Rural Elderly Have Been Reduced to This

An 87-year-old man said that after working hard to raise two children, he is left with no one to care for him in old age, his eyes brimming with tears. (Video screenshot)

[People News] October 29 is the traditional Chinese festival — the Double Ninth Festival. In recent years, after the Double Ninth Festival, many netizens have posted tragic news about elderly family members who committed suicide by drinking pesticide due to poverty or inability to afford medical treatment, and this year is no exception. Netizens have also revealed that many Chinese elderly tend to choose to end their lives in early October because this period coincides with holidays, when their children working far away in cities return home for vacation, making it convenient for the children to handle their funerals.

According to a report by NTD Television, a netizen from Hubei posted a video on social media in late October saying that his mother had just passed away, “My aunt also drank poison and died yesterday. The pesticide was called Zhuzhuangsu. Elderly people all want to take this path. This seems to be the fate of rural elders.”

Another Hubei netizen said, “Most of the elderly in our village died by drinking poison; they think this is normal.” He also cited examples of elderly people committing suicide one after another. Among the 2,884 replies, many netizens recounted situations of rural elderly suicides that they were familiar with.

“My grandfather’s sister just drank this Zhuzhuangsu and died in October, terminal lung cancer …” “A Hubei specialty — my grandfather hanged himself, my childhood friend’s grandfather had liver cancer and drank poison, my cousin also drank poison. Terminal illnesses can’t be cured, so they end it all at once, afraid of burdening their children.” “My uncle died this National Day. He drank poison and didn’t die, then used a rope to hang himself …” “My father-in-law was like this — a retired teacher, tortured by pancreatic cancer, left a suicide note, hung a strip of white cloth on a tree to end his life …” “Yichang, Hubei — many elderly people around me died unnaturally: drinking poison, jumping into rivers, hanging themselves; those who are old, or who fell ill.” “Tianmen, Hubei — far too many, far too many …”

The netizens who filmed these videos said that if our parents are all like this, then what is the meaning of our growing up? And because these videos of elderly people did not “tell China’s story well” as required by the authorities, they have been ordered deleted by the CCP authorities. (Video screenshot)

What is different about China’s internet this year, however, is that in addition to news of elderly people taking their own lives, a new term has suddenly become popular on Chinese social media: the “American kill line,” drawing widespread public attention. The so-called “American kill line” claims that there is an invisible “life-and-death threshold” in American society: once an individual’s income or assets fall below a certain critical point, they are institutionally abandoned, rapidly falling from the middle class into poverty or even homelessness.

This narrative quickly spread across platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu. Many self-media accounts reinforced it with cases like “Silicon Valley engineers go bankrupt after six months of unemployment” and “the extreme fragility of the American middle class,” even describing it as a “bottom-layer purge mechanism” of capitalist society, triggering shock and discussion among some netizens.

However, many commentators who have long studied the U.S. system point out that the so-called “American kill line” does not exist, and that such claims are closer to packaged and exaggerated political propaganda than to an accurate description of reality. It is obvious that this is an online campaign aimed at smearing the American system. As early as 2021, a research report by a U.S. company pointed out that a pro-CCP government online campaign had shown a clear trend of expansion, extending to cover multiple languages and online platforms, and even attempting to mobilize physical protest actions within the United States.

According to a post by X account @duwen2023, the “American kill line” narrative mostly originates from anecdotal cases lacking statistical foundations, which, after being amplified by social media platform algorithms, are packaged into the “truth about American society.” Such narratives deliberately ignore the social safety net that actually exists in the United States, and are instead reposted intensively at specific times, forming a highly unified direction of public opinion.

Commentary points out that the core characteristic of U.S. social security lies in reducing the risk of individuals “falling through the bottom line” through institutionalized spending. Taking public expenditure as an example, U.S. per-capita investment in areas such as healthcare, education, and retirement security remains significantly higher than China’s, forming a safety net mechanism that covers the entire life cycle.

In terms of social assistance, the United States has long implemented the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In fiscal year 2023, an average of about 42 million people received food assistance each month, accounting for roughly one-eighth of the national population. Experts point out that the purpose of this system’s design is to reduce the destructive impact of economic fluctuations on individuals, rather than to subject the poor to humiliating forms of selection.

In addition, the United States also provides basic living conditions for low-income and vulnerable groups through multiple systems such as Medicaid, Medicare for the elderly, housing subsidies, and heating assistance. In healthcare, the law clearly prohibits hospitals from refusing emergency treatment due to a patient’s inability to pay, and allows individuals, in extreme circumstances, to make a fresh start through the personal bankruptcy system.

An 81-year-old grandmother raised five children, but none are by her side. She relies on selling vegetables to survive, even while walking with the support of a wheelchair. (Video screenshot)

By contrast, some commentators point out that within Chinese society there actually exists a “kill line” that is not acknowledged but very real, and it is especially evident among the rural elderly population.

X account @cskun1989 cited surveys by scholars from Tsinghua University and Wuhan University showing that the suicide rate among rural Chinese aged 70 to 74 has long been four to five times the global average. Wuhan University sociology professor Liu Yanwu spent six years conducting fieldwork in more than 40 villages across 11 provinces, finding that cases of rural elderly choosing suicide due to poverty, illness, and lack of care have already become “normalized” in some regions.

The research recorded many cases showing that elderly people ended their own lives because they did not want to become a burden on their families, and in the absence of social support. In some rural areas, elderly suicide is regarded as a “reasonable option,” reflecting the severe absence of institutional safeguards in CCP-ruled China.

Some analyses also believe that when China’s public discourse heavily hypes the “American kill line,” it actually diverts attention away from its own structural social problems, including low rural pensions, excessively high out-of-pocket medical costs, and the rupture in social保障 caused by the urban–rural divide and the household registration (hukou) system. △