On March 14, 2026, a graduate student surnamed Sun at Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Hunan fell into a river and died. In her suicide note, she revealed a great deal of information: her supervisor, surnamed Gu, had subjected her to long-term humiliation and oppression, assigning her all kinds of tasks outside her residency training duties; whenever her progress did not meet expectations, she would be berated by the supervisor regardless of time or place. After another supervisor surnamed Zeng joined in teaching her, this graduate student would be scolded whenever she frequently missed clinical work because she was handling assignments given by the supervisors; in the end, she was even threatened with being denied graduation and was dragged to the academic affairs office to process a withdrawal from school.
This graduate student endured immense mental torment for a long time and could not see any way out. She had already jumped from a building once before, trying to escape reality’s oppression through suicide, but it failed. When this student attempted suicide by jumping from a building, the school authorities not only failed to wake up to the issue and hold her supervisor accountable; instead, they sided with the supervisor and immediately sent her to the psychiatry department of Xiangya Second Hospital. The school’s academic affairs office and her supervisor even blamed her for it, saying that why were other people fine while only she had problems, and afterward repeatedly demanded that she reflect on herself and sign all kinds of pledges and liability waivers, as if they themselves bore no responsibility whatsoever. In the eyes of these utterly conscience-free people, she was not a victim at all, but rather a huge “problem”! It was precisely because she felt despair over such a dark reality that this graduate student chose to jump into the river and end her life. After this incident occurred, the investigation and handling were carried out only by a joint investigative team formed by the Hunan Health Commission and Central South University; no public security department intervened.
Once the incident was reported, it sparked public opinion online, and many people expressed sympathy for the student, angrily questioning and denouncing the supervisor, the school, and the hospital.
But we still have many questions: why can hospitals and schools, without the consent of guardians or parents, casually send someone to a psychiatric hospital? And what exactly gives them the nerve to act so recklessly?
These questions, in essence, all point to the same fact—what killed the student was not only the supervisor’s direct oppression, but also the hospital’s and the school’s shielding and indulgence of the supervisor; it was an entire decayed capitalist medical system and order.
Precisely because, in capitalist society, the entire medical system is built on relying on massive state violence and a barbaric fascist system to monopolize medical resources and thereby fraudulently seize and plunder the sweat and blood of the broad laboring masses, the chief physicians, supervisors, and others within it, as direct accomplices and beneficiaries of this profit-driven and murderous apparatus, naturally enjoy the system’s generous treatment and inherent privileged status, making them the most morally depraved.
As a Class A tertiary hospital directly under the National Health Commission, Xiangya Hospital has behind it the full violent apparatus of the government of the Chinese revisionists. These parasites who feed on the people’s sweat and blood rely precisely on the protection of the Chinese revisionist fascist system, and that is why they dare to be so domineering and tyrannical, casually locking students up in psychiatric hospitals without bearing any legal responsibility—the law is always the law of the ruling class, a means and tool for suppressing the resistance of the ruled class; in China’s capitalist society, how could the law, which represents the will of the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie of the Chinese revisionists and suppresses the people’s resistance, possibly punish them? Even after the student jumped into the river and died, when faced with public condemnation and pressure, the people conducting the investigation were still entirely arranged by them, left completely under their control! The supervisor who directly caused the student’s death was merely suspended from outpatient duties in a lukewarm manner, such a perfunctory response serving as an answer to the angry masses!
Under China’s decayed capitalist medical system, students in residency training who choose suicide, like Sun in the Xiangya Hospital case, are by no means the only ones.
On February 24, 2024, 25-year-old resident trainee Cao Liping at Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital cut her own throat and died by suicide in the on-duty room bathroom. It is reported that before her death she had worked 42.5 consecutive hours of overtime, yet all she reported was a monthly wage of just over 70 yuan per day.
On March 14, 2024, a resident trainee named Lin Sheng at the First People’s Hospital of Nanning, Guangxi, died by suicide in the hospital restroom. An alleged suicide note circulating online revealed that he had once worked more than thirty hours during a holiday without rest, yet his work still had not been finished…
Some say that the reason resident trainees repeatedly commit suicide is that the residency training system is unreasonable and the pressure on resident trainees is too great; if we simply improve their treatment, the problem can largely be solved. So how should their treatment be improved, and how can the system be made reasonable? Often, this ends up placing hopes on the Chinese revisionist government to increase fiscal input in related areas, or to introduce relevant policies for adjustment.
In reality, what the above view envisions is only making minor reforms under the premise of maintaining the existing cannibalistic capitalist medical system. Better treatment for resident trainees would mean more opportunities for upward opportunism and wealth accumulation; at best, they would merely become the kind of doctors—like the supervisors who once oppressed them—who become part of the capitalist medical system and its ruling foundation. They would indeed no longer be oppressed, but they would have to live by consuming the sweat and blood of the people, becoming despicable parasites! The broad laboring masses would still be exploited, still have their sweat and blood “eaten up” by this barbaric capitalist medical system! What we oppose is not only the oppression of resident trainees, but the entire evil capitalist medical system, including the residency training system. Without fundamentally overthrowing the capitalist medical system, medical tyrants and academic tyrants like the supervisor in this incident, who rely on privilege to oppress students, will continue to emerge, will continue to run rampant, and will kill more people!
But we must also see one fact: if the supervisors and hospitals oppress students so severely, why do the students still continue residency training? Why not drop out, and instead choose suicide? Because in reality the students’ own social position is detached from the masses; they stand from a petty-bourgeois standpoint. What they oppose is not the capitalist system and hierarchy, not the system of exploitation of man by man, but only the oppression they personally suffer within the entire system. As for not dropping out, it is also because the students are not really willing to give up the path of opportunistically climbing upward; they still seek a social status above that of ordinary working people. The female graduate student in this incident is a clear example. In her suicide note she said she did not regret choosing this major, only regretted choosing Xiangya Hospital. Her suicide was, to a certain extent, driven by despair that her own path of opportunistic advancement had been blocked. But fundamentally, precisely because she was petty bourgeois, her life was detached from the people, and she lacked a scientific worldview. When facing the oppression of capitalist society, she saw only the smallness of her own individual strength and thus fell into endless despair and fear. Her suicide, in essence, was a negative form of resistance by the petty bourgeoisie after bankruptcy against capitalist society.
In today’s China, what path should young students suffering under capitalist oppression and torment truly take? They should go among the workers and peasants, oppose the profit-driven and murderous capitalist medical system, oppose the exploitative system of man eating man, change this decayed, reactionary, and dark society, overthrow the fascist regime, and rebuild a socialist system. Under socialism, the medical and health cause will be a great endeavor that truly serves the masses of the people. Young students who in the past were oppressed and devastated by the old system will, under the guidance of the revolutionary line, truly become doctors who heal the sick and save lives, serve the workers and peasants, and realize their own liberation!
Afternoon Investigation: Behind the Xiangya Hospital graduate student’s jump into the river _ Lianhe Zaobao.pdf (1.9 MB)
25-year-old graduate student falls into river and dies by suicide: her “final suicide note” hides all the truth… _ New Zealand Chinese Herald.pdf (3.7 MB)