China (?) - Mass punishment

Corporal punishment in mainland China was theoretically abolished in 1949 after the communist revolution. It has long been known that, despite this, school students are physically punished on a casual or irregular basis. Remarkably, however, this clip (if it really is from China) shows that in some Chinese schools there is "proper" CP, i.e. of a much more structured and formal sort, almost in the tradition of Europe or the English-speaking world.

Five male students get four strokes of the cane each in the classroom of a mixed-sex secondary school.

Allegedly, the boys were caught playing basketball when they were supposed to be in class. This might explain why two of the boys are shirtless, since boys sometimes take their tops off when playing impromptu games in warm weather.

The punishment is delivered to the seat of each boy's trousers as he adopts an "on all fours" posture. This modus operandi is so typical of South Korea, and so relatively little seen elsewhere, that I would have said that was where this clip came from, but for the facts that the captions appear to be in Chinese (can somebody please tell me what they say?) and that the clip has appeared on several China-based websites but not, as far as is known, on any Korean ones. I should be surprised if it is from Taiwan, but that cannot be 100% ruled out. I should be very surprised indeed if it is from Singapore or Malaysia.

This does not appear to be a terribly serious punishment. There is some giggling going on in the class, the schoolmaster is smiling at one point, and the strokes are not especially hard. Nevertheless, the boys are seen to be holding their bottoms afterwards.

The schoolmaster lifts up the shirt-tails of the boys who are wearing shirts in order to reduce the number of layers of clothing over the target area.

The stick is more rigid and brittle than a British or Singaporean rattan cane. Indeed, if you look carefully you can see that part of it breaks off and falls to the floor during the caning of the third boy, but the schoolmaster carries on regardless.

Unfortunately somebody has dubbed a silly music track on to this clip; there is nothing I can do about that, or the fact that the soundtrack is very slightly out of sync.

HERE IS THE CLIP: