Why China Turned a Murder Suspect Into a Folk Hero

This month, China has a strange new problem. Pears. And more specifically, pears from a city in Henan province called Luohe. About two weeks ago, people suddenly attacked pear sellers from Luohe. Some people were saying, I will never buy a Luohe pear again. Others were boycotting any products made in Luohe. And the backlash has become so widespread that completely unrelated pear farmers in other parts of China say their businesses have also been affected. So what did pears possibly do to offend the Chinese public? Nothing. The story actually begins with a man named Xia Fugang. He was a fugitive wanted by Chinese authorities. He was accused of killing a man. And yet during the 10 days he was on the run, something extraordinary happened. It began on July 30th in Xiping County, Henan province. This man was 51 years old, or is, I should say, is 51 years old. He came from a very poor rural family. His father survived partly by collecting scrap. In Chinese, we say jian laji. The family was described as quiet, ordinary farmers. The authorities say Xia got into a dispute with a neighbor whose last name is Hou, and Xia attacked him with a knife. Hou later died. Authorities initially said one relative was also injured. Their later statement said that Xia injured additional innocent people while he was on the run. But online, a very different story began circulating. According to the online version, Xia and his family had endured years of bullying from powerful people in the village who are connected to the authorities. The man Xia killed was portrayed online not simply as his neighbor, but as a local bully connected to CCP's grassroots power. People claim that Xia had been beaten and humiliated, had tried to seek help through official channels, and had finally reached the point where he believed nobody could protect him. Even though these are only internet claims, tens of millions of Chinese believe them, and not the official story. Almost immediately, the public stopped seeing Xia as simply a murder suspect. They began calling him the hero of Xiping, or the hero from Xiping. In Chinese, they call him Xiping Daxia. On July 30th, after the attack, Xia fled and disappeared into the countryside. And this is where the story became almost cinematic. Xiping is surrounded by enormous fields of summer corn, taller than a person. Xia vanished into them. Authorities issued a reward, 20,000 yuan for useful information, 30,000 for information that helped police capture him, and 50,000 yuan, which is about more than $7,000, for directly helping apprehend him. But days passed. He was not found. No Xia. The search thus expanded. Police searched villages and farmland. Online accounts showed checkpoints, search teams, drones, and large numbers of personnel moving through the countryside, even including military personnel. Some reports claim extraordinary number of police, armed police, militia, and even military personnel were involved. There are claims of more than 100,000 people deployed. They were deployed to conduct a blanket search for this man. Some cornfields were even cut down, despite local farmers' protests, because it's their harvest. What is clear is that the scale and visibility of the operation became a story in itself. And Chinese people immediately noticed the contrast. They asked, where are these people during the natural disasters? This summer, large areas of China have suffered devastating floods, winds, and other natural disasters. Homes have been submerged, destroyed. Farmlands have been destroyed. Families have lost everything. But there was no help from the government. And online, people began asking an uncomfortable question. Where is this kind of mobilization when ordinary people need rescuing? Where are all the buses full of personnel? Where are the helicopters? Well, I should say, where were the helicopters? Where was this kind of mobilization? Where were all the buses full of personnel? Where were the helicopters? Where were the drones? Where was this enormous state capacity when people's homes were underwater? But one fugitive disappears into a cornfield, and suddenly, the machinery of the state seems to appear everywhere. People started looking at the manhunt through years of accumulated frustration. They weren't just watching police search for this Xia Fugang. They believed they were watching the Chinese state demonstrate what it was capable of doing when its own authority was challenged, and when one of their own was killed. And then something even more remarkable happened. People began helping Xia. Instead of cooperating with police, some people began trying to help Xia survive. Videos and posts circulated online showing villagers leaving bottled water, instant noodles, bread, sausages, snacks, and cigarettes, and other supplies near fields. People online cheered him on. They shared updates about the police search just to help him escape. Some even offered tips on how he could continue hiding. And think about how extraordinary that is. This is a man accused of killing another human being. The authorities were warning that he was dangerous, yet the Chinese public didn't see it that way. And that's the real story. Because you cannot explain the reaction simply by looking at Xia Fugang, you have to ask what has happened to public confidence in the system. For nine days, he remained missing. That's extraordinary given the overwhelming search efforts the authorities put in. Some people believe that he was safe during those nine days as the result of people's help. Then came August the 8th. Around 4 p.m. that day, police captured him in a town in Luohe after 10 days on the run. Now, remember the name Luohe. Videos of his capture surfaced. After 10 days, he looked calm when he was taken by the police. His calm composure further elevated his heroic status among the people. So how was he captured? An elderly man connected to a local pear orchid had spotted him in a cornfield when he was eating peanuts. I think this is the man. This is the man connected to a local pear orchid. We don't know how much money the man in the picture, the pear farmer, let's just call him the pear farmer, we don't know how much money he got. Whether 20,000 or 30,000 or 50,000 yuan for reporting shot to the authorities. Nevertheless, the internet rapidly settled on a much simpler story. A pear farmer sold out the hero of Xiping for 50,000 yuan. And that was enough. The public anger erupted. The backlash was immediate. Suddenly, the words boycott Luohe began circulating online. First, people targeted pear sellers. Videos appeared of people declaring they would never buy pears from Luohe again. Then truck drivers claimed they would refuse loads going there. Some people said they would rather lose money than do business with Luohe. One viral joke said Luohe should no longer be called Luohe anymore because of the scandal. It should be renamed to 50,000. Because according to the joke, that was the price of the city's honor. The boycott has spread to pear growers in other regions. One woman growing pears in Nanyang reportedly went online in tears. She showed people her ID card and her land contract. Her message was very basic. She said, I'm from, I'm not from Luohe. My farm isn't in Luohe. Please stop attacking me. Online reports even claimed that people with Luohe license plates received hostile treatment elsewhere and that workers from Luohe were discriminated against because people joked that Luohe residents love reporting others. The boycott became so widespread that official commentary began criticizing the public sentiment. There were also videos circulating in which a young man claiming to be the informant's son-in-law pleaded with the public to stop attacking his family, saying the elderly man had made a mistake and that the family was already going through serious hardship. The reaction underneath these social media development was revealing. People weren't interested in forgiveness. They believe something much larger had been betrayed. So why do people care so much? This to me is the most important part of the entire story because you don't have to believe Xia Zhigang was a hero. You don't have to believe every allegation made about the man he killed. But we have to ask, why did so many ordinary Chinese people emotionally identify with the fugitive instead of the authorities hunting him? I think the answer goes far beyond Xia Fugang or Xia Zhigang. He became a symbol. People weren't necessarily supporting the act of killing. They were projecting onto him years of accumulated anger about government corruption, the paralysis of the legal system, public bullying, petitioning system that go nowhere, arbitrary power, and the feeling that ordinary people have nowhere to turn when someone more powerful mistreats them. So when they saw this barefoot farmer disappearing into the cornfields while a huge state apparatus searched for him, they didn't see a criminal suspect. They saw a little guy having the courage, defying the system. And once that image took hold, the story became almost mythological. And the pairs are not really the story because underneath the irrational boycott is something very real. People felt they had almost no power in the CCP's system. They couldn't change the legal system. They couldn't change local government. They couldn't decide how the police operated. They couldn't even protect this man, Xia Zhigang. But they could decide where to spend their ten yuan. They could refuse to buy a pair. That tiny consumer choice became their vote and their power. It became their protest. It's their way of saying, we support this man. Someone made this comment online and it was noticed. Someone said, something strange happened in 2026. A man accused of killing someone became a hero to the entire internet. I'm not sure the story proves that China has suddenly awakened, but it does reveal something important. When millions of people instinctively trust a fugitive story more than the governments, when they want to help a fugitive hiding in the cornfields more than the massive apparatus hunting him, people's trust in the system has completely collapsed.