This is an absurd incident with no innocent parties and no ultimate winners. Because both parties laid a crooked foundation from the very beginning, the more the media and public opinion poured in enthusiasm and added bricks, the more a distorted and absurd crooked building was constructed. Of course, even in such an incident where both sides are at fault, it seems that one should not "give each a beating with fifty strokes." And according to the different roles of the two parties, more of the beating should fall on the side of public authority.

The "naked official" incident had already gradually calmed down. The urban management officers involved came to apologize, and the insulted "official" greeted them with a smile. A sensational Chinese-style event seemed likely to end in a Chinese-style happy ending.

However, several days later, an article interspersed with several surveillance videos began to circulate online. The article and videos re-outlined the path of the "official" Bi Guochang after he discovered his clothes had been taken away by urban management officers—not, as he had described, walking to the city government to "petition" under the surprised gazes of pedestrians, but taking a taxi to the city government, and in between even going home to fetch a camera, making the intention to create a sensation quite obvious.

With the release of the videos, public opinion was stirred again. An incident of enduring humiliation to defend rights was tainted with the stigma of deliberately creating a tragic atmosphere and manufacturing a sensation, causing the public to doubt the honesty of the "official" and to develop different views on the nature of the incident.

In this already severely distorted and deformed incident, there are no innocent parties. Both the urban management officers involved and Bi Guochang committed errors that are difficult to forgive.

First, as an "official" who had long been engaged in journalism and held a leadership position, he should clearly know the important value of truth in news dissemination. Although he had been retired for many years, from the moment he wrote the article and entrusted a friend to publish it online, he should have realized that this was actually a news dissemination and could very likely cause widespread impact. Therefore, ensuring the truthfulness of the facts he stated should have been no different from when he was engaged in professional news reporting. After the video was exposed, Bi Guochang apologized to the public and said that at the time he wanted to defend his rights through public opinion, so he "concealed something" in his account, wanting to "make the matter bigger and get more people's attention." Such thoughts and actions are understandable from an ordinary retired old man, but from a former professional journalist, they are hard to accept, and from the very beginning they laid the first crooked foundation stone for this sensational event.

On the other side, on the one hand there was the public apology of the urban management officers involved and the local government witnessed by the media, and on the other hand there were mysterious and rather bizarre articles appearing online that twistedly defended the urban management officers involved. First there was an appeal to sympathy with "little urban management officers cannot afford to offend a high-ranking official," followed by surveillance videos revealing the "truth" of the incident. Each move precisely hit the public's sensitive points and successfully reversed the unfavorable public opinion trend against the urban management, making them masters who thoroughly understand the patterns of online public opinion. Few would believe that such masters came from "Sanya citizens" who enthusiastically helped the urban management. At present, the government department involved insists that it does not know where the disclosed surveillance videos came from, but public opinion has every reason to suspect that these videos came from government surveillance facilities and were deliberately leaked by certain government departments in an attempt to reverse unfavorable public opinion. In fact, the person involved, Bi Guochang, and some media concerned about the matter have already raised questions, believing that the WeChat public account "Three Bitches" that successively published "little urban management officers cannot afford to offend a high-ranking official" and the surveillance videos was a temporary public relations account directly opened or instructed by the local government. If the local government cannot provide a convincing clarification and explanation, these speculations will inevitably solidify into strong public dissatisfaction with the government's abuse of public power and public resources.

It should be said that this is an absurd incident with no innocent parties and no ultimate winners. Because both parties laid a crooked foundation from the very beginning, the more the media and public opinion poured in enthusiasm and added bricks, the more a distorted and absurd crooked building was constructed.

Of course, even in such an incident where both sides are at fault, it seems that one should not "give each a beating with fifty strokes." And according to the different roles of the two parties, more of the beating should fall on the side of public authority. Even if a retired old man's actions were improper, they were ultimately due to personal character or cultivation. But if government departments, openly or secretly, directly or indirectly, use improper means to pit their wits against this stubborn old man, what is exposed is the narrow-mindedness of some people who hold public power and the institutional loopholes of using public power for private purposes. The poisoning of the social atmosphere and the harm to citizens' rights will be far greater than the improper behavior of a retired old man.