channels stopped working.

An influencer’s reputation crossed company boundaries

The two businesses were presented to customers through an online brand closely associated with Li. Corporate-registration information cited by Jiemian identifies him as a shareholder in the Beijing company, which offered services covering university choices, special admissions programs, postgraduate recommendations and entrance-exam counseling. The Wuhan operation was described as a regional delivery company whose orders largely came from livestream traffic.

Li disputed claims that he had fled. During an August 19 livestream, he characterized the accusations as attacks by competitors, said the Wuhan and Beijing companies were separate legal entities, and said he did not receive money from the Wuhan business. Those statements are important because the dispute involves both the public identity used to attract customers and the legal entities named in contracts. A recognizable presenter may shape a buying decision without necessarily assuming every obligation of a service provider.

That distinction may be clear in corporate paperwork but less clear in a livestream sales funnel. Parents reportedly encountered Li’s videos on platforms including Douyin and Kuaishou, added assistants on WeChat, and then paid through a mini-program or a company account. Promotional references to prominent investors also reassured some buyers, according to the report. By the time families heard about layoffs and missing contacts, the brand, sales channel and delivery company had already blended into a single customer experience.

Parents face a recovery problem, not just a service delay

Several parents have reported the matter to police in Wuhan and Beijing, Jiemian said. They were reportedly advised that the cases were contractual disputes and that litigation could be the appropriate route. Some families are preparing lawsuits, while others are collecting records they believe may support additional allegations. No court finding establishing fraud was cited in the report, so the closures and refund claims should not be treated as a final determination of criminal wrongdoing.

For customers, however, the immediate questions are concrete: which company received the payment, which entity promised the service, whether the contract provides for a refund, and whether that company still has recoverable assets. Screenshots from livestreams can help document how an offer was marketed, but contracts, payment records, invoices and written communications are likely to be more useful in identifying the responsible party.

The episode also shows how anxiety around competitive admissions can support unusually long prepayment periods. Planning advice is intangible, difficult to evaluate before delivery and tied to deadlines that families cannot recover once missed. Urgency claims such as an impending price increase can push buyers to pay before they have examined cancellation terms, service milestones or the provider’s ability to operate for several more years.

Prepaid education needs clearer accountability

The reported losses do not prove that all admissions-planning services are unreliable. They do show why families should separate an influencer’s credibility from the financial condition and legal duties of the company receiving payment. Before paying far in advance, customers can ask for the legal name on the contract, a staged payment schedule, specific deliverables, refund conditions and a clear explanation of who will hold student records if staff or ownership changes.

Platforms also influence the transaction. Livestreams can create trust quickly and at national scale, while service delivery remains scattered among companies, assistants and regional teams. Clearer labeling of the contracting party and more visible refund information would make it harder for marketing identity to obscure legal responsibility.

For the affected parents, those preventive steps come too late. Their priority is preserving contracts, receipts, chat histories and promotional claims while pursuing a coordinated refund process. The broader lesson is that a large audience and an elite-sounding title are not substitutes for a service provider’s capacity to fulfill a contract years after the payment is made.

China’s ‘Weekend Shopping’ Idea Tests Consumer Pressure

Layered paper storefronts, a shopping basket, paired calendar blocks and an abstract rating gauge

A Chinese online project is asking consumers to treat an ordinary purchase as a vote on working conditions. The idea, promoted under the name Shuangxiu Gou—roughly “weekend shopping”—is to steer spending toward companies said to give employees both Saturday and Sunday off. It has attracted attention because it translates a familiar workplace complaint into a consumer choice: if employers compete for customers, perhaps rest policies can become part of that competition.

Chinese-language posts circulating in early September described a WeChat mini-program where products appeared beside the names of associated companies and a “weekend index.” Screenshots shared by one prominent nonofficial Chinese account also appeared to show links to large shopping platforms and a separate area where users could add companies, post workplace comments and discuss pay. Those images are useful evidence of how the project was presented online, but they do not establish that every displayed function worked, that every rating was accurate or that the mini-program and every similarly named website came from the same operator.

The proposal nevertheless points to a real public-interest question. China’s standard five-day workweek exists alongside widespread complaints about long hours, unpaid overtime and nominal days off interrupted by work messages. A shopping guide built around rest policies tries to move that debate beyond recruitment forums and into the marketplace. Its appeal is easy to understand: it offers people a small action they can take without waiting for a labor dispute, a court case or a company announcement.

Turning workplace reputation into a shopping signal

The public website using the Shuangxiu Gou name says it provides company information, product reviews and service evaluations so job seekers and consumers can make more informed choices. It also says companies can claim a profile and respond to reviews, while user submissions are moderated. These are the platform’s own descriptions, not independently tested guarantees, but they reveal an ambition broader than a simple list of “good employers.” The product combines consumer advocacy, workplace discussion and employer reputation.

A public technical page for the website describes its weekend index as an aggregation of user votes and reviews. The page explicitly says the score reflects subjective employee feedback rather than an official judgment about labor-law compliance. Public metadata viewed in September defined the scale as zero to five, with higher values indicating better implementation of two-day weekends. Crucially, it said a zero could mean that no data were available. Treating zero as proof that a company denies weekends would therefore misread the platform’s own definition.

At the time that metadata was examined, the service reported thousands of company entries, but only a minority had weekend-vote samples. Those figures were supplied by the service itself and did not show how many people had rated each employer, whether contributors were current employees or how representative the sample was. The technical documentation also withheld voting details and review counts from its open interface. That makes the index easy to browse but difficult for outsiders to audit.

The basic consumer logic is still notable. Environmental labels, fair-trade certifications and product-safety ratings already ask buyers to consider conditions behind a purchase. Shuangxiu Gou applies a similar idea to time: the hidden input is whether the people who made, marketed or delivered a product receive predictable rest. In theory, a visible signal could reward employers that offer humane schedules and impose a reputational cost on those that do not.

The same-name problem and the limits of screenshots

The online trail is less tidy than the viral presentation suggests. A Chinese developer using the name “Daxian Plays Digital” described building a WeChat mini-program from an existing project with the same Shuangxiu Gou name. The developer’s July post framed it as a tool for consumers concerned about workplace rights and described local-data and cloud-development modes. A related public code repository described a lightweight website whose company information was maintained in a local file.

That development trail does not clearly match the separate website whose public interface describes aggregated user voting, a five-point index and thousands of entries. The available materials do not establish that the developer, the website operator and the mini-program shown in September screenshots are the same party. They may be connected, may represent different versions, or may be independent projects built around the same slogan. Reporting them as one verified product would erase an important uncertainty.

The screenshots have similar limits. They indicate that people were discussing a shopping service with company ratings and marketplace links. They do not prove that a purchase reached the advertised seller, that a rating came from an employee or that a company’s schedule applied across headquarters, factories, contractors and retail locations. A brand can also have several legal entities and work arrangements. Linking a consumer product to one employer-wide score may be much harder than the interface makes it appear.

A rating system needs more than a persuasive idea

Crowd-sourced labor information can be valuable because formal job descriptions often say little about actual schedules. Workers may know whether weekends are routinely protected, whether overtime is compensated and whether managers expect instant responses outside office hours. Aggregating those experiences could reveal patterns that an individual review cannot.

But the value of a score depends on its method. The public materials reviewed did not explain the minimum number of votes needed for a rating, how recent reports were weighted, how duplicate or coordinated submissions were detected, or how employee status was checked. They also did not provide enough information to reproduce an individual company’s score. Without those safeguards, a rating can be distorted by a tiny sample, a workplace dispute, a publicity campaign or confusion between similarly named businesses.

Company response rights can help, but they create another design challenge. A fair appeal process should correct misidentification and outdated information without allowing an employer to remove legitimate criticism simply because it is uncomfortable. Moderation must also protect workers who share sensitive experiences. Salary claims, overtime allegations and comments about managers can expose ordinary employees to retaliation or privacy harm if identifying details are not handled carefully.

The project’s consumer-facing premise introduces a further question: what exactly counts as supporting a two-day-weekend employer? A product sold under a well-known brand may pass through manufacturers, logistics firms and storefronts with very different schedules. A marketplace purchase can benefit the platform, the merchant and multiple contractors at once. A simple badge may imply a clean relationship between money and labor practice where the real supply chain is fragmented.

Why the experiment matters even before it is proven

The attention around weekend shopping shows that time off has become part of how some Chinese consumers evaluate companies, not merely a private issue negotiated between an employee and a manager. The initiative’s most important contribution may be cultural rather than commercial: it presents reliable rest as a feature worth advertising and asks companies to compete on it.

That framing could be useful if the project becomes more transparent. Publishing a clear scoring formula, sample sizes, update dates and distinctions between offices, stores and factories would let users judge how much confidence to place in each entry. Separating “no data” from a genuinely poor score should be prominent rather than buried in technical documentation. A visible correction history could show when company responses changed a listing and why.

For now, consumers should understand the weekend index as a crowd-sourced signal, not a certification. The public materials support the existence of an online effort built around two-day weekends and consumer choice, while leaving its ownership, product variants and data quality partly unresolved. That does not make the idea meaningless. It means the project should be judged by the same standard it seeks to apply to employers: persuasive claims need transparent evidence, and trust has to be earned through accountable practice.

Beijing Tightens Drone Ban Ahead of November Deadline

A paper-cut city grid beneath restricted-airspace rings with a dismantled drone, storage box and outbound parcel

Beijing is preparing to impose a substantially tighter citywide regime on civilian drones, giving owners a limited window to remove or surrender their equipment before revised rules take effect on November 15. The change reaches beyond restrictions on flying: the municipal announcement says the new framework will also prohibit possessing or storing unmanned aircraft and their core components, unless an exception applies.

The Beijing municipal government said on September 13 that the revised Beijing Regulations on the Administration of Unmanned Aircraft had been approved by the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress. The government presented the measure as a response to new security demands in the capital and said it was intended to strengthen airspace management and eliminate risks. Lianhe Zaobao separately reported that the revision was passed less than six months after an earlier set of controls took effect.

For residents, retailers, researchers and businesses that already own drones, the immediate issue is practical rather than abstract: what must happen to equipment now located inside Beijing, and how much time remains to act?

What the revised Beijing drone ban changes

According to the municipal announcement as summarized in Chinese-language reporting, Beijing’s entire administrative area will be treated as controlled airspace under the revised rules. Unmanned aircraft flights will be prohibited, and units and individuals will generally be barred from possessing or storing drones and designated core components. Transporting or carrying those items into Beijing will also be prohibited.

This language marks a clear tightening from the rules adopted in March and implemented on May 1. Those earlier provisions already classified all of Beijing as controlled airspace, but they described outdoor flights as requiring an application and approval rather than setting out the new blanket prohibition reported this week. The earlier version also prohibited sales and rentals to buyers in Beijing and restricted transportation into the city.

Storage was treated differently under the May framework. It prohibited new storage facilities anywhere in the municipality and barred storage facilities inside the Sixth Ring Road, while allowing facilities outside that boundary if they met safety requirements and passed an assessment. The revised measure, by contrast, establishes what the municipal announcement calls a citywide principle against storage. Lianhe Zaobao reported that warehouses and temporary storage locations will not be permitted for units or individuals unless the regulations provide otherwise.

The distinction matters because it shifts the burden from controlling where larger quantities may be warehoused to controlling whether the equipment may remain in the city at all. A hobbyist keeping one aircraft at home, a small production company storing equipment between assignments, and a repair business holding components may face different operational questions, but all are affected by the broader possession and storage language.

The announcement also indicates that exceptions will remain. Specially protected units must establish safety-management systems, assign clear responsibility and prevent security incidents. Flights conducted under special arrangements will remain subject to national rules. The publicly available summary does not provide a complete, case-by-case guide to eligibility, so owners should not assume that professional, educational or commercial use automatically qualifies.

Owners are being offered three disposal routes

Beijing has announced several ways for individual owners to deal with drones already in the capital. The options are designed to move equipment out of the city or remove it from circulation before the revised regulations begin.

The first route is an on-site buyback. The municipal notice says that qualifying disposals completed from November 1 through November 14 will receive a subsidy equal to 15 percent of the buyback transaction price, capped at 1,500 yuan for each aircraft. The announcement available through the government portal identifies the subsidy period and ceiling, but owners will still need the implementing instructions to learn where appraisals will occur, which models qualify and what documentation will be required.

The second route is scrapping. During the same November 1 to November 14 period, an owner who completes an eligible scrapping process can receive a subsidy of 100 yuan per aircraft. This may be the more straightforward option for damaged, obsolete or low-value equipment, although the reported amount is modest compared with the cost of many consumer and professional drones.

The third route is shipment out of Beijing. From September 12 through November 14, individuals may send unmanned aircraft to an address outside the municipality through China Post’s EMS service without paying the delivery charge after verification. The wording places importance on both the approved carrier and the verification process; it should not be read as a general authorization to use any parcel service.

Owners may also personally take equipment out of the capital before November 15 using civil aviation, railway or road transportation, according to the municipal announcement. That option appears simple, but travelers should check the applicable carrier’s battery, security-screening and packaging rules before arriving at a station or airport. Permission to remove a drone from Beijing does not cancel transport-safety requirements or rules at the destination.

A short compliance window raises practical questions

The disposal program gives residents roughly two months from the government’s September announcement to the November deadline, but the subsidized buyback and scrapping period lasts only two weeks. That compressed schedule could create a late rush, especially if detailed locations and procedures are released close to November 1.

Owners will need to distinguish the aircraft itself from the core components covered by the revised regulation. Earlier Beijing rules treated airframe structures, flight-control systems, communication systems and power systems as categories that could include regulated components. Whether every detachable part held by an individual falls within the revised list will depend on the final text and its implementation. Batteries, controllers and repair parts should not be discarded casually, both because of safety risks and because ordinary waste channels may not be suitable.

Businesses face additional concerns. Retailers were already restricted from selling or renting drones to units and individuals inside Beijing under the May rules. The new possession and storage principle may now affect inventory handling, repair intake, demonstration equipment and logistics arrangements. Film crews, mapping companies, schools and laboratories may need to determine whether they qualify for a special arrangement and whether approval covers purchasing, transportation, storage and flight as separate activities.

The revision also highlights the difference between owning a technology and receiving permission to use it. Under the earlier framework, an existing drone that had completed real-name registration and information verification could, in some circumstances, be carried back into Beijing by its owner. The new public summary describes a far broader ban on possession and storage. Anyone relying on an earlier registration or verification should therefore seek updated guidance rather than assuming the old treatment continues unchanged.

Safety policy meets the realities of civilian use

Beijing has justified its drone rules in terms of the capital’s distinctive low-altitude security demands. Unmanned aircraft can create risks around airports, government facilities, major events and densely populated neighborhoods. Clear limits may also reduce uncertainty for police, transport operators and residents who encounter unauthorized flights.

At the same time, civilian drones are ordinary tools for photography, surveying, inspection, education and research. A citywide prohibition on possession and storage reaches more deeply into those activities than a flight-permit system alone. The strength of the policy’s practical safeguards will depend on whether exception procedures are clear, timely and accessible to legitimate users rather than available only in theory.

The government’s free-shipping and subsidy measures acknowledge that residents may incur costs in complying. Yet the difference between a 100-yuan scrapping subsidy and the value of functional equipment may encourage many owners to ship or carry their drones elsewhere instead. That could solve the immediate compliance problem without answering longer-term questions about people who live in Beijing but use drones legally in other provinces.

Enforcement details will also matter. The public summaries describe what will be prohibited and how owners can dispose of equipment, but they do not fully explain how possession will be checked in homes, workplaces or transit, or how disputed components will be classified. Proportionate enforcement and clear notice will be important because the revised rules potentially affect people who have never conducted an unauthorized flight.

What owners should do before November 15

Drone owners in Beijing should first make an inventory of aircraft and potentially covered components, including equipment held at home, in offices or at repair locations. They should preserve registration and purchase records and watch for official instructions identifying buyback sites, scrapping points, verification requirements and the exact scope of regulated components.

Those choosing shipment should plan early enough to complete EMS verification and delivery before November 15. Those carrying a drone out personally should confirm the rules of the airline, railway or road operator, particularly for lithium batteries. Businesses and institutions that believe their work may qualify for special treatment should seek an assessment before moving, storing or operating equipment under an assumed exemption.

The key deadline is not merely a ban on taking off. Based on Beijing’s announcement, the revised rules are meant to remove most civilian drone possession and storage from the capital as well. With disposal support concentrated in the first half of November, waiting until the final days may leave owners with fewer practical choices and less time to resolve questions about eligibility.

China County Apologizes for Publicly Shaming Teachers

An empty classroom desk, blank exam papers, a cracked red ranking bar and paper scales in a layered collage

A county government in southwestern China has apologized after teachers whose classes recorded low exam averages were reportedly called onto a stage for group photographs beneath a large display bearing the Chinese word for “shame.” The episode has prompted a wider argument about whether public humiliation can improve schools—or simply punish educators for problems that test scores cannot explain.

The incident took place during Leibo County’s autumn education administration meeting on August 26 in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, according to Chinese-language reports. Images circulated online two days later. A report carried by China Jilin Network and attributed to Xinhuanghe said the screen identified groups associated with primary-school averages below 30 points and junior-middle-school averages below 15 points. Multiple teachers were shown standing onstage.

Liangshan’s education and sports bureau told the outlet that the images were authentic and that several local bodies had begun examining the incident. At that stage, officials said they still needed to establish precisely what the displayed figures represented and how the decision to use the humiliating label had been made.

An apology after the images spread

Later on August 28, the Leibo County government issued an apology, according to The Beijing News. The statement described the event as an improper practice that failed to respect teachers, caused serious psychological harm to those attending and produced a negative public impact.

The county said it had formed a special working group to conduct a full investigation and would handle the matter in accordance with the findings. The apology acknowledged wrongdoing, but the material available for this article did not include a completed investigation, the names of decision-makers or details of any disciplinary measures. Those questions therefore remain open.

The distinction matters. The circulating images and the official apology establish that an inappropriate event occurred, but they do not by themselves explain the meeting’s internal planning or show whether every teacher onstage taught a class that fell below the displayed thresholds. Early reporting also noted uncertainty over whether the figures referred to student averages or another form of evaluation. Treating those unresolved details as settled would go beyond the public record.

Why public ranking is a blunt instrument

Exam results can reveal important learning gaps. They can help schools identify where students need additional instruction, where curricula may be misaligned and where teachers need resources or training. But a single class average is not a clean measure of one teacher’s performance.

Students arrive with different levels of prior preparation. Rural and lower-income communities may face shortages of experienced teachers, limited access to tutoring, long travel times, unstable staffing and family pressures that affect attendance or study. Class size, subject difficulty and the design of the test also influence an average. None of these factors removes professional responsibility, but all of them complicate the claim that a low score can be assigned to one person as a moral failure.

Public shaming creates an additional problem: it converts a diagnostic measure into a spectacle. Instead of encouraging teachers to disclose weaknesses and ask for support, humiliation may give them reasons to conceal problems. It can also encourage teaching narrowly to the test, avoiding difficult students or concentrating attention on pupils most likely to lift an average.

Chinese online criticism cited in the reporting focused on this mismatch. Commenters argued that student background, staffing conditions and family circumstances shape rural education outcomes, and that humiliating frontline teachers does little to address those structural pressures. Those comments represent public reaction rather than a systematic survey, but they point to a basic policy question: whether accountability is designed to produce better information and support, or merely visible punishment.

Accountability without humiliation

Rejecting public humiliation does not mean rejecting accountability. School systems can review classroom results while using several measures rather than one threshold. Student progress over time, attendance, classroom observation, curriculum coverage and the level of support available can provide a more useful picture than raw averages alone.

A credible review would also separate questions that are often blurred together. Did students start the year far behind? Did their performance improve even if the final average remained low? Were teachers assigned outside their specialties? Did the school experience vacancies or unusually large classes? Were struggling teachers offered coaching before punitive measures were considered?

Those questions do not guarantee a comfortable outcome. A fair evaluation process may still identify weak teaching or poor management. The difference is that findings are based on evidence, educators can respond, and any corrective action is connected to improving learning rather than displaying blame.

Leibo County’s promise of an investigation now makes transparency important. A meaningful follow-up would explain who authorized the stage display, clarify what the score thresholds represented, describe how affected teachers were treated and state what procedural changes will prevent a repeat. Without that detail, the apology may close the immediate controversy without addressing the management culture that allowed it.

The lesson beyond one county

The episode resonates because performance pressure is not unique to Leibo. Education authorities everywhere face demands to raise results, and numerical rankings offer an apparently simple way to demonstrate action. Yet the simpler the metric, the greater the temptation to confuse measurement with explanation.

Schools need honest information about student performance. Teachers also need evaluations that recognize professional duty without reducing complex classrooms to a public label. The two goals are compatible when assessment is specific, evidence-based and linked to support. They become harder to reconcile when officials use humiliation as a management tool.

For Leibo County, the next test is not another exam score. It is whether the investigation turns an acknowledged mistake into clear accountability and a better way of helping students and teachers improve.

Glory to Hong Kong: Protest Anthem and Image Archive

Featured image for Glory to Hong Kong protest anthem archive

This archive post preserves imagery connected to Glory to Hong Kong, the protest anthem that became one of the most recognizable symbols of the 2019 Hong Kong democracy movement.

Summary

This post preserves a visual archive item related to Glory to Hong Kong, a protest anthem associated with the 2019 Hong Kong democracy movement.

Glory to Hong Kong protest anthem image archive

Information Risk

This is an archive-style post. It preserves the image and historical context but does not provide a full legal or political update on later restrictions around the song.