Death, Denial, and Silence: Inside China’s Push to Bury Zhuhai’s Devastating SUV Attack

Outside the sports center in the southern city of Zhuhai where a 62-year-old man had plowed an S.U.V. into a crowd, killing at least 35 people, workers on Wednesday quickly removed bouquets of flowers left by grieving residents. Uniformed police officers and officials in plainclothes shooed away bystanders and warned them not to take photos. At hospitals where patients were taken after the attack — at least 43 more people were injured — local officials sat outside the intensive care units, blocking journalists from speaking with family members.

On the Chinese internet, censors were mobilized to delete videos, news articles and commentaries about the attack. Almost 24 hours had passed before officials divulged details about the assault, which happened on Monday, including the death toll. Their statement offered limited details, and they have held no news conferences.The response was a precise enactment of the Chinese government’s usual playbook after mass tragedies: Prevent any nonofficial voices, including eyewitnesses and survivors, from speaking about the event. Spread assurances of stability. Minimize public displays of grief.

The goal is to stifle potential questions and criticism of the authorities, and force the public to move on as quickly as possible. And to a large degree, it appeared to be working.Though many residents of Zhuhai, the city of 2.4 million where the attack happened, were clearly shaken, they said on Wednesday they had not questioned the delay in information, attributing it to the government’s need to first sort…   out what had happened. A steady stream of people arrived by foot or taxi to lay flowers at the sports center’s entrance, but when officials took away the flowers and told the people not to linger, they quickly complied.

Local governments have also vowed in recent months to spend more time screening for people who have experienced “failures,” after a spate of violent attacks, including several cases in which schoolchildren were stabbed.But officials were also clearly on the lookout for any deeper scrutiny of the Zhuhai killings. Videos and photos of the scene of the attack showed only as grayed-out squares on Weibo, a social media platform. Blog posts urging people not to treat violent attacks as isolated incidents, but rather to look deeper for potential social causes, disappeared.