China Publicly Shames COVID Rule Breakers by Parading Them Down Street in Hazmat Suits

Officials in a southern Chinese border town have defended viral videos showing suspects in full hazmat suits being paraded down crowded streets for allegedly defying the country's strict public health measures.

In social media footage viewed more than 7 million times on China's Twitter-like microblog Weibo, heavily armed police and additional officers in hazmat gear are seen escorting four men through the city of Jingxi in Guangxi, a region bordering Vietnam.

A series of clips showed the suspects carrying enlarged printouts of their own mugshots as their faces were obscured by protective equipment during the public shaming event. Similar spectacles technically have been barred for a decade due to the humiliation they cause to would-be offenders.

In another video, the four suspects, each flanked by two officers, stand before a large crowd on a public square guarded by rows of armed police. A red banner hung from a building behind them identifies the event as an annual border crime prevention and public awareness campaign.

Weibo users were critical of the display. Some said it called back to similar public humiliation events known as "struggle sessions," common during Mao Zedong's decade-long Cultural Revolution.

Zhengguan News said the event took place on Tuesday and involved four men who were caught smuggling foreign nationals across the border into China in violation of the country's COVID-19 restrictions.

A spokesperson for the Jingxi Public Security Bureau told the Henan-based news site on Wednesday that it was organized by officials in the township of Anning, where another spokesperson said there was "nothing inappropriate" as the suspects had broken the law and were "punished accordingly."

Also on Tuesday, Jingxi People's Procuratorate announced the arrest of two local residents, surnamed Huang and Bi, who had allegedly smuggled a pair of Vietnamese nationals into China on October 19. They were accused of facilitating the illegal border crossings while also breaching China's disease control laws.

The public prosecutor said the suspects were en route to Guangxi regional capital Nanning when they were intercepted by police. One of the Vietnamese nationals later tested positive for COVID-19, forcing nearly 50,000 people in the townships of Anning, Tunpan and Ludong to quarantine, the statement said.

It was unclear whether Huang and Bi, who were formally charged on December 20, were among those paraded through Anning on Tuesday. Posts on Weibo showed similar shaming events have taken place this month in the form of public court hearings.

China, which is opening the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in just over a month, is pushing a "zero-COVID" policy, with strict external and internal border controls.

On Wednesday, China's National Health Commission said 152 locally transmitted coronavirus cases were detected the previous day, down 30 from Monday. The majority of fresh cases were in China's northwestern Shaanxi province, where a continuing outbreak of the Delta variant has forced 13 million residents in provincial capital Xi'an into their seventh day of an indefinite lockdown.