Commentary on Tangshan Beating Incident: There Should Be No Confrontation Between Men and Women, Only Between Good and Evil

A barbecue
A barbecue (photo: unsplash.com)
By Li ShiguangJuly 8th, 2022

In early June, the beating incident in Tangshan has outraged the Chinese public. In the surveillance video, we saw extremely infuriating scenes of a group of women having dinner together on June 10 when one of them in a white blouse was approached by a male diner who touched her on the back, which was suspected to constitute sexual harassment. The woman pushed him away. In return, she was beaten by the man. Seeing the conflict happen, his accomplices then joined him hitting her instead of stopping him. In the end, the woman fell on the ground covered in blood. Her friends who tried to help were also attacked. Some attackers even smashed chairs onto the women. The level of violence was really heinous.

After the incident was exposed on the Internet, it quickly became an exploding topic in a short period of time, causing heated discussions in the whole society.

One of the vigorous debates about this incident was whether it was gender-based. First, the perpetrators were all men, whereas, the victims were all women. Second, in the surveillance video, we can see that most of the customers dining on site were males. However, in the end, none of them stood up to stop the fight but chose to remain silent.

From this perspective, after it went public, many people focused on its gender-based nature and pointed the finger at "men". A male celebrity criticized, " “It was especially sad that only the women stood up to help each other throughout the whole incident. All the men around [them] were indifferent. How could such a thing happen?!" A well-known female figure attacked all Chinese men indiscriminately, "Chinese men all should enlist for military service. The men dining and watching around, what were you waiting for? Every day guys talk about worshiping heroes, haha, they turn out to be just a teddy bear in the end."

Not only celebrities, I found that many ordinary people also got into fights because of this incident. Many couples and lovers held disagreements, quarreled, fought, and even ended up in divorce, for one couldn’t convince the other to have the same opinion.

In this regard, I just want to say, don't simply define the Tangshan beating incident as a confrontation between men and women. Otherwise, it's a big mistake.

The key to this incident is that a group of strong people brutalized a group of weak people for no reason. In this case, the weak were all women who are generally vulnerable compared to men in terms of body size and strength, due to their natural physiological structure. In addition, in this incident, victims were also outnumbered. When physical strength and numbers are at disadvantage, the final result is inevitable.

As a man, I asked myself, if I were there at the time, would I dare to stand up bravely? Honestly speaking, my answer was probably NO, since standing up would not gain anything other than being beaten up. Two reasons for not daring. One, even if someone stood up, given the circumstances, they wouldn’t be of any help. Two, it would be very likely that they could be detained as accessories to beating by relevant departments.

I firmly believe that there is no confrontation between men and women, but only between good and evil.

The beating incident at the Tangshan BBQ restaurant was a criminal case in which a group of mafia-like gangs and thugs committed a brutal assault on ordinary people. In this case, and in all crimes, I believe that gender is not the original sin, but evil and violence.

Therefore, we need to discern that what our focus is not and should not be gender, but crime and violence. When many people make a fuss about "confrontation between men and women" to attract attention, as Christians, we should uphold the truth of the holy book and make it clear that the core of the event is evil, not gender. Otherwise, we will fall into the tricks and traps of Satan, whose agenda always is to stir up strife among us, while the Holy Spirit works on peace.

- Translated by Shuya Wang

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