You might also like: Can She Win the Second Egg Freezing Trial Now?Can She Retract Her Resignation After She Found Her PregnancyTwo women were fined after a physical altercation on a train from Meishan to Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The incident, which took place on Thursday, has ignited a heated discussion on Chinese social media regarding the limits of self-defense versus fighting.According to media reports, Wang, who was traveling alone to Chengdu, was seated in front of Yang, who was traveling with three children to Jiangyou. When the children became noisy, Wang stood up and turned around to stop them. However, Yang did not intervene and instead accused Wang of making a fuss over nothing, leading to an argument that escalated into physical violence.Local police were called and determined that both parties had violated the Public Security Management Penalty Law by slapping each other in the face. As a result, Wang was fined 200 yuan, while Yang was fined 500 yuan (as she is the one slapped first).While Wang has stated that she accepts the punishment but refuses to reconcile with Yang and has applied for administrative reconsideration, the incident has sparked a debate online about whether fighting back after being hit should be considered illegal violent conduct.One netizen on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo commented that the incident had prompted them to reflect on how they could protect their rights and personal safety in similar situations.Online or offline, most views and questions focusing on the following aspects:1.How to determine the boundary between legitimate self-defense and mutual fighting?2.Did the police try to mediate the situationat the sacrifice of principle?3.Are we only allowed to "not fight back and not insult" when facing someone else's infringement?Firstly, how to distinguish legitimate self-defense from "mutual fighting"? In fact, the reason for the extensive discussion of this case is the police's determination of the nature of the case - mutual fighting.Generally speaking, "mutual fighting" refers to mutual physical combat, which is the behavior of mutually harming each other actively under the control of the intention to fight and intention to harm.According to Criminal Law of the PRC, legitimate self-defense refers to the behavior of taking measures to stop unlawful infringement in order to protect public interests, personal or property rights and other rights of oneself or others. If it causes harm to the perpetrator of the unlawful infringement, it shall not bear criminal responsibility.It is generally believed that five conditions, including causal conditions, temporal conditions, subjective conditions, objective conditions, and limit conditions, must be met to constitute legitimate self-defense.Civil Code of the PRC also clearly stipulates that "if the harm is caused by legitimate self-defense, no civil liability shall be borne."However, in reality, the problem of "generalization of mutual fighting" has existed for a long time. Even if one party is rude, unreasonable and starts the fight, once both party go to the police station, they find that if they do not make peace, both will also be punished. It doesn’t matter what is the reason, what is the consequence. It seems that when encountering a hooligan, avoidance is the only way out.In March 2023, the Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Properly Handling Cases of Minor Injuries in Accordance with the Law", which clearly put forward "accurately distinguishing between legitimate self-defense and mutual fighting-type intentional injury", and pointed out that "in case of disputes arising from trivial matters, both parties cannot maintain restraint and cause a fight. If the party with the fault strikes first and uses excessive means, or if one party strikes first and continues to harm the other party despite the other party's efforts to avoid conflict, and the counterattack causes harm to the other party, it should generally be considered as legitimate self-defense"…However, despite these regulations, it is still a common practice in judicial practice to determine such case as mutual fighting and deny legitimate self-defense.Secondly, can the incident be classified as mutual fighting?1. The cause of the incident was the bad behavior of the "naughty child" on the high-speed rail, such as making noise and kicking the back of the seat. The guardian should take the responsibility of preventing and stopping bad behavior and giving reasonable guidance.2. The parents' supervision of their children's bad behavior was ineffective, they insulted others first, and directly hit people with excessive means of slapping in public, which had faults that caused the conflict to escalate.3. The woman fought back when the parent first hit her and continued to hold the intention of attacking her with a water bottle. The counterattack behavior has both subjective and objective characteristics of avoiding further harm, which meets the requirements of legitimate self-defense. The woman's behavior was passive and defensive, which was different from the act of mutual fighting, which is both voluntary and illegal.Despite the provisions of Criminal Law of the PRC and Civil Code of the PRC on legitimate defense, the thinking of "both parties receive punishment" is illegal, unreasonable, and inconsistent with the requirements of encouraging people to bravely defend their legitimate rights and interests and building a law- based society.As law professor Luo Xiang pointed out in his commentary: "The law is nothing but reason and human nature. We are all ordinary people with both rationality and sensibility, with flesh and blood." The reluctance to fight back due to various restrictions and concerns when personal rights and dignity are infringed upon is one of the reasons why the social atmosphere is becoming increasingly hostile.You can also check the Chinese version regarding this case in our another article published today Related provisions in "Interpretation of the Public Security Organs on the Implementation of the Law on Administrative Penalties for Public Security" by the Ministry of Public SecurityArticle 1: "Taking measures to stop illegal infringements in order to avoid being infringed upon by ongoing violations of public security does not constitute a violation of public security management."