The photo shows the last spot that 26-year-old Chinese photographer and blogger Zhou Peng had appeared. Zhou committed suicide in East China at the end of November and sparked discussion on social media. Photo: Web

Twenty-six-year-old Chinese photographer and blogger Zhou Peng, also known as Ludaosen, committed suicide in East China at the end of November, shocking millions of netizens. Before his death, the blogger left behind a posthumous message on Chinese social media that mentioned he had been bullied as a child. The blogger's death and the message has sparked discussion on the negative impact of school bullying. 

On November 28, Zhou uploaded the message to his Sina Weibo account. In the post, he talked about being a "left-behind" child in a mountainous village. When he was young, he was bullied at school because he looked like a girl, which he said cast a dark psychological shadow over his life - "I wanted to give my life back to the world." 

His friends and many netizens who saw the post contacted the police as quickly as they could, but they would prove too late. On Wednesday, local police announced in a notice on Sina Weibo that after searching for a few days, they had found Zhou's body in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province.

Zhou was an independent photographer, the Beijing News reported, and his friends praised him for the kindness he showed others in daily life. They noted that they never heard Zhou mention his experiences from childhood.

"The school bully hurt him so deep he was not able to recover, even in adulthood," a Sina Weibo user commented, representing many voices online.

When it comes to campus bullying, education experts say that although the school system at every level has been coming up with various solutions, this issue has always been "hanging in the air because solutions are not able to touch the inner core of this issue."

"Teaching according to law" is the phrase that Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, kept mentioning to the Global Times during an interview on Thursday.

"We have never been able to define a teacher's rights when it comes to education and discipline," said Xiong, noting that a teacher's ability to keep students in line and curb bullying is an important part of this issue. 

"Many teachers worry that their 'harsh requests' to students will be regarded as a punishment, so they simply refuse to punish those students, and subsequently this is seen as a tacit allowance of these students' behavior."

Another educator surnamed Zhu also told the Global Times that society has "overlooked school bullying for a long time."

She said that she believes that the generation gap between parents and children in families has grown even larger due to today's rapid society, which leads many parents to see their children's bulling behavior as not something they need to worry about. 

"There are still so many parents who consider conflict among children as nothing but a simple prank," she noted, adding that this ignorance will only lead to the increase in incidents of school bullying.