A court in northern China has convicted two teenagers from Handan, Hebei province, of murdering their classmate in March. One was sentenced to life in prison and the other to 12 years in prison. The facts showed that the teenagers conspired to kill their partner and divide his money between them. In a statement the court endorsed its sentence saying that the “Methods were especially cruel and the circumstances especially vile.”
Since his arrest and the case making headlines in local newspapers, a bitter controversy broke out on the networks about the treatment of this type of crimes when those involved are minors. To the point that on Chinese social networks, the hashtags about this murder generated more than a billion views in one day.
Details of the case and the accused
The victim and his classmates were described by the media as ‘abandoned children’, which is a term used to describe children in China who live with their grandparents in rural areas, while their parents migrate to work in the cities.
Of the defendants, whose surnames are known only as Zhang and Li, They had harassed the victim for a long period of timealso 13 years old, surnamed Wang, according to what the deceased’s father told the press. There is also a third boy, surnamed Ma, who according to the court did not cause harm to the victim, for which he was sentenced to receive correctional education.
During the trial, the details of what happened on March 3 emerged. Zhang took Wang to the greenhouse on a motorcycle, while Li rode on another with Ma. Along the way, Li told Ma of the plan he had hatched to kill Wang. And when the four of them arrived at an abandoned vegetable greenhouse, Zhang attacked Wang with a shovel and Li helped him. While Ma, upon witnessing the attack, decided to momentarily leave the scene. Afterwards, Zhang and Li buried the victim in the orchard and the three left the scene.
Then Zhang used Wang’s phone to transfer money from his WeChat account (a Chinese multi-service application) to Lee and himself. He also took out the SIM card from Wang’s phone and ordered Ma to destroy it. Later, the authorities would find the body of the 13-year-old boy buried in a shallow well in the greenhouse.
The court argued that Zhang was the main culprit, for planning and instigating others to carry out a crime that ended up causing Wang’s death. While Li was considered an accomplice who actively participated in the act.
What the law and the public say
In 2021, Beijing lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 for “special cases” which included particular situations such as inflicting death by “extremely cruel means.” The change was because in 2018, a 12-year-old boy who police say killed his mother was allowed to return to school days later because they had no other option since they couldn’t press charges against him.
Additionally, under Chinese law, those over 12 but under 14 may face criminal prosecution. as long as it is permitted by the Supreme People’s Prosecutor’s Office, which is the highest-ranking public prosecutor in the country. In that sense, the prosecution stated that because the accused, who due to their age, at that time was 13 years old, had to “assume criminal responsibility.”
The case has received great media attention and aroused the anger of the public who had been expecting an exemplary punishment since March. And since the sentence was announced Social media users have praised the sentence for what they called a “brutal crime.” Others considered the 12-year sentence for one of the defendants too lenient. «The one who only received 12 years will be a young man when he is released. I hope he doesn’t take revenge on society when he comes out,” can be read in a comment that went viral on Weibo – which is like Chinese Twitter. And some preferred to remember the agony of the victim’s parents. “As a father, I am really sorry for the child,” said another Weibo user. “It’s really heartbreaking,” they add.
The importance of the case, as pointed out by media such as Al-Jazeera or CBS, lies in the fact that it is one of the first in which the lower age limit has been applied. And in recent years, a series of high-profile murders allegedly carried out by children has provoked a more heated reaction from the public.
‘The New York Times’ reported on examples such as Xinyue, an 8-year-old girl who was stabbed by a 13-year-old boy several times, and her body was abandoned in a poplar forest in northwest China. His family has been waiting for the trial to begin for two years.
In fact, some attorneys have called for even harsher penalties that include the death penalty. They point out that in recent years minors have often faced insufficient punishments for very serious crimes. Although in China, as NYT recalls, the number of arrests of minors is never officially clear.
Other jurists have pointed out that these types of conversations actually overshadow the issues of prevention and the importance of educating ‘abandoned children’ to avoid these crimes. However, the debate remains open on how to address youth crime in China when talking about especially egregious cases.
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