China Media Insights

Understanding culture through data

The Abyss of Humanity

The storm around China's new true-crime book

Original title 人性的深渊
Translated title The Abyss of Humanity
Author(s): Wu Qi 吴琪 / Wang Shan 王珊
Publisher SDX Joint Publishing Company
Date published May 2025
# Pages 320
ISBN 9787807684473

In January 2024, China executed Wu Xieyu (吴谢宇), once a star student at Peking University, for the murder of his mother nearly a decade earlier. The case has haunted the Chinese public ever since: not only because of the brutality of the act, but because this gruesome femicide seems to grow out of the very soil of academic aspiration, filial duty, and educational pressure that are so familiar to many young Chinese nowadays.