A video shared widely on social media shows nine men punching, kicking and dragging three women in and out of a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan City on Friday night. The incident has sparked outrage across the country as tens of millions of people have expressed frustration on the Internet over the lack of legal protection for women and their anger at patriarchal social norms. Weibo, the Chinese microblogging platform, said in a statement on Saturday that it had blocked 265 accounts for violations, including encouraging “gender confrontation”. The social networking platform also banned relevant hashtags such as “we wish every girl to grow up safely”, which she said did not comply with government regulations. Analysts said the incident and the government’s efforts to control the narrative underscored Beijing’s failure to address widespread abuse of women as authorities tightened their grip on the country’s #MeToo movement. “What happened in Tangshan means that any Chinese woman can be beaten at any time for any reason,” said Lu Xiaokuan, a Beijing-based lawyer who focuses on women’s rights. “There is no way to avoid it.” The shocking incident in Tangshan, a city of 7.7 million people in Hebei Province, began when a man approached three women eating at a restaurant and put his hand on the back of a table. The woman asked what she wanted before shouting “you are sick” and slapping his hand. The man responded by hitting the woman in the face, causing a hand-to-hand fight that erupted in the street, where the original victim was dragged by her hair. A group of men dining out took part in the attack, hitting women with chairs and beer bottles, trampling them and shouting “hit her to death”. Two of the targeted women were hospitalized but were in stable condition, according to local media. Public outrage in the aftermath of the attack also focused on law enforcement passivity. A case report examined by the Financial Times showed that the local police department failed to respond to multiple calls regarding the attack shortly before 3 a.m. The document, drafted by Tangshan Airport Road Police Station, described the incident as a “normal skirmish”. Tangshan police arrested nine people over the weekend who allegedly took part in the violence. Some of the suspects had previous criminal records, according to court documents. However, the violent attack sparked an outcry on social media, with many complaining about the lack of legal protection for women in China. A Weibo post posted Saturday night that was read tens of thousands of times claimed that the incident was not accidental, but a reflection of the systematic sexual violence that had its roots in Chinese society. “We must acknowledge that our environment contains forces that support, encourage and drive male violence against women,” the user wrote. The Tangshan attack followed a series of recent incidents that have drawn attention to sexual violence and gender inequality in China. This year, a video of a woman chained to a hut in a rural area of ​​eastern Jiangsu Province sparked widespread outrage and highlighted the authorities’ failure to eradicate human trafficking and abuse. Last December, an employee of the e-commerce giant Alibaba was fired after publicly accusing her manager and a client of sexually assaulting her on a business trip. He said he had reported the incident to the company, but had not responded.

Last month, Peng Shui, a Chinese tennis star and three-time Olympian, accused former Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli of sexual harassment. Peng later dropped the charges after disappearing from public view, but the incident, which involved the highest echelons of Chinese politics, undermined Beijing’s narrative of improving conditions for women. Authorities sought to reduce the incidence of sexual violence, despite its prevalence, by launching numerous attacks on women’s rights groups that activists say could help further gender inequality. The Communist Youth Association of China in April described “extreme feminists” as an “internet volume” that undermines policy priorities such as rising birth rates in the sinking country. That rhetoric, said Lü Pin, a Chinese New York-based Chinese women’s rights activist, meant that the Tangshan incident would not be the last. “China’s male-dominated government has no incentive to improve women’s rights because it benefits from the status quo,” she said.