When a prominent woman in the Chinese #MeToo movement sued a powerful man, it was the accused, not the accuser, who was portrayed as a victim. When several women were beaten after resisting unwanted approaches in a restaurant, the news was treated in the media with a focus on gang violence, not gender. And when a mother of eight was found chained to the wall of a shack, the focus was on her mental health, not her false imprisonment.
Each of these incidents went viral on the internet in China, initially setting off a wave of outrage over violence against women. But in all cases the discussion was promptly censored.
The Chinese Communist Party has for years promoted gender equality as one of its core principles, but while cases like these remain in the headlines, Beijing has done little to address the clamor for accountability. Instead, fearing social unrest, it has used social media censors to stifle criticism and promote comments that support the narrative of social harmony.
When an issue becomes popular online, the party’s propaganda department sends guidelines to directors of major platforms to tell them how to handle the topic, explains King-Wa Fu, a professor at the Center for Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Hong Kong. Censors then remove comments or accounts that express opinions that stray too far from the regime’s position.
“We have already seen this happen with many cases in the last ten years where this type of local claim or dissatisfaction grows and becomes part of the national agenda.”
The flurry of expressions of concern about violence against women put pressure on the authorities. Fearing any dissent that gets out of hand, they have narrowed the space for discussion — the tactic was recently used to manipulate the debate around one of the cases that fall within the #MeToo movement.
Activist Zhou Xiaoxuan in August lost her appeal against Zhu Jun, a TV anchor she had accused of sexual violence. When Zhou first came out publicly in 2018, her case inspired other women to speak out publicly about their experiences of harassment. Shortly after, she was banned from Weibo, the popular Chinese platform, and positive comments about her were removed.
“The government doesn’t want people to create hashtags to talk freely about #MeToo,” says Liu Lipeng, who worked on Weibo from 2011 to 2013. He says he was part of a team of 200 censors instructed by the government to delete feminist comments. “After the government sets the tone, Weibo immediately deletes posts that detract from it.”
After the first trial, the judges ruled that Zhou had not presented enough evidence against Zhu. A similar verdict was given on Aug. 10, in the judgment of an appeal. She argued that the judges gave her few opportunities to detail her allegations and rejected her lawyer’s attempts to present evidence.
She was scolded by online critics, who accused her of making up “stories” that would have ruined Zhu’s life. Censors used Weibo to promote comments in support of the court’s decision against Zhou, deleting and suppressing messages in support of it.
The anchor never appeared in court, “but outside of it he was protected by censorship,” says Huang Simin, a human rights lawyer who has worked on cases involving gender-based violence in China. Zhou, for her, “was censored, no matter how much she wanted to speak out. She was invisible and absent.”
Zhu denied the allegations and filed a lawsuit against Zhou for defamation. Weibo did not comment.
Disappearance of tennis player and beating of women
One of China’s most famous tennis players, Peng Shuai, suddenly disappeared from the internet and public view for weeks last year after accusing a high-ranking party member of sexual assault. More recently, in June, censors swung into action again after a group of men brutally beat several women at a restaurant in the city of Tangshan — two of them had to be hospitalized.
Videos of the attack spread, shocking viewers and raising questions about the sexist attitudes that allowed this behavior. But other voices were quick to downplay the idea that gender had played a role in the violence — for them, it was a public safety issue.
In the following days, state media highlighted the importance of fighting gang violence in the country. Comments were promoted on social media that described the attack as “merely gang-related”. Messages that mentioned sexism were silenced. Weibo closed more than a thousand accounts, including those that, according to the company, would be “inciting gender conflict”.
Last week, after authorities charged 28 people with 11 crimes following an investigation, state broadcaster CCTV aired an 11-minute report dominated by police officers describing what happened during the beating. One of the victims quickly appeared.
But when the narrator asked about possible sexual assault, the report cut to a police officer who dismissed the question, describing such suggestions as “made-up false information”.
The same thing happened with a woman found in January chained to the wall with a metal chain around her neck. A video of her went viral, triggering a search by journalists and citizens to locate her. Netizens questioned the regime’s narrative that she was a mother with an intellectual disability; many people feared that she was a victim of human trafficking.
But when activists tried to visit the woman to give her an opportunity to give her account, they were arrested and beaten by local authorities. Your social media accounts have been removed. Others who tried to share posts about the chained woman were harassed by police.
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