How China’s #MeToo Movement Prospered in the Face of Government Censorship
2018 was the year of the #MeToo movement, with thousands of people coming forward with their stories of sexual harassment. Although the movement originated in the United States, it sparked similar campaigns in nations all around the world, many with their own unique variations on the movement. One country where the #MeToo movement took off is China. What set China’s #MeToo movement apart, though, was the fact that the leaders of the movement were up against an oppressive government who was actively working to censor and repress their message.
Although the #MeToo movement would not begin in China until early 2018, feminist activism and protests had been on the rise in the country in the preceding years. In March of 2015, Chinese police arrested five feminist protestors for planning a demonstration against sexual harassment on public transportation. The arrests prompted to international protest, leading to the highly publicized ‘Free the Five’ campaign. These anti-sexual harassment protests laid the groundwork for the movement that would begin in China in 2018 when Zhou Xiaxuan came forward with her story about popular television presenter Zhu Jun. Jun is a national celebrity, known for hosting the annual New Year’s Eve Gala on state television that is viewed by 700 million people. Xiaxuan stated that in 2014, while she was working as a screenwriter for Jun’s television show, Jun sexually harassed her in his dressing room. Afterwords, according to Sky News, she went to the police, who “didn’t take her case forward; she stayed silent.” That is, until 2018, when the #MeToo movement swept the United States, inspiring Xiaxuan to come forward with her own story of abuse on the Chinese Twitter-like platform Weibo. Xiaxuan’s story was shared thousands of times, making international news and encouraging countless others in China to share their own stories of abuse.
These reports were not without backlash, though, particularly from the Chinese government. In order to understand the Chinese #MeToo movement, it is necessary to examine free speech laws within the nation. According to The Guardian, “China has no press freedom, no freedom of assembly, no independent judiciary and the world’s most aggressive system of internet censorship and surveillance.” This means that the government can suppress or delete any information the Internet that they deem inappropriate or inflammatory, including mentions of sexual harassment. On Weibo, as The New Yorker reports, “any and all iterations of #MeToo—whether in dialect or using homonyms or emojis—are censored." Xiaxuan’s initial Weibo post about her experience with Jun was deleted quickly after its publication in 2018. Because of this, feminist activists have resorted to more elusive techniques in order to avoid suppression of their message. This includes the use of images rather than text to avoid filters and petitions spread through QR codes in order to so spread them quickly before they are deleted. For a while, Foreign Policy magazine reports, "a bowl of rice (mi) and a rabbit (tu) became the new symbol” of the movement as a covert way to spread their message without detecting attention from the censors. When it comes to activism outside of social media, feminists are careful to avoid public demonstrations, instead opting for one-on-one discussions with authorities and reaching out to survivors with support and advice. In the past, Chinese authorities have been quick to clamp down against public demonstrations that could be viewed as threats toward the state, as seen in the “Feminist Five” arrests in 2015.
Although the #MeToo movement is no longer making headlines, feminist protestors in China are continuing their efforts to change the culture around sexual harassment. Xiaxuan’s lawsuit against Jun is ongoing, and, as she told Sky News, she hopes that it will make a lasting impact on the way that people in China view sexual assault. "I don’t know if one day it could change,” she stated. “But my lawyer told me that I must fight to the end because of them. So I will fight to the end."
This article was originally published in March 2019.
