‘Gold-digger’: China blogger jailed over fake news claiming woman’s grandpa was tycoon husband, attracting 470 million views online

A man in China who spread fake news online about a “gold-digger” marrying an ageing tycoon, alongside photos of a young woman with her grandfather, has been jailed for a year.

The perpetrator, surnamed Wu, was sentenced by Dongguan No 1 People’s Court in southeastern Guangdong province, for “fabricating facts that defamed” and which resulted in “serious consequences that jeopardised the social order”.

In November 2021, Wu falsely wrote on a social media platform that a 73-year-old Dongguan entrepreneur had married a 29-year-old woman and given her 880,000 yuan (US$122,000), a flat worth 800,000 yuan and a luxury car.

With his post, which included several pictures taken from the woman’s social media account without her permission, Wu hoped to attract online traffic to help him sell property projects.

The woman whose account he took the images from, surnamed Shen, had shared the photographs online in 2018 of her with her grandfather, of whom she was very fond. She did not know Wu.

Wu’s post was viewed 470 million times and shared more than 31,000 times. About 76,000 comments were left, most of which directly, or by implication, called Shen “a gold-digger”.

Wu was arrested after his post went viral and Shen reported it to the police.

Shen said it cost her a great deal of time and money to gather sufficient evidence to present to the police in a bid to safeguard her rights.

“His contents have been relayed on various social media platforms, so it’s hard for me to collect the evidence,” Shen wrote on Weibo.

“I need to notarise these videos and screenshots because only the notarised evidence will be accepted by the police,” she added.

The court found Wu had also defamed another person on the internet.

In September, China’s Supreme People’s Court issued a directive to intensify the crackdown against online intimidation and aggression, acknowledging the widespread impact of such behaviour.

“The rumour-mongers…trigger large-scale negative comments. The posts have not only harmed victims’ rights but also sparked group panic and lowered the public’s sense of security,” the Supreme People’s Court said.

Many victims of online lies, intimidation and aggression have not been successful in disproving the falsehoods and holding the bullies to account.

At the beginning of the year, a 24-year-old woman committed suicide following months of depression as a result of cyberbullying. She had posted a photo of herself with pink hair on social media and internet trolls accused her of being a prostitute.