Renewed "Me Too" in China: How CCP-led censorship muzzles voices against sexual harassment

The “Me Too” movement started online in the US, and spread worldwide like a wildfire in 2018. Beijing’s “Me Too” movement, hidden from global glare through a state-controlled blanket thus far, has resurfaced once again this month. Stories of a series of sexual assault allegations against Shi Hang, an influential screenwriter in China, resurfaced massively. Since the reignited spark of renewed “Me Too” debate, many businesses have severed ties with Shi Hang publicly, a first in the country. The fate of women activists in China seems to have taken a nosedive in the last few years due to strict censorship, media control and stern government actions that perceives any form of citizen-led grass-root activism as a threat to its legitimacy. This was witnessed in 2015, a few years before the “Me Too” movement, when activists of Feminist Five, a women’s rights group in China, were detained and subsequently kept behind bars for months for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. Their only fault; they dared to protest against sexual harassment on public transport. They continue to remain under strict state surveillance despite the bail. Zhou Xiaoxuan, popularly known as Xianzi, emerged as the face of China’s “Me Too” movement in 2018 when she accused popular Chinese television host Zhu Jun of sexual harassment. First shared on her WeChat (social media platform), the accusation sparked a nationwide debate with respect to the country’s gender discrimination and harassment. In a 3,000-word essay, Zhou accused the television host of sexually harassing her during a visit to his dressing room to conduct an interview with him in 2014. When she reported the incident to the police, Zhou was instructed to remain silent on this crime, as the man was a national example of “positive energy". During the trial, the court rejected her request to label the case as a sexual harassment lawsuit and gave her little opportunity to speak, blocking her efforts to present evidence such as video footage of the area outside the dressing room, according to The Organization of World Peace. The controversy, however, met with similar setbacks as suffered by “Feminist Five” due to censorship of the media and unfavourable court verdicts citing lack of evidence. Xianzi also faced online harassment from internet trolls, who claimed to be nationalists and patriots. Similarly, many other women activists, including prominent ones like Xiao Meili and Liang Xiaomen, have faced internet crackdown endorsed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with their accounts being abruptly shut down following a smear campaign by the internet and social media trolls. Such is the level of censorship that Chinese women started using rice bowl and bunny emojis (pronounced cumulatively as mi-tu in Chinese) because the word “Me Too” was censored. On 2 November 2021, the “Me Too” movement reached a new height when sexual harassment accusations, so far limited within entertainment industry and academic spaces, reached the top echelons of the CCP, a first in the Communist Party-ruled state. The famous Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai took to her Weibo (Chinese social media platform) account to accuse the former Vice Premier and CCP cadre Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. However, soon after the accusation, Shuai faced enforced public disappearance for weeks and immediate censorship of her story within 30 minutes of her post, so much so that even references to her name, besides several hundred keywords, were censored on the internet. Peng Shuai’s subsequent appearances in photos and videos were widely believed to be staged by the CCP state authorities. This reveals CCP’s apprehension of citizen-led activism and its systematic crackdowns on dissenters under vague national security charges. Unfortunately, CCP-led censorship of stories of sexual violence, despite the public outrage on the internet, continues unchecked. As social media platforms are the only channel available for the country’s gender activism since the media is controlled and mostly run by the Communist State, the locals remain apprehensive with regards to the journey ahead given the autocratic regime. On the legal front, China’s 2015 Law for the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests mentions the term “sexual harassment” as a crime. Yet, of the nearly 50 million court verdicts in People’s Republic of China between 2010 and 2017, only 34 had focused on this particular criminal act, according to data posted by a report in The Diplomat in 2022. Of these 34 cases, only two had been brought to the courts by the victims of sexual harassment by suing their harassers. Yet, both these cases were dismissed by the courts, citing “lack of evidence” as a reason. Though anti-harassment regulations were enacted within China, these rules have not been applied consistently and the laws weren’t enforced to punish the guilty. In 2018, the Supreme People’s Court of China accepted sexual harassment as a ground for civil lawsuits, and in July 2019, the first ever such lawsuit by a victim had resulted in a partial victory. This half-measure verdict is now being looked at as “groundbreaking and setting the tone for similar upcoming civil cases”. A new civil law in 2020 put the onus of preventing and stopping sexual harassment by people in positions of power in the CCP, State-run institutions, and businesses, and for putting in place appropriate measures. During public consultations on the new law by the end of 2021, the draft defined specific behaviours and expressions as sexual harassment, and included schools to the list of entities that needed to establish adequate mechanisms against sexual harassment and sexual assault. Yet, grassroots activism, frowned upon by the CCP, faces government repression under Xi Jinping’s leadership. No wonder, China is ranked 102 out of 146 as per the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum. The writer is the chairman of New Delhi-based think-tank Law and Society Alliance. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.