Mocha’s account on the video sharing site Bilibili (web screenshot)
He originally died quietly. After his death, his poverty, illness and loneliness at the end of his Life made millions of people cry.
Mocha, a UP owner (web video creator) that few people knew about before his death.
The Chinese government released data this week saying that 1.335 billion people in China held social security cards at the end of last year, covering 95 percent of the population and all cities.
“The world’s largest social security net is still being woven, and will ‘pocket’ and protect everyone in the future,” the Xinhua report said.
Mocha, 22, was the one who fell through the cracks of this large net.
Through the words he left on the Internet before he was born, netizens pieced together his rough life trajectory: born in 1998, his real name is Mocha.
Born in 1998, his real name is Chen, his Family lives in the Daliang Mountain region of Sichuan – officially known as “one of the poorest corners of China”; his Parents divorced at an early age, his family is poor and in debt; he dropped out of high school to work, earning less than 1,000 yuan a month, and is owed wages by his employer. After his grandmother passed away, his family argued over the property and swept him out of the house; forced to make ends meet, early last year, he used an old computer supported by a friend to start a live broadcast, but there were few fans; in the same year, he was found to be suffering from a variety of serious illnesses and had no money to seek medical treatment, so he had to give up treatment; one day in January, he died in a dilapidated rental house, alone and in poverty. A few days later, the landlord found his body.
“My first reaction at first was that this was the ‘little girl who sold matches’ of the Xi Jinping era,” Zhou Fenglock, a human rights activist who now lives in the United States, told Voice of America.
“He died in a Time of peace and prosperity, when the Communist Party officially declared the eradication of poverty last year,” Zhou Fenglock said. “It’s definitely a systemic problem that is reflected through such an individual tragedy.”
Last weekend, news of “the death of the most tragic UP owner of B Station (video-sharing site Bilibili)” stormed onto the hot search. Mocha’s originally unattended channel grew by more than 1 million fans in a few days. Pop-ups saying “goodbye” littered his videos.
A Chinese post-graduate, who asked to remain anonymous, told Voice of America that he was touched by the number of people discussing Mocha in the past few days.
“He recorded his thoughts on the last few months of his life on B-site as if he were writing a diary,” he said. “There was no resentment in these words, nor was there any selling of misery, he just expressed some very simple wishes, such as he wanted to eat strawberries, but they were too expensive to buy. But it is these simple wishes, but ultimately not as hoped, so that we netizens ‘broken defense’ (break through the psychological defense).”
What makes him most saddened is not the death of Mocha itself, but how the official attempts to turn public opinion around and divert people from questioning the root cause of this tragedy.
“Only one day after Mocha’s death hit the news, the local media tried to shift the focus by reporting how many square meters Mocha’s mother’s house had. This was clearly an attempt to change the public Perception that Mocha died of poverty,” he told Voice of America.
“Then another day later, the netizen who compiled the story of Mocha’s life suddenly changed his story and was apparently silenced,” he added, “and the media was informed by so-called ‘informed sources’ of ‘another version’ of Mocha information. This version of Mocha has changed into a criminal offender. We all want to know what law Mocha he actually broke.”
Mocha’s death set off a storm of public opinion that quickly reversed within days. He went from a young man who was crushed by life and left the world in pain and despair amidst poverty and illness to a troubled youth who was withdrawn, lazy, addicted to games, borrowed money and ran away, and had been detained several times for breaking the law.
The 95-year-old, who requested anonymity, said the collective smear articles not only did not match Mocha’s online narrative before he was born, but also contradicted previous reports by local media. He believes that there must be an official directive behind the “ground-cleaning article”, just to clear the responsibility of the government and society, and put the blame for the tragedy entirely on Mocha himself.
“This is extremely despicable and ironic in my opinion,” he told the Voice of America. “They are trying to express that no one will ever be starved to death in a well-off society. Beyond that fairness, justice, the truth don’t matter at all.”
Human rights activist Zhou Fenglock said that the rewriting of the story of Mocha’s death was actually expected by many people. Fearing that the mask of peace and prosperity would be pierced by such a tragedy, the officials would surely create their own version.
“This is the second crushing of the weak,” he said.
China’s official media said that after eight years of struggle, the country achieved full poverty eradication by the end of 2020 and will be announced as moving into moderate prosperity in the first half of this year, driven by the Party Central Committee with Xi Jinping at its core. The official media also said China has now established a basic medical insurance system covering the entire population.
“A young man dying of poverty and illness in a society that claims to have universal health care and comprehensive poverty eradication turns out not to be a social problem after all.” A young man of similar age to Mocha, who was studying and working in Japan, said sarcastically.
“Mocha is fortunate to be noticed, and I believe he will not be the one who lives the worst in China,” she told the Voice of America.
Li Keqiang, the Communist Party premier, said China has 600 million people with low and middle incomes and below, earning an average of only about 1,000 yuan a month.
“I bought a box of strawberries today and it’s the first time I’ve shed tears eating them,” one Twitter user wrote.
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