Posts use inaccurate figures to claim 'death tolls from major incidents in China are always 35'

"Thirty-five is indeed a magical number. How many bloody and cruel truths are hidden behind it?" read a traditional Chinese X post shared on November 13, 2024.

It was shared alongside what appears to be a screenshot from an online article that supposedly shows a list of major incidents from 1993 to 2004 in which the number of people killed was 35.

At the end of the article, the writer says the death tolls do not exceed this number because if they did, local officials would be removed from office.

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Screenshot of the false X post, captured on November 28, 2024

The post was shared after one of China's deadliest mass-casualty events in years (archived link).

Local police said a man killed 35 people and injured 43 more when he ploughed his car into those exercising around a sports centre in the southern city of Zhuhai.

It took police almost 24 hours to release the death toll, and videos of the attack later appeared to be scrubbed from social media.

China has witnessed a spate of deadly attacks in recent months; Beijing has described the killings as isolated incidents, or the motives of the perpetrators have not been publicly disclosed.

The screenshot was also shared elsewhere on X here and here, on Facebook, as well in a report by Taiwanese online media Newtalk.

Half of the figures cited in the post, however, are wrong.

Inaccurate data

The claim has previously circulated in Chinese social media, prompting rebuttals from the State Administration of Work Safety in 2011 and in the Communist Party-run People's Daily in 2013 (archived links here and here).

"There is no direct correlation between the treatment of officials and relevant departments and the number of deaths," read the People's Daily article.

A keyword search on Google showed that the figures provided for six incidents in the falsely shared posts differed from their official death tolls.

Below is a screenshot of the falsely shared post, with the inaccurate death tolls highlighted by AFP:

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Screenshot of the falsely shared post, with the inaccurate death tolls highlighted by AFP

In one of the incidents cited, a bus accident in Xinjiang in August 2001, state media reported there were 34 deaths (archived link).

According to state media, the death tolls for the five of the incidents -- a bus and train collision in Liaoning Province in April 1993, poisonings from counterfeit alcohol in Yunan Province in June 1996, a coal mine explosion in Guizhou Province in February 2003, a explosion at a fireworks factory in Liaoning Province in December 2003, and a gas explosion in Shanxi Province -- were all above 35 (archived links here, here, here, here and here).

Moreover, the list excluded other mass casualty incidents with death tolls far higher than 35.

Keyword searches, for example, found state media reports that indicated a 2000 Christmas day fire in Luoyang City in Henan Province killed 309 people; a fire at a cinema in Karamay City in Xinjiang killed 325 in December 1994; and the Dalian air crash in May 2002 killed 128 (archived links here, here and here).