On August 10, a Beijing court dismissed Zhou Xiaoxuan’s appeal after she accused a prominent state television presenter of sexual harassment. Because it inspired additional women to come forward and publicly disclose their own experiences with sexual harassment, the case was regarded as a turning point for the #MeToo movement in China. The influence spread beyond the internet and sparked group actions offline as well. Numerous women gathered outside the courthouse to support Zhou at her first trial in 2021, and the police remained silent.
However, at the same time, the debate of the case was controlled on social media, and only a few media outlets were permitted to present a short story in keeping with the official line about the case, which illustrates the growing nervousness over the actions surrounding women’s rights.
In China and other countries, the #MeToo movement has mostly been digital, using the internet and social media as platforms and tools for mobilization, making alternative voices heard, and for fostering awareness and civic involvement. So, one of #MeToo’s long-lasting repercussions in China has been the ongoing social debate over what constitutes sexual harassment.
Legal language and arguments serve as an invaluable resource for determining what, specifically, the concerns of those engaging in the debate are because the public discussion on sexual harassment tends to include a wide range of perspectives and personal experiences.
The People’s Republic of China’s Law for the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests (hereafter the Women’s Protection Law), which went into effect in 2005, mentions “sexual harassment,” however the phrase is not specifically defined in the law. Only 34 of the more than 50 million court decisions made between 2010 and 2017 that are publicly available focused on sexual harassment, and only two of those cases were brought by victims suing their alleged harassers. Both cases were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Local anti-harassment laws have also been passed, although they have not always been followed and put into action.
The Supreme People’s Court of China did not include sexual harassment as a cause of action for civil litigation until the end of 2018. The first of these civil lawsuits were resolved with a partial victory for the plaintiff on July 13, 2019. This verdict is seen as ground-breaking since it will likely influence future civil trials with a similar tone.
“Party and government departments, corporations, schools, and other institutions shall undertake appropriate measures to prevent and halt sexual harassing activities that take advantage of authority or positions,” the new Civil Code of 2020 stated.
Additionally, the Women’s Protection Law Amendment draft introduced requirements for schools to implement systems to prevent and stop sexual harassment and assault during its public consultation phase at the end of 2021, defining particular actions and expressions as sexual harassment.
However, these advancements in the legal system and policymaking process have been made at the expense of grassroots activists who are fighting on the same issue. While some #MeToo allegations have been making their way through the legal system since 2018, none have produced any significant outcomes. Due in part to state-run media efforts to stifle debate, media and public interest in the cases has proven to be ephemeral.
In higher education, for instance, despite commitments made in response to social pressure at the height of the 2018 #MeToo allegations, many of which featured students accusing their professors of sexual harassment, no university has designed or implemented any mechanism for addressing harassment. The new Civil Code, which came into effect in 2020, has not been any better at encouraging colleges to take initiative. This is so because the Disciplinary Board, a standard administrative division in governmental organizations and public institutions and an outgrowth of the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, is the central authority that adjudicates sexual harassment cases in most universities.
Most cases have been approached from the standpoint of the accused faculty member’s moral character, and punishments have typically included administrative fines and disciplinary sanctions, such as warnings, demerit records, expulsion from the group, the revocation of teaching credentials and titles, and demotion.
In order to counter the bad effects of online allegations, Chinese authorities and prominent (male) players are resolute in their use of the same digital affordances that fueled #MeToo, thus drowning out victims of sexual violence. Using higher education as an example once more, our research has shown that while digital media has lowered the barriers to collective action for a range of issues, grassroots activism still must negotiate with multiple state institutions and system insiders in order to advance.
A Chinese institution, for instance, may use its resources and authority to control the information posted on social media. The institutions’ different administrative rankings have an impact on the outcome, even though news media, especially state media, can bypass them and report sexual scandals connected to them. To avoid the formation of a movement, offline collective actions would also be put down much faster.
The decreasing internet space for combatting sexual harassment in China also shows the escalating sexist manosphere and the growing antagonism of digital culture toward victims. Victim-shaming, witch-hunting, trolling, and doxing of victims and activists are common, even when or especially when opposition to sexual harassment becomes a dominant discourse.