China & the #MeToo Movement, Censorship, & Sexual Assault
By: Kendall O’Connor
Founded in 2016, the “Me Too” movement was created “to help survivors of sexual violence . . . find pathways to healing.”[1] In 2018, in the short span of six months’ time, the Me Too movement “went global”[2] due to the “viral #metoo hashtag.”[3] Using various forms of social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, thousands of women from around the world used the #metoo hashtag to post about their own sexual assault, harassment, or other sexual violence experiences.[4] Since then, the viral #metoo hashtag has been cited as the key driver to the start of a “global conversation about sexual harassment”[5] which has expanded to “survivors from all walks of life and helped to destigmatize the act of surviving by highlighting the breadth and impact of sexual violence worldwide.”[6] For example, the Washington Post recently covered #metoo stories originating from a number of countries, including Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Indonesia, Russia, and, the country to be highlighted in this article, China.[7]
Similar to other international women, women in China came forward to “accuse academics, journalists, television hosts and even monks of sexual harassment and abuse” when the #metoo hashtag went viral.[8] And while the majority of coverage surrounding the movement has talked about the positive influence it has had on stimulating international conversation, and rightly so, little has covered the personal backlash the victims have endured or problems which international citizens have faced.[9]
While the power and reach of social media may seem boundless to some of us in in the United States or similarly situated countries, using the internet to advance the #metoo hashtag has created a unique difficulty in international countries that hold the ability to censor its news, social media, and internet.[10] China, for instance, led by their increasing authoritarian Communist Party leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, has long been recognized as a censorship regime.[11]
For example, as an answer to the emergence of international apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Uber and Apple Pay, the Chinese government created the “WeChat” app which combined all functions of the international brands; however, Chinese citizens have since started to question whether their WeChat activities are being monitored by the authorities.[12] China even hires “professional censor[s],” who spend “hours scanning online content on behalf of Chinese media companies looking for anything that will provoke the government’s wrath.”[13] This censorship can range from blurring out earlobes of Chinese male pop stars who have ear piercings or jewelry, to censoring “nearly every important foreign competitor online,” including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Pinterest, Reddit, the New York Times, and Netflix.[14]
While not entirely surprising given the country’s track record with the feminist movement (Chinese authorities arrested five women in 2015 for handing out stickers about sexual harassment and, in 2017, temporarily banned “Feminist Voices,” an influential feminist website in China), the Chinese government’s inclination to censorship has even reached the #metoo movement.[15] While acting as an activist under China’s current regime can be daunting considering the government has cracked down on various forms of dissent, thousands of Chinese woman, and some male, “have [nonetheless] defied heavy Internet censorship to sign #metoo petitions at dozens of universities, demanding action against sexual harassment.”[16] These activists hope to restructure the Chinese legal system, which has been criticized as having “very few good legal options” if a Chinese individual has been sexually assaulted or harassed.[17]
Unlike any grassroots movement that has become before it, the #metoo movement in China has been called “one of the first coordinated student protest movements since [1989]” and has posed a significant issue for China’s Communist Party because the party is “technically founded on egalitarian principles” which calls for equality for all.[18] The national attention to the #metoo movement has now enabled Chinese feminist activists to demand the Communist Party fulfill its promise of equality by speaking out online.[19]
The movement went viral in China on January 1, 2018, after Luo Xixi, a former PhD student, posted about her own sexual assault experience on the social media platform Weibo.[20] The post was said to be viewed over five million times, but “censors eventually took down the majority of the #metoo posts and the variations of the hashtag.”[21] Feminist activist Xiao Meili, for example, launched a #metoo petition addressed to her alma mater, the Communication University of China, and posted it on the Chinese social media platforms Weibo and WeChat.[22] Nonetheless, Xiao reported the petition was deleted by censors shortly after its posting.[23]
After realizing the Communist Party was censoring the #metoo movement, “Chinese women started using Chinese words that sounded similar to ‘me too’” to evade automatic removal of their posts.[24] For example, “mi” in Chinese means “rice” and “tu” means “bunny,” so Chinese feminist activists starting hashtagging “rice bunny” to avoid censor.[25] Other activists used photos of rotated text or blockchain to make their #metoo posts harder to remove.[26]
Why would China censor the #metoo movement? It is likely due to the Chinese Communist Party’s fear of “western hostile forces” using “western feminism to interfere in China’s handling of woman’s affairs.”[27] Despite threats by police and the Communist Party’s use of censorship, Chinese feminist activists are fighting back and believe “it will be extremely hard to silence all the women who want
[1] Me Too, About: History & Vision, Me Too Movement, https://metoomvmt.org/about/ (last visited Apr. 8, 2019).
[2] Amanda Erickson, In 2018, #MeToo – and its backlash – went global, Wash. Post (Dec. 14, 2018), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/12/14/metoo-its-backlash-went-global/?utm_term=.8e0e8008afb8.
[3] Me Too, supra note 1.
[4] Erickson, supra note 2.
[5] Id.
[6] Me Too, supra note 1.
[7] Erickson, supra note 2.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.; Me Too, supra note 1; See Graham Techler, Hasan Minaj’s Patriot Act Remains Netflix’s Best Talk show in its Second Season, Paste Magazine (Feb. 12, 2019), https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/02/hasan-minhajs-patriot-act-remains-netflixs-best-ta.html (talking about Netflix and other media companies agreeing to censorship demands).
[10] See generally Leta Hong Fincher, China is Attempting to Muzzle #MeToo, NPR (Feb. 1, 2018), https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/02/01/582167268/china-is-attempting-to-muzzle-metoo; Techler, supra note 9; Lucas Niewenhuis, ‘Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj’ Highlights China’s #MeToo Movement, Online Censorship, And Uyghur Repression, SUP China (Feb. 12, 2019), https://supchina.com/2019/02/12/patriot-act-with-hasan-minhaj-highlights-chinas-metoo-movement-online-censorship-and-uyghur-repression/.
[11] Niewenhuis, supra note 10.
[12] Audrey Jiajia Li, Learning to Survive Without WeChat, NY Times (Sept. 20, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/opinion/learning-to-survive-without-wechat-in-china.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FInternet%20Censorship%20in%20China.
[13] Li Yuan, Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It, NY Times (Jan. 2, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/business/china-internet-censor.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FInternet%20Censorship%20in%20China.
[14] Li Yuan, No Earrings, Tattoos or Cleave: Inside China’s War on Fun, NY Times (Mar. 27, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/business/china-war-on-fun-earrings-tattoos.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FInternet%20Censorship%20in%20China&action=click&contentCollection=world®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection; Tim Wu, China’s Online Censorship Stifles Trade, Too, NY Times (Feb. 4, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/opinion/china-censorship-internet.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FInternet%20Censorship%20in%20China; Niewenhuis, supra note 10.
[15] Fincher, supra note 10.
[16] Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj: Censorship in China, Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80990679?trackId=200257859 (last visited April 9, 2019); Fincher, supra note 10.
[17] Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj: Censorship in China, supra note 16. Until recently, China did not even have a definition of “sexual harassment” which made it difficult to file civil sexual harassment lawsuits. Id.
[18] Id.
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Fincher, supra note 10.
[23] Id.
[24] Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj: Censorship in China, supra note 16.
[25] Id.
[26] Id.
[27] Fincher, supra note 10; Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj: Censorship in China, supra note 16.
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