Chinese #metoo takes another step

Disappeared, then reappeared under questionable circumstances, tennis champion Peng Shuai is the new face of the #metoo movement in China. Back on a wave that disturbs Xi Jinping’s regime.

Agnes Gruda
Press

The first was Luo Xixi, a student at Beihang University in Beijing, who accused her academic advisor of pressure of a sexual nature against herself and several other young women.

It was in January 2018. The storm Harvey Weinstein, this Hollywood producer accused of repeated sexual assault, had just swept through the United States.

The #metoo movement was spreading across the planet under various hashtags, including the French hashtag #balancetonporc.

Inspired by these examples, Luo Xixi decided to take the plunge, too. She denounced her advisor Chen Xiaowu on the Weibo network, the Chinese Twitter. It was the first time that a victim of sexual harassment dared to advertise under her own name in China.

The rest took on the appearance of a bushfire. In a few days, the publication was relayed by more than 3 million people. Other victims came out of the closet.

In the sights of whistleblowers: media stars, a monk leading a Buddhist association, philanthropic organizations, or even entertainment stars.

As authorities tried to put out the blaze by blocking publications, the denunciation movement came under a new hashtag: #rizlapin. Two words which, in Mandarin, sound like “me too”.

A shock

“Luo Xixi’s publication caused a huge shock,” recalls Lü Pin, who published an online Chinese feminist magazine, Feminist Voices, from 2009 to 2018.

Until then, she explains in a telephone interview, sexual harassment was part of the scene in China.

Yet these forced relationships “are not romantic, they are abusive,” said the one who has since gone into exile in the United States and is pursuing doctoral studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

At the time, some 9,000 students and graduates signed a petition calling on Beijing University to stop sexual harassment on its campus.

Luo Xixi’s courage has paid off. The Chinese government has subjected universities to clearer rules. “Professors no longer have the right to maintain intimate relationships with students, at the risk of losing their jobs,” emphasizes Lü Pin. The denounced university counselor was even shown the door.

Judicial block

The problem is that the judicial system, it does not follow, deplores Lü Pin. And that the causes of sexual harassment are generally dismissed in court.

Last September, screenwriter Zhou Xiaoxuan, another leading figure in the #metoo movement in China, lost her case in a lower court, which ruled that it was dismissed for lack of evidence.

It was in 2018, in the midst of the #metoo storm launched by Luo Xixi, that Zhou Xiaoxuan accused a star TV presenter of sexually assaulting her in a makeup lodge while she was an intern for the national network CCTV. , in 2014.

The young woman was then 21 years old. She is 28 today. Presenter Zhu Jun has since disappeared from the screens. The regime discreetly discarded him, notes Lü Pin. But that does not mean that the Chinese leaders want him to be condemned by justice.

Zhou Xiaoxuan has become a very active activist for women’s rights, and any victory could inspire other women to follow her example, Lü Pin said.

Highly placed aggressor

On November 2, tennis champion Peng Shuai took the Chinese #metoo movement to a new dimension.

First, because she is one of the most famous faces of China abroad. But also because the man she accuses of assaulting her, former Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli, is one of the most powerful apparatchiks in the Chinese regime.

“These people live behind the scenes, very discreetly, we know nothing about their private life”, underlines Lü Pin.

“It’s such a delicate matter,” she said.

This is what explains the sudden “disappearance” of the tennis player, whose publication was immediately deleted from the Chinese network.

“Peng Shuai had the courage to file a complaint against a high-ranking leader of the Chinese Communist Party,” said Benedict Rogers, journalist and specialist in East Asia, joined in London on Tuesday.

She shattered a new glass ceiling. But there was a price to pay …

Muffled movement

The reaction of Chinese leaders to the wave of denunciations of sexual assault is twofold. On the one hand, the institutions sanction the men targeted by the #metoo movement in China. But that does not mean that this movement can express itself freely, far from it.

The Chinese regime fears any “act of protest on the part of civil society and any empowerment of the people”, adds Benedict Rogers.

In the case of Peng Shuai, the Chinese authorities are especially afraid of the ripple effect, notes Benedict Rogers. We do not want other denunciations targeting other high ranking dignitaries.