Videos shared widely on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, showed a mostly maskless crowd of hundreds out on the streets on January 2—a public holiday—in rare scenes that were discouraged for three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The social media app’s censors subsequently removed the videos.
On Twitter, which has become a digital archive of footage deleted from the Chinese internet, one video showed the crowd of youths swarming the police car, which witnesses said had sought to intervene in an unauthorized firework celebration. Pyrotechnics could be seen in the background.
In another clip, a young man was seen inciting the excitable New Year crowd standing atop the vehicle, which was later flipped onto its roof.
Authorities in Luyi county in Henan province—roughly 125 miles southeast of “iPhone city” Zhengzhou—said they had arrested six of eight individuals suspected of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” an oft-cited public order crime, according to a statement published online on Tuesday.
“A few people deliberately vandalized an on-duty police car parked by the roadside, attracting a crowd of onlookers. It resulted in chaos at the scene and was a negative influence,” the police said. Order was restored and no injuries were reported, the statement added.
Authorities said the incident happened at 11 p.m. local time on Monday on one of the county’s main thoroughfares, next to a public square. They urged the remaining suspects to turn themselves in, promising leniency.
Luyi police could not be reached for comment.
The police statement didn’t reference the province-wide ban on fireworks and firecrackers that has been in place since July 2021. The ban, taken on public safety and environmental grounds, followed central government guidance that has seen hundreds of cities similarly ban or restrict the use of pyrotechnics since 2018.
Beijing extended a downtown firework ban across the entire city last year, allowing it to record its cleanest air on record since the monitoring of hazardous PM2.5 particles began in 2013.
China traditionally marks Lunar New Year and other holidays with loud firecrackers to rid families and businesses of bad luck.
Major cities including Beijing and Shanghai organized official displays to ring in 2023. Across the country, however, members of the public celebrated China’s first post-COVID New Year by shooting fireworks from the back of mopeds and through car windows, social media images showed.
Do you have a tip on a world news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about China? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.
