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When a mother was found chained in a shed in Fengxian, Jiangsu province, in winter, authorities blamed mental illness. A few months later, when three women in Tianjin accused professors of pressuring them into sex, they were criticized for not owning their adult choices.
This month, a group of men beat four women while eating at a late-night barbecue restaurant in Tangshan, Hebei province, after a woman failed to respond to advances from one of the men. Authorities blamed the spread of gangs in the area for the attack, which left two of the women hospitalized.
For years, activists have struggled to highlight the country’s casual stance on violence against women, only to learn that gender has little to do with it. Grassroots women’s rights advocacy, including the #MeToo movement, has struggled in China, where it has clashed with Beijing’s intolerance of activism and has been accused of being a Western import. But as incidents and outrage mount, the debate becomes harder to quell.
The chained mother-of-eight’s story continues to rock China and inspire rare social activism
More and more women refuse to be educated about the spread of sexism in Chinese society. “From the woman in Fengxian to the brutal beating in Tangshan, the ‘you’ in these situations are all vulnerable. Maybe it’s you next time, or me, or all of us,” wrote a blogger using the pseudonym Zhao Qiaoqiao in a popular comment about the incident.
“If a case develops into an incident and an incident into a phenomenon, only then will society pay attention and try to solve this problem,” Zhao wrote.
In an article that was later censored, another blogger asked, “Why have you not only gone gender blind with the Tangshan incident, but are doing everything to erase the gender dimension of this incident?”
Video footage of the attack in the early hours of June 10 in Tangshan shows a man approaching a table of women and placing his hand on one of their backs. The woman pushes him away. After a second exchange, he hits her. When her friends try to intervene, other men rush to the table and hit her, dragging her outside and repeatedly kicking her on the floor while other patrons look on.
Tangshan authorities launched a public safety campaign and vowed to crack down on crime, with police stationed across the city and in restaurants. A prominent sociologist wrote in an essay that this was a “common occurrence” of threats to public order, arguing that it “was due to sexual harassment but did not reflect gender discrimination in society.”
Articles about the incident and gender-based violence were deleted, including one urging the government and state media to avoid talking about feminism. Weibo, the microblogging website, suspended 265 accounts for “inciting gender divisions” in discussing the Tangshan violence.
The response is consistent with other campaigns to limit the consequences of such episodes. Online support for a landmark #MeToo lawsuit in which a former intern accused a prominent TV host of sexual assault last year has been heavily censored. An activist who tried to visit the woman found chained outside in Jiangsu, east China, was arrested by police in March.
Last year, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who claimed on social media that a top official urged her to have sex, disappeared from public view for weeks before retracting her comments in carefully managed interviews.
In April, the Chinese Communist Youth League’s official Weibo account published a post stating that “extreme feminism has become a malignant tumor on the Internet.”
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Wang Yu, a Beijing-based lawyer, said such framing is consistent with official messages on women’s rights in China.
“The government is concerned about people talking about gender because any discussion of human rights is considered sensitive by officials, and that includes women’s rights,” she said.
However, observers say the movement has made some gains. Outrage over the chained mother’s case ignited netizens and spurred forms of online and offline activism rarely seen as the space for Chinese debate has shrunk.
A recent case of #MeToo activism online, inspired by a Taiwanese writer, also debunked criticism that Chinese feminists had been brainwashed by Western ideology.
In May, a woman posted on Weibo that an associate professor at Nankai University in Tianjin took advantage of his position to lure her into a sexual relationship with him as a student. She quoted Taiwanese author Lin Yi-han’s 2017 novel about a young girl who is seduced by her tutor, based on Lin’s life story. Lin killed himself shortly after the book was published.
“This matter has plagued me with multiple suicide attempts for the past six years,” the woman wrote. “When I die, I hope the world will know my story,” reads the post, which the Washington Post has not been able to independently verify. It attracted 1.4 million likes as netizens called for preventing another tragedy like Lin’s.
After the post, two other professors in Tianjin were accused of having affairs with students, and within a week the school fired the accused professor for “inappropriate relations with women” and issued disciplinary measures against the other two, according to a college statement.
Lu Pin, the founding editor of Feminist Voices, a Chinese platform that was banned in 2018, said Lin’s book has become a symbol of women’s rights in China. The novel is ranked eighth on a list of the top 250 books ranked by Douban, a popular review site. A Lin fan page has more than 22 million views from rape victims leaving messages about their experiences.
“[Lin] speaks to many Chinese women in a culture that places great importance on shame,” said Lu.
The attack at the late-night barbecue restaurant similarly struck a chord about women’s vulnerabilities. Despite efforts by Tangshan authorities to downplay the attack, the public continues to demand answers. On Monday, a trending topic on Weibo calling for an update on the victims received more than 1 billion views.
“The more you hide the facts from people, the more dissatisfied the public will be. Then more speculation will follow, with more negative implications,” reads a widely shared National Business Daily editorial.
Following the public outrage, the Hebei Public Security Department issued a statement on Tuesday, saying the condition of the two hospitalized victims had improved and nine suspects had been arrested. Authorities also said Tangshan’s deputy police chief had been removed and five other police officers were under investigation for their handling of the attack.
However, censorship was quick to oppose any perceived activism regarding the incident. A Shanghai woman’s account was suspended on Weibo after she posted a photo of herself holding a sign demanding information on the situation of the women. A hashtag “I stand up for the Tangshan girls” also seems to have been censored.
Still, suffragettes say the feminist movement in China will endure.
“The existence of the feminist movement is based on the needs in people’s hearts,” Lu said. “People are always waiting for the next opportunity to speak up. There is no way to eliminate this movement.”
Lyric Li in Seoul contributed to this report.