Two passengers on a Chinese domestic flight have landed in hot water after taking a crying toddler away from her grandparents and locking her in a restroom in order to “set some rules.”

The incident went viral across Chinese social media over the weekend after one of the women, Gou Tingting, posted video footage of herself and another passenger disciplining the child inside the locked lavatory.

“If you make any noise again, we will leave you here alone,” one of the women can be heard telling the wailing girl in the clip.

In her post, Gou presented her actions as a selfless effort to protect her fellow passengers from an unruly child. But the video quickly triggered an avalanche of condemnation, with users accusing her of being heartless, and even attempting to report her to the police.

The confrontation took place during a flight from the southwestern Chinese city of Guiyang to Shanghai on Aug. 24. According to Gou, the child was flying with her grandmother, who was unable to quell her crying.

“Many passengers were using tissues to block their ears,” she wrote in her post on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok. “Some had moved to the back of the plane to escape the noise.”

Growing increasingly frustrated, Gou and another nearby passenger decided to take matters into their own hands. With the grandmother’s permission, they took the child to the restroom and threatened not to let her out until she stopped making noise.

The issue of how to deal with ill-behaved children in public spaces has become increasingly controversial in China over recent years. There have been growing complaints about parents allowing spoiled xiong haizi — or “bear children” — to run wild, with clips of kids shouting, running around, and kicking seats frequently going viral on social media.

That has led to a rise in posts from users arguing they should be allowed to intervene and discipline other people’s naughty children. Some have even posted “tutorials” offering — sometimes highly problematic — tips on how to tame a bear child. Suggestions include pretending to be mentally unstable to scare the child into silence, or threatening to report the child to their school.

By posting her video, Gou was likely seeking to tap into this genre. When she began receiving criticism for her actions, she pushed back.

“I prefer to take action rather than be a bystander,” she wrote in a reply to one angry comment. “I just wanted to calm the child down and let everyone rest.”

But the backlash to Gou’s post soon became overwhelming. Related hashtags racked up hundreds of millions of views on social media as users piled in to accuse Gou of lacking empathy.

Some users went as far as to report Gou to the police on the grounds that her behavior was potentially abusive, posting screen grabs of the filed police reports in their comments under Gou’s original post. Gou later deleted the post from her feed.

Guizhou Airport Public Security Bureau has declined to charge Gou or the other woman involved with any offense, telling local media that the child’s grandparents had given consent to the two women to help deal with the child.

Juneyao Airlines, which operated the flight where the incident took place, confirmed that the child’s grandmother had accompanied the child and the two women to the restroom, waiting outside while the women talked to the girl inside the toilet. The girl’s parents said they understood the women’s actions.

Wang Xin, the mother of a 3-year-old child from eastern China’s Zhejiang province, told Sixth Tone that she felt the incident reflected a growing impatience toward young children among the public.

“Nowadays, people have a low tolerance for children crying,” she said. “To avoid the problem, I always tried to drive rather than take public transport when my child was young.”

But Jiang Anyi, a 26-year-old from Shanghai, said that the two women were justified in their actions, as the child’s grandparents had given their consent.

The debate over how to deal with children in public settings looks set to continue in China. Some high-speed trains have started operating special “childcare compartments” to reduce conflicts among passengers, but these remain relatively rare.

(Header image: VCG)