Police line up shortly before the deadline for a city-wide curfew passed in Baltimore, Maryland April 28, 2015, as crowds protest the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died in police custody.[Photo/Agencies]

"Qian is actually the first one who reminded others to be careful," Fu Hao, founder of Chinausfusionelite, told China Daily. Chinausfusionelite is a public account founded by Fu two years ago. It sent out a "moment" on WeChat on Monday, with pictures and stories from Baltimore, that received 50,000 hits in less than 24 hours.

"Around 4 to 5, there started to be more and more people talking about what's going on in Baltimore, which got our attention," Fu told China Daily.

"There has been an increase of more than 1,000 followers of our WeChat account since the publication of the post," Fu said. "So we set up a WeChat group to connect people together and send out messages to help them to protect themselves."

"People have been forwarding messages that there are Chinese students injured in the unrest, but no one has accurate information yet," Fu told China Daily.

"There's no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday," US President Barack Obama said Tuesday at the White House. "It is counterproductive."

Obama also said that problems in cities such as Baltimore are not new and need to be addressed by everyone.

"We can't just leave this to the police," Obama said, adding that "we as a country have to do some soul searching. This is not new. It's been going on for decades."

Almost a quarter of the people live below the poverty line in Baltimore, the setting of the gritty TV police drama The Wire.

Hong Xiao, Reuters and Ifeng contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at leshuodong@chinadailyusa.com