Public allegations of sexual harassment are rare in China. Swift responses to punish the accused are rarer still. So a recent case at one of China’s top universities, in which a student posted a video online accusing her supervisor of sexually harassing her, leading to his sacking, has created shockwaves.
On 21 July, a woman who identified herself as Wang Di posted an hour-long video on Weibo, in which she accused her PhD supervisor at Renmin University in Beijing, Wang Guiyuan, of physically and verbally abusing her for more than two years. The professor, a former Chinese Communist party representative at the university, threatened to block her graduation prospects, Wang Di said.
Her video included an audio recording of one encounter in which a man is asking to kiss a woman, who repeatedly refuses. “I am reporting my professor, Wang Guiyuan … for sexually harassing and forcibly molesting me, and requesting to have a sexual relationship with me,” Wang Di said. The audio could not be independently verified.
Photo: AP
By the following evening, the student’s video had received more than 2 million likes and prompted an outpouring of supportive comments. A related hashtag soon surpassed 110 million views. Within a day, the university said that after an investigation, the allegations were proven to be true, although the university’s statement referred to “moral misconduct,” not sexual harassment. Wang Guiyuan was fired from the university and expelled from the CCP. Local police said they were investigating the claims. Wang Guiyuan did not respond to a request for comment.
But the speed at which the Renmin case was dealt with masks the facts that allegations of sexual harassment and abuse are often dismissed or downplayed if made privately, and that women face enormous risks in speaking out, Chinese feminists and legal experts say.
The Renmin case demonstrates the consequences of a university lacking a proper internal procedure for handling complaints, said Feng Yuan, who founded a helpline for victims of domestic violence.
“It is assumed that the victim must reveal his or her identity and speak out in this way,” she says.
On Weibo, Zhou Xiaoxuan, a screenwriter who goes by the pen name Xianzi, wrote: “Universities systematically cover up teachers’ behavior and systematically ignore the situation of students. Only a very small number of students who can’t stand it, risking slut-shaming and cyberbullying, seek help from public opinion.”
In 2018, Zhou discovered her own uneasy fame after she publicly accused a famous television presenter, Zhu Jun, of forcibly kissing and groping her during an internship. Her lawsuit against him ultimately failed because of insufficient evidence. Sexual harassment cases in China often require “smoking gun” evidence such as audio or video recordings of the alleged abuse.
Other women have come forward on social media with their own accounts of campus harassment. “Thank you sister for speaking out. I too was sexually assaulted by my post-doctoral professor 3 years ago and still have no outcome after calling the police and reporting it,” one user wrote on Weibo.
On 24 July, Shaanxi normal university said that it had suspended a professor accused of “violating teacher ethics” in 2017, adding that it had “zero tolerance” for misconduct.
The statement didn’t provide details about the nature of the allegation: sending explicit photographs to female students.
Feminists have pointed out that Chinese institutions — schools, courts, the police — tend to avoid naming sexual abuse directly, preferring instead to treat the matter as a misunderstanding or moral failing between two people. Such a strategy is a way of dealing with gender-based violence “in a way that does not touch the essence of the problem,” Feng said.
Organized feminist activity has largely been squashed in China, with activists facing severe punishments. Sophia Huang Xueqin, a journalist who reported on China’s nascent #MeToo movement, was jailed last month for five years for inciting state subversion.
Feminism in China has been forced to become “very decentralized and individualized,” said Li Maizi, a veteran activist who is now based in the US. That means that women who speak out against abuse by people in positions of authority shoulder all the risks themselves.
One of those risks is being sued — by the alleged harasser. In May, a court in Beijing heard a defamation case filed by Li Songwei, a celebrity counselor, against a woman who accused him on social media of engaging in an inappropriate sexual relationship with her when she was his client.
And Xianzi, the screenwriter, was sued by Zhu for defamation after she made her MeToo accusation against him (he dropped his lawsuit due to poor health last year).
Research by Darius Longarino, Wei Changhao and Yixin Ren of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School suggests that only 8 percent of civil lawsuits relating to sexual harassment are cases in which an alleged victim is suing an alleged perpetrator. The majority of lawsuits are lodged by the accused, often for defamation.
But despite the risks, some women will continue to speak out publicly, Li predicts, “because where there’s repression there’s resistance.”
Last week saw the appearance of another odious screed full of lies from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian (肖千), in the Financial Review, a major Australian paper. Xiao’s piece was presented without challenge or caveat. His “Seven truths on why Taiwan always will be China’s” presented a “greatest hits” of the litany of PRC falsehoods. This includes: Taiwan’s indigenous peoples were descended from the people of China 30,000 years ago; a “Chinese” imperial government administrated Taiwan in the 14th century; Koxinga, also known as Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功), “recovered” Taiwan for China; the Qing owned
In Taiwan’s politics the party chair is an extremely influential position. Typically this person is the presumed presidential candidate or serving president. In the last presidential election, two of the three candidates were also leaders of their party. Only one party chair race had been planned for this year, but with the Jan. 1 resignation by the currently indicted Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) two parties are now in play. If a challenger to acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) appears we will examine that race in more depth. Currently their election is set for Feb. 15. EXTREMELY
Jan. 20 to Jan. 26 Taipei was in a jubilant, patriotic mood on the morning of Jan. 25, 1954. Flags hung outside shops and residences, people chanted anti-communist slogans and rousing music blared from loudspeakers. The occasion was the arrival of about 14,000 Chinese prisoners from the Korean War, who had elected to head to Taiwan instead of being repatriated to China. The majority landed in Keelung over three days and were paraded through the capital to great fanfare. Air Force planes dropped colorful flyers, one of which read, “You’re back, you’re finally back. You finally overcame the evil communist bandits and
They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself. Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy. “An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said. He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk
RSS