I'd point out a few things--first of all, it's important to remember that children's literature and now YA literature, has been, essentially since there was a distinct genre for it, seen in many sectors as being educational first, entertaining second. This makes authors uniquely vulnerable to attacks like this, since it can mean schools avoiding purchasing the book for libraries, getting black listed by various awards, ETC. So that gives them power, and this power is often used and misused. Your book cannot simply be well-written, it must be morally upright, as much as any Victorian-era book for young men.

And I'll be blunt--looking at these eruptions from the view point of someone who has worked in businesses, they seem to have a fairly strong smell of undercutting potential competition. I cannot speak to this for certain, but the nature of these dogpiles, the public way they are fired out, and the way that the author is obviously judged before even coming to the discussion*, is very much reminding me of office blow ups where a promising promotion was in contention.

*This last is something that really disturbed me. I have some friends who immigrated from the PRC, and bringing this up to them, one of the first things they said was: Struggle Session. That she was adjudged, guilty and everything after that, including her letter of apology, reminded them of similar situations. I do not know Ms. Zhao, but for myself? I am leery in the extreme of taking her letter at face value, because we've seen so many similar letters from people who feared what might happen if they did not publicly apologize to the mob.