That's a strange incident... the man had a reserved seat. He appears to have been so drunk he couldn't move. Why did the woman not just sit in his seat? Was it the principle? The vitriol of the Weibo comments, if they are genuine, suggest that some very important social contract was broken. But it just doesn't seem like a very big deal to me, especially since it appears that there were guards available to move him and they (sensibly in my view) chose not to.
I just watched the video. I think not a single person who watches the video would believe he was drunk. His answer was loud and clear. And the exchange between him and the conductor showed he's an utter douche. He specifically said he wasn't drunk, didn't drink.
It is a big deal because people in China are fed up with such behaviours. Yes the woman would be able to use his seat but why should people give in to such behaviour?
Generally police in China avoid using force. There have been videos that police were attacked by drunks / speeding drivers. Some people think police in China are far too soft.
"The public blacklist has been incorporated by another incarnation of the social credit system — Zhima Credit, a service of the mobile payment provider Alipay. China has a huge mobile payment market, with transactions totaling $5.5 trillion in 2016, compared with $112 billion in the United States. Alipay, owned by Ant Financial, and WeChat Pay dominate the still-growing Chinese market.
Zhima Credit is an optional service embedded in Alipay that calculates users’ personal credit based on data such as spending history, friends on Alipay’s social network, and other types of consumer behavior. Zhima Credit’s technology director controversially told the Chinese magazine Caixin in 2015 that buying diapers, for example, would be considered “responsible” behavior, while playing video games for hours could be counted against you.
Hu Tao, Zhima Credit’s general manager, paints a different picture now. She says the app doesn’t monitor social media posts “nor does it attempt to measure qualitative characteristics like character, honesty, or moral value.” Zhima Credit is not a pilot for the social credit system and doesn’t share data with the government without users’ consent, she says."