No evidence of Hangzhou police issuing notice linking Wang Wang billboard to ‘subversion’
On July 27, an X post claimed police in Hangzhou’s Xihu district arrested a businessperson who supported animal rights for “inciting state subversion” after the person “projected animal abuse content on a large advertising screen in a shopping district.”
The claim followed outrage online over a recent animal abuse case in Jieyang, Guangdong province, where a stray dog known as Wang Wang (旺旺) and her three puppies were killed by four children.
The post included what appears to be an official police notice saying the suspect, who controlled the digital billboard, had exploited an “extreme animal protection discussion” to inflame public sentiment and “maliciously directed attacks at government effectiveness in an attempt to overthrow socialism.”
It also said the suspect was “funded by external forces to fuel overseas anti-China propaganda.” The supposed notice was dated July 26, 2026, and was signed by the Xihu Branch Bureau in Hangzhou.
The notice and the claim were shared by users on X (here and here) and Threads. The post was also translated into English and Japanese. Altogether, they have gained over 2,760 likes and 640 shares. Many commenters expressed discontent and voiced anger over the reported arrest.
However, Annie Lab found no evidence that the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau issued the notice.
We also discovered that the shopping mall mentioned in the notice is not located in the Xihu district, another sign that its content is inauthentic.
No matching police notice
Chinese police commonly publish notices about criminal cases on their official Weibo accounts.
Annie Lab reviewed the Weibo account “Ping’an Xihu (平安西湖),” the official account of the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau’s Xihu branch on July 27, one day after the alleged notice was supposedly released, and found no such announcement.
The account’s latest notice (archived here) was published on Oct. 18, 2024, concerning the spread of unverified information about the surveying profession.
We also checked the branch’s official WeChat account. Its most recent notice (archived here) was issued on May 20, 2023, about a parking dispute.
A search of local news coverage also found no relevant results.
Mall in another district
Other posts on Xiaohongshu, X, and Threads (archived here, here and here) indicated that the billboard ad about the abused dog was removed from the Hangzhou Hubin Yintai in77 mall.
However, the shopping mall is located in Shangcheng district (上城区), not Xihu district (西湖区), according to Baidu Maps.
The inconsistency stands out because the notice was supposed to have been issued by the Security Bureau’s Xihu branch.
Also, it is worth noting that the alleged police notice identified the mall by its full name, which is unusual. Police notices in China generally use a location address rather than disclosing an identifiable venue name.
We reviewed the latest Shangcheng district zoning plan issued in 2018 and can confirm that the mall is included in its jurisdiction.
We then looked into the official Weibo account of the Shangcheng branch and found no announcement or information related to the billboard poster or the abused dogs.
Animal abuse outrage
The animal abuse case in Jieyang involving Wang Wang happened on June 28. According to the BBC, the dog and her three puppies were beaten and then burned to death by four underage boys.
Related videos and photos were circulated widely online in the following days, quickly turning the case into a major topic of public discussion in China and drawing intense anger online.
Two days later, the local official WeChat account “文明揭东” (Wen Ming Jie Dong) issued a government notice stating that the four minors had been transferred to a special education school.
As the images spread across Chinese and overseas platforms, many users condemned the cruelty, called for accountability, and demanded stronger animal protection laws, while authorities urged people not to keep spreading the material or not to engage in cyberbullying, considering that minors were involved.
Chinese platforms have since censored relevant keywords including “Jieyang Wang Wang” and “Jieyang dog abuse,” and posts supporting animal rights have been taken down.
