06/25/25 - The Luo Shuaiyu Case
On the 8th of May, 2024, an intern doctor at the Xiangya Second Hospital, Luo Shuaiyu, died after falling off of a 15-story building. And almost year later, his death has blown up all over Weibo.
The official government story is that Luo Shuaiyu had terrible grades, and was probably going to fail his internship. In fact, he was so certain he wasn’t going to pass anyways that he did not even submit his graduating thesis on time. For some reason, he was in the habit of keeping screenshots and audio recordings of every single interaction he had with his coworkers. Perhaps as a result of this, he had no friends. And after making several social media posts complaining that he didn’t even know if he wanted to be a doctor anymore and saying that if he had to do any more work he was going to kill himself, he finally did the deed.
He went up to the rooftop of the dorm building he was in, climbed over a 1.65m fence, came to the outer wall, crawled through a 80cm hole in that wall, and launched himself off of the building with all his might, landing 4 metres from the base of the building head-first, and bouncing another three metres forward to end up 7m from the base of the building.
His parents immediately demanded financial compensation from the hospital, and when they weren’t offered the sum they wanted, they threatened to slander the hospital on the internet, and that’s exactly what they did, faking evidence of corruption and illegal dealings at the hospital, putting the wrong subtitles on the audio recordings so you think you’re hearing something nefarious going on when every OR sounds like this, etc.
But there’s nothing going on here, the Xiangya Second Hospital are full of hardworking doctors only looking to do right by their patients, and this is just one vindictive paranoid guy and his greedy, manipulative parents.
The evidence they offer for their side of the story is that you have their word for it. No photos, no security camera footage, nothing. Just a written report that you should accept as authoritative because when has the government ever lied?
The parent’s story is something altogether different.
They say that their son had become targeted at the hospital by his coworkers and teachers. They were taking turns keeping an eye on him and stopping him from accessing any hospital computers, which obviously made doing his job nigh impossible. It was for that reason that he knew he was probably not going to become a doctor, because whether he passed his residency or not basically came down to the subjective judgement of the doctors at Xiangya Second Hospital and they all hated him.
He had repeatedly told his parents he had no intention of suicide, but that if he ends up dead, it’s very important that they get the data off of his computer. The day before he supposedly committed suicide, he was still trying to get evidence off of the hospital computers. One of his coworkers spotted him and posted in the group chat, “Keep an eye on Lou Shuaiyu. Don’t let him touch any of the computer.”
The morning of the 8th, Luo Shuaiyu sent off a text to two separate coworkers, reading, “I’m on my way to the office.” And, “Something bad’s happened to Luo Shuaiyu.” And 10 minutes after that, he was found by another resident of the dorm building 7 meters from the base of the building, dead. His parents claim that there were signs of a scuffle in his room. He was not wearing his glasses at the time of his death, despite his rather high prescription, because his glasses had been crushed underfoot. The police, of course, claim that his roommate said his glasses had been broken since four months ago.
He had told his parents previously that, “If I ever end up dead, it’s very important that you get the data off of my computer.” And when they went to the hospital, the police refused to turn over Luo Shuaiyu’s personal effects and body over to his parents unless they signed an agreement saying that it was definitely a suicide and they don’t want a criminal investigation and they will cremate him ASAP.
They sign it, because they feel like they have to, and get his computer, and find that someone had wiped all the data off of it. They went to a data analyst to try to recover the data, and found pages upon pages of evidence documenting illegal organ trading, money laundering, medical fraud, and general corruption at the hospital.
They compile all this information and start sending it to any agency they can think of—the local cops, the state cops, the Ministry of Health, everyone. And nothing ever comes of it. Every department just claims that’s not their jurisdiction. Finally, after a year of being kicked around, they get frustrated and start posting the evidence online. And it immediately blows up and comes to the top of the trending hashtags and everyone is talking about it.
And that’s when the government suddenly comes out and claims that yes, they did in fact investigate into this, and what they found was that there was absolutely nothing illegal going on in Xiangya Second Hospital, and attempted to slander their son as a resentful, failing medical student who was just maintaining these thousands of audio recordings for no reason.
The evidence they provide is extremely extensive (though they do only release a piece or two at a time to refute the government whenever they make a slanderous claim). There is OR audio recordings of surgeons talking about cutting out a perfectly healthy colon. There’s discussion about getting IVC blood from 3-9-year-olds for organ donor matching. There’s a log of all the organ extractions Xiangya Second Hospital performed in the months of March and April and how half of them had no cause of death listed and no signature on the consent form, and there is no documentation of where those organs then ended up. There is suspicious money transfers where the hospital would suddenly wire Luo Shuaiyu 400K, which he would then wire to someone in administration just a few hours later.
Quite obviously, nobody really believes the government report. But I understand if you’re still hesitant. Is it possible that Luo Shuaiyu’s elderly parents have cleverly photoshopped and AI audio-generated all of this evidence? I mean, theoretically. If it’s not quite beyond reasonable doubt for you, then here’s an additional piece of context.
This was not the first time that Xiangya Second Hospital has dominated the trending hashtags for this sort of thing. The last time this happened was in August of 2022, when someone asked a question on Zhihu, “What do you guys think about Dr. Liu Xiangfeng at the Xiangya Second Hospital ER?” And the posts under it were filled with stories of his horrific deeds.
“Treat it like a tumour whether it’s a tumour or not.”
”If you can’t find a blockage in the colon, just cut out the healthy colon.”
Opening a private OR to perform illegal surgeries. Telling perfectly healthy patients that they have cancer to scare them into surgery. Putting gallstones into people’s gall bladders. Deliberately covering himself in the patient’s blood and running out of the OR in a panic to push the family into buying some expensive, non-existent medicine or else they’re going to lose their loved ones. And he had been doing this at Xiangya Second Hospital for years.
And when this case finally blew up, he was eventually arrested and sentenced to 17 years (and 420K in fines) for his crimes, along with his assistant.
And that was the end of it. They caught the bad guy. And absolutely no one else at Xiangya Second Hospital was involved or knew anything about it.
Right now, the internet discourse seems very obsessed about the details of Luo Shuaiyu’s death. There’s a lot of debate about just how much a human body realistically bounces, whether it’s possible to launch yourself out of a 80cm hole in a squatting position with enough speed to get that much clearance, why he wouldn’t just jump out his own window, etc. For the most part, I find myself very uninterested in this part of the discussion because I’m not a forensic scientist. I don’t know how armchair debating human body splatter physics on the internet is ever really going to prove anything. And I don’t think it actually particularly matters whether he killed himself or not.
What matters is the horrific evidence that he sacrificed his life to compile. That’s what people need to focus on, and that’s what people need to push harder for. Because I am terrified that all of this obsession on the precise mechanics of the death is just a distraction so that the government can silence his parents forever. I pray to God that they have offshore backups of all of their data. I pray to God that they will send a data packet to some western journalists so that at least we have a record of it.
A lot of people are frustrated with Luo Shuaiyu’s parents for not releasing everything at once, but instead a couple of pages today, an audio clip tomorrow, a transaction record next week, like squeezing toothpaste. In their defense, I think it’s because they still have faith in the federal government. They still think that the CCP means well and loves the people and it’s only Xiangya Second Hospital and their local connections in Hunan province that is covering everything up. And if they make a big enough fuss to catch federal attention, then someone will actually investigate this case and bring justice to their son, and if they release all the evidence on their own, then that will interfere with the investigation.
And I am terrified that some other piece of news is going to take everyone’s attention away, because no matter how horrific your story, the internet always moves on to the next thing. It hasn’t been that long since the Liu Xiangfeng case and people had stopped talking about it until this blew up. And I’m terrified the second people aren’t paying attention anymore, we are never going to hear from his parents again, the same way we never heard from the Chained Woman again. And Xiangya Second Hospital is going to keep operating this way for years, decades to come. And in just another three years, when someone says, “Oh, I went in for this appendectomy, but some doctor screwed up and accidentally took my kidney instead, hahahahaha, isn’t that silly?” People will respond with, “Oh, that is so silly!”