A stray dog and her puppies were killed by four boys under 14 in Jieyang, Guangdong province, in a video that sparked outrage across the Chinese internet in June. Authorities said the boys would avoid criminal charges and be sent to a "specialised school" instead, and asked the public to stop sharing the footage and comments to protect the children's identities and prevent cyberbullying. Rather than quelling the anger, the censorship has driven China's animal welfare advocates to campaign offline and internationally, including erecting billboards in New York, highlighting both the strength of public feeling and the absence of any Chinese law against animal cruelty.

Three weeks on, posts about the dog, named Wang Wang, continue to attract thousands of comments, and search terms including her name still trend despite deletions and sharing restrictions on some content. The boys' identities have not been officially confirmed, though partial footage and unverified images claiming to show their faces keep circulating, risking misidentification of other children. Posts by celebrities such as Du Jiang and Joe Chen calling for stronger animal protection laws also vanished, though it is unclear whether this was down to censorship or the celebrities themselves, while commentators suggest the episode has struck a chord as part of a wider pattern of publicised animal cruelty cases in China.