China jails ex-police chief in aftermath of vicious Tangshan barbecue restaurant attack on women

Ma Aijun sentenced to 12 years in prison for abuse of power, taking bribes in case related to assault that shocked the nation
Ma is the first official publicly known to have been jailed over the case

Women and gender

Phoebe Zhang

Published: 2:40pm, 23 Jan 2024

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A former police chief in northern China has been jailed for sheltering gang members in a case linked to a brutal attack on a group of women at a late-night barbecue restaurant in Tangshan two years ago.

Ma Aijun, former head of the Lubei district branch of the Tangshan Public Security Bureau in Hebei province, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined 700,000 yuan (US$97,300), a district court in the neighbouring city of Langfang said in its annual report on Sunday.

Ma was convicted and sentenced for breaching the law for personal gain and bribery, with the court referring to him as “Ma from the Tangshan barbecue beating case”.

It was the first publicly known sentencing of an official connected to a case that outraged the nation after a video of the attack went viral in June 2022.

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Chinese women turn to self-defence classes after brutal attack on female diners in Tangshan

The footage showed a local thug, later identified as Chen Jizhi, harassing a woman and beating her after she rejected his advances.

The woman’s friends tried to intervene but were assaulted by Chen’s accomplices, who stormed the restaurant, struck the victims on the head, dragged them outside and continued the beatings.

Prosecutors accused Chen of being a gang leader and charged him in connection with 11 other crimes dating back to 2012, including three unlawful detentions, assault, illegal gambling and robbery.

He was sentenced in 2022 to 24 years in prison.

But questions lingered over how Chen had walked free after his earlier offences.

Many had accused local police of being slow to respond, arriving at the scene only after the suspects had fled.

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The provincial public security department ordered police from Langfang, about 150km (93 miles) from Tangshan, to take over the case.

In the report on the weekend, Guangyang District People’s Court acting president Wang Peiheng said the court focused last year on criminal cases that sabotaged market and social order.

“We regularly cracked down on crime and eliminated evil according to the Anti-Organised Crime Law, and concluded three cases involving eight people,” he said.

China’s top court orders crackdown amid public outcry over attack on women

As of Tuesday morning, the news of Ma’s sentencing had been read more than 130 million times on Weibo, with most readers concluding that justice had finally been served.

“This is a reasonable follow-up to the incident,” one commenter said.

Many people slammed the slow initial response to the assaults by the local police.

Another commenter said: “I cannot imagine that if the video did not go viral and they hadn’t faced the anger of the public, how long the police would have protected the gang members.”

The Communist Party disciplinary authority in Hebei also investigated 15 officers and officials in Tangshan.

In August 2022, initial investigations found evidence that eight officers, including Ma, two directors and two deputies from three police stations had allegedly abused their power, breached the rules and accepted bribes.