Two days after the deadliest known violent attack in China in a decade, officials were working to make it seem as if nothing had happened.
Outside the sports center in the southern city of Zhuhai where a 62-year-old man had plowed an S.U.V. into a crowd, killing at least 35 people, workers on Wednesday quickly removed bouquets of flowers left by grieving residents. Uniformed police officers and officials in plainclothes shooed away bystanders and warned them not to take photos. At hospitals where patients were taken after the attack — at least 43 more people were injured — local officials sat outside the intensive care units, blocking journalists from speaking with family members.
“I’m here keeping watch,” one man, who identified himself as a local community worker, said when reporters entered the ward. “No interviews.”
On the Chinese internet, censors were mobilized to delete videos, news articles and commentaries about the attack. Almost 24 hours had passed before officials divulged details about the assault, which happened on Monday, including the death toll. Their statement offered limited details, and they have held no news conferences.
The response was a precise enactment of the Chinese government’s usual playbook after mass tragedies: Prevent any nonofficial voices, including eyewitnesses and survivors, from speaking about the event. Spread assurances of stability. Minimize public displays of grief.
The goal is to stifle potential questions and criticism of the authorities, and force the public to move on as quickly as possible. And to a large degree, it appeared to be working.
Though many residents of Zhuhai, the city of 2.4 million where the attack happened, were clearly shaken, they said on Wednesday they had not questioned the delay in information, attributing it to the government’s need to first sort out what had happened. A steady stream of people arrived by foot or taxi to lay flowers at the sports center’s entrance, but when officials took away the flowers and told the people not to linger, they quickly complied.
A delivery driver on a motorcycle unloaded five bouquets of flowers, which he said he was doing on behalf of people who had ordered them from a nearby flower shop. He had agreed to spend the entire day delivering for that shop, he said, because many other drivers were unwilling to go, worrying about police interference. As he spoke, an officer told him to move on.
Workers took the flowers to a nearby building, which was shielded by temporary red barriers. “We’re organizing them,” a man in plainclothes told reporters when asked why the flowers were being removed. “You can see our workers are treating these flowers very solemnly.”
The sports center — a sprawling complex that includes a swimming pool, badminton courts and two fields with running tracks — is normally lively, residents said. Parents take their children for walks, retirees dance in large groups and others march in walking teams that have become popular among older Chinese.
On Monday, just before 8 p.m., the loud music that many groups put on was suddenly interrupted by screams. The police said the driver plowed through the gate of the sports center before barreling into a crowd exercising near one of the tracks.
It was unclear how fast he was driving, or how long the attack lasted. Videos posted on X that were verified by The New York Times showed dozens of people lying motionless on the ground. Many wore the brightly colored uniforms of the walking teams. Shoes, bags and other personal belongings were scattered around them.
On Wednesday, most of the sports complex remained accessible but was virtually deserted, with stores inside closed. The area where the attack occurred had been blocked off by metal barriers, with only police cars allowed to enter.
The manager of a basketball training center next to the sports complex said that he and his colleagues had decided to close the center for several days, in part because some of their coaches had witnessed the attack on Monday and were still traumatized. On Wednesday, he led about 20 of the center’s employees in laying flowers at the sports center’s entrance.
“I’ve just been really depressed this past few days,” said the manager, who gave only his surname, Tang. (He himself had not been present on Monday.) “So many people, gone just like that.”
He added of the flowers: “I guess it’s the simplest tribute we can give.”
The owner of a nearby liquor store, who also gave just her surname, Ye, said she had been so shaken on Monday that she hadn’t dared leave her store that night.
The last known violent incident with so many deaths in China was in 2014, in an attack on a market in Xinjiang that left 39 dead.
In the Zhuhai assault, the authorities said that their preliminary investigation had suggested that the attacker, whom they identified by the surname Fan, was angry because of the outcome of a divorce settlement. The police said that they had not been able to interview Mr. Fan, because he was in a coma after stabbing himself.
Officials said they were stepping up security to ensure public safety. On Tuesday night, officials from Guangdong Province, which includes Zhuhai, pledged to pay closer attention to legal, family and neighborhood disputes, to “prevent and control risks at the source.”
Local governments have also vowed in recent months to spend more time screening for people who have experienced “failures,” after a spate of violent attacks, including several cases in which schoolchildren were stabbed.
But officials were also clearly on the lookout for any deeper scrutiny of the Zhuhai killings. Videos and photos of the scene of the attack showed only as grayed-out squares on Weibo, a social media platform. Blog posts urging people not to treat violent attacks as isolated incidents, but rather to look deeper for potential social causes, disappeared.
Essays calling on the government to be more transparent were also deleted, such as one by Chu Chaoxin, a veteran journalist. “We really need to know more information, and we have a right to know more,” he wrote. “Social stability and peace of mind have never been achieved by creating an information vacuum.”
Still, those types of voices were most likely in the minority, said Rose Luqiu Luwei, a journalism professor at Hong Kong Baptist University who studies Chinese propaganda and censorship. Most Chinese who do not have access to the uncensored internet are unlikely to have noticed the information vacuum.
“For those who are able to access information, it will lead to continued disappointment and even anger,” she said. “However, for the majority who do not have timely access to information or sufficient information, the impact is minimal.”
Even Zhuhai residents who had already heard about the incident through social media on Monday before videos were removed said that they were accustomed to the gap in information.
A landscaping worker at the sports center, who said he had gone home before the attack occurred, said that he thought many people had probably self-censored in sharing posts.
“The national news departments post. How can people like us dare to post?” the worker, who gave his surname, Yao, said, noting that all social media profiles were linked to I.P. addresses that can reveal users’ locations. Sharing would only lead to trouble, he said.
Mr. Yao was sitting on the outskirts of the complex, watching a video on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, showing flowers that had been laid at the site the night before.
Several hours later, a search for the Zhuhai sports center on Douyin yielded only 14 results, none of which showed flowers.
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