Chongqing Chaos: TFBOYS Agency Trainees Targeted by Online-Organized "Anti-Fan" Mob in China

Shoving matches, doctored explicit images, buckets of water and, by some accounts, a blade. What began as online trolling outside a Chinese talent agency's headquarters ended with police intervention and arrests, after a wave of self-styled "anti-fans" descended on the site to taunt teenage trainees and the young women who follow them.

The company at the center of the chaos is Chongqing-based Time Fengjun (時代峰峻), the 17-year-old agency behind boy band TFBOYS and its successor act, the Times Youth League (時代少年團). Its training compound in Chongqing, home to its "TF Family" trainees, has long doubled as a pilgrimage site for young fans hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols in person.

Starting on August 15, that same location became a target. Large groups of mostly young men, organized through call outs on Douyin, gathered outside the compound for several days running to jeer at the agency's fifth generation of trainees, most of them still middle schoolers, hurling the internet insult "Jiahao" (嘉豪) at them. The name has become slang for boys mocked for an exaggerated, socially awkward style: black streetwear from head to toe, a black face mask, and exaggerated electronic dance moves.

According to reports from Hong Kong and Chinese outlets, the men live streamed much of the harassment for views, tore down fan banners, hurled abuse inches from trainees' faces, cursed at supporting fans, doused a mother and daughter with water, and kicked at bystanders. Some witnesses alleged that men in the crowd secretly photographed female fans and circulated manipulated, sexually explicit images of them on the spot. Female fans reportedly began fighting back, and the standoff spiraled: by August 17 the confrontation had turned physical, with reports that at least one fan was cut and bleeding.

Video from the scene also showed some of the agitators singing a military anthem called Song of a Powerful Army (強軍戰歌), written in 2013 as part of a Communist Party campaign promoting combat readiness and loyalty within the ranks, while waving national flags. The irony was hard to miss: a solemn anthem meant to project military discipline and resolve against a formidable enemy was instead being belted out by a mob of grown men squaring off against teenage performers and their young female fans, hardly the adversary its authors had in mind. Background on the song's origins is available here, and footage of the chanting circulated widely, including this clip.

Chongqing police stepped in on August 17, taking several men into custody for questioning. It took three more days for authorities to issue a public statement, on August 20, saying legal education had been provided to those involved and that anyone found to have disrupted public order would be investigated in accordance with the law. The statement called on young fans to pursue their idols rationally and with civility.

Time Fengjun moved faster, announcing on the evening of August 18 that it was suspending trainees' outdoor practice and appearances, citing the start of the school year, and asked fans to stop gathering outside its offices to avoid safety risks. The statement said nothing about the harassment or the alleged explicit images, and it landed badly: fans and other commentators accused the agency of ignoring the abuse its own trainees and fans had just endured, with one widely shared post accusing the company of happily taking young women's money while showing them contempt.

The incident set off an extended argument across X and Threads, largely among mainland Chinese internet users posting in simplified Chinese, about what the chaos really represented. Some tied it to broader economic strain: one widely shared post argued that with the economy slowing and prospects for young people dimming, this kind of outburst was less about fandom rivalry than a generation's frustration boiling over. Another commenter went further, suggesting that when an economy falters and ordinary people stop earning money, conflict between men and women is often the first fracture to show, with class conflict soon to follow.

Others, also posting in simplified Chinese, read the clash mainly through the lens of gender conflict, an argument that spread widely on Threads. Female fans dismissed the men who showed up as bitter and unsuccessful. Some of the men, in turn, accused Chongqing police of only detaining male suspects, mocked the force's name, and argued their protest was really about objecting to how the trainees, most of them children, were being idolized in ways they considered inappropriate, comparing their gathering to a patriotic uprising. One Chongqing based poster framed the men's actions as pushing back against what he called capital and female fans exploiting boy idols without limit. That framing was itself contested, including by female commenters who suggested the men's stated concerns masked simpler anxieties about their own romantic prospects.

Time Fengjun's young fandom has its own long history of extreme, sometimes stalker-like conduct that predates this incident. In 2020, residents of a Chongqing apartment complex complained for days about crowds of fans camped outside in hopes of glimpsing two Times Youth League members, with fans regrouping almost as soon as police cleared them. In 2023, a stalker tracked down the home of trainee Zhang Zeyu, who had not yet debuted, stole a package addressed to him, filmed an unboxing video, and sold the contents online at inflated prices. In 2024 the agency said in a statement that a stalker had broken into a trainee's dormitory, secretly filmed him and sold the footage online, forcing the company to pursue legal action and to publicly plead with fans to chase stars rationally.

Some critics argue the agency itself deserves a share of the blame for enabling that culture. Fans have long suspected that stalkers' uncanny ability to predict artists' movements points to leaks from inside the company. One 2024 online post asked pointedly whether staff had been feeding schedules to obsessive fans, a claim circulated widely at the time. Time Fengjun ultimately acknowledged that an employee had been privately selling artist information to fans, saying an internal investigation had identified a suspect but that the company could not pursue the matter further because evidence and financial records were hard to obtain, and police had likewise been unable to build a case.

A long thread on the Chinese Q&A platform Zhihu has also traced what some users call the agency's tolerance of, or even implicit reliance on, covert filming and stalking incidents as free publicity, compounded by a fan base still in school and vulnerable to losing perspective. Critics argue that dynamic has trapped both the young performers and their fans in a cycle of unhealthy interaction that keeps repeating.

What began as a scuffle outside an idol agency's gates has, in the eyes of many who watched it unfold online, become a stand in for several of China's more uncomfortable current anxieties at once: friction between young men and women, economic pessimism among the young, and the unresolved ethics of building an industry around child performers. As one mainland Chinese commenter put it, the episode touches gender conflict, the economic frustrations of young people, the mechanics of fandom and the role of livestreaming in amplifying it all, a small window into much larger fault lines that, the commenter added, China's own social sciences seem unlikely to examine closely.

​Original Article in Chinese​

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