Zhengzhou ACG Event: Man Abuses Cosplayers as "Traitors"
On May 24, in the Da Shanghai City shopping mall in Zhengzhou, Henan, several ACG cosplayers gathered for exchange. On-site video shows a man holding a megaphone continuously abusing the cosplayers present, calling them "traitors" and "national sell-outs," and claiming that "those into ACG are not Chinese." Subsequently, police arrived at the scene to handle the situation, and the man was handcuffed and taken away.
From currently available public materials, there is no indication that these cosplayers committed any illegal acts. The core of the conflict appears more like a cultural attack ignited by politicized hatred: as long as clothing, characters, or anime elements are labeled as "Japanese," "foreign," or "unpatriotic," the hobbies of ordinary young people can be branded with the heavy labels of "traitor" and "selling out the country."
Similar incidents are not isolated cases. In recent years, there have been cases in various parts of China where cosplayers, Hanfu enthusiasts, or anime fans were mistaken for "wearing kimonos" and abused as "national sell-outs" or "traitors," and even surrounded, pulled, and beaten at anime conventions for portraying Japanese anime characters. In 2025, an incident occurred at a Chengdu anime convention where cosplayers related to "My Hero Academia" were attacked, with slogans such as "Death to all the Japs" appearing on site; there were also controversial reports in Fuzhou, Yangzhou, and Changsha regarding the misidentification of anime costumes, Hanfu, and kimonos.
These events reflect not a simple "passersby not understanding ACG," but the social consequences of the CCP's long-term hatred education and nationalist mobilization. When the regime continuously shapes "patriotism" into a license to report, surround, and abuse others, society gradually learns to judge private life using political labels.
What is more ironic is that while the CCP repeatedly claims to oppose "historical nihilism," in reality, it has cultivated a group of "Boxer-style patriots" who cannot even distinguish between Hanfu, kimonos, domestic anime, and Japanese anime. They may not know exactly what they are opposing, but they know very well who should be cursed as a "traitor." If this social atmosphere continues to develop, China's public space will become increasingly North Koreanized: cultural entertainment must be political, personal hobbies must express loyalty, and young people may be dragged into an ideological trial just for portraying a virtual character.
In the Zhengzhou incident, the police eventually took the abusive man away, temporarily preventing the escalation of the conflict. But the real problem is not just a man with a megaphone, but the system that creates such people: it continuously produces enemies, continuously manufactures hatred, and pushes the most ordinary Chinese people into an absurd society of mutual judgment, mutual reporting, and mutual attack.