Word of the death spread on the Internet in the days after the woman, whose surname was Yuan, was initially said to have committed suicide by jumping from a top floor or roof of the mall, called Jingwen, last Friday. Rumors on the Internet said Ms. Yuan, a migrant worker from Anhui Province, had been raped by private security guards in the mall, where she worked, and might have been thrown to her death.

A witness told The Wall Street Journal that the protest had swelled by 10 a.m. and had ended by 5 p.m., though a heavy police presence lingered on the scene. CDT’s “Sensitive Words” project also noted that photos of riot police and police helicopters had spread on Weibo, while footage of the demonstration had emerged on Tencent.

The Guardian’s Jonathan Kaiman had more on the protests:

A shopkeeper who gave his name only as Mr Li said that some police had arrived at around 10am, followed by around 200 people who paraded down the street shouting “Protest! Protest!”

The rapidly growing number of officers then closed the road for the rest of the day, he said. Photographs of the scene posted online showed hundreds of people on the street, although it was not clear how many were protesters and how many were onlookers.

One bystander said that officers had clashed with protesters, beating them and dragging them into vans.

While police said a preliminary investigation and autopsy did not indicate foul play, and that the woman did not have any interaction with other people during the hours before she fell to her death, the state-run Global Times reported that the demonstrators demanded a more open investigation:

Rumors have been circulated online that Yuan was gang raped in a enclosed room inside the building by seven security guards, which led to her suicide, or that they even pushed her out. Yuan’s mother visited the Dahongmen Police Station supervising the market but was not allowed to see the surveillance footage, some Web users said.

Leslie Hook of the Financial Times wrote that the protest, which halted traffic in southern Beijing for hours, “highlights mounting social pressures facing China’s leaders:”

The area where Ms Yuan worked is poor and is mostly populated by “outsiders” such as herself who work in the garment trading industry, according to residents. Scepticism of the police is widespread in China and many smaller protests across the country have been sparked by allegations of malpractice.

By Wednesday evening, the protest had dissipated amid heavy rain, but a large military presence was still visible, with dozens of parked buses carrying special forces, soldiers and police.

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Post tags: Anhui, Beijing, mass incidents, migrant workers, murder, protest, rape, suicide, women's rights, Yuan Liya
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“It’s really annoying,” said Wang Man, 31, an employee of a poverty relief N.G.O. in Beijing. “By now though, I don’t care, as I think there’s a plot behind it. It’s an admonishment to women, it’s telling us what to do, where and when. Everyone is trying to get us to sacrifice ourselves, to look after children, husbands, old people.”

[...A]s a result, partly, of the increasingly defiant attitudes of women like Ms. Liu and Ms. Wang toward a term that many still find terribly hurtful, a riposte to “leftover women” has been born — and it’s a clever one. Yes, they’re saying, we’re “shengnu.” But that’s “sheng” as in “victorious,” not “leftover.”

[...] “We should have the right to choose what we want to do. So do we really need such a power-filled word as ‘victorious’ to describe something so normal?”

Ms. Wang agreed. “I’ve heard of it and I think it’s O.K., but I don’t think it’s a question of victory or defeat,” she said. “It’s just a way of life. If I had to choose, though, I’d tend toward ‘victorious’ for sure. Still, it all feels a bit tiring.”

Meanwhile, some people argue that even though the surplus of men has pushed up the cost of marriage, the gender imbalance might not necessarily empower women. From Louisa Lim at National Public Radio:

Nowadays, 70 percent of Chinese women believe a man should provide an apartment, along with a marriage offer, according to a 2011 survey. In economic terms, the relative scarcity of women is giving them bargaining power. These women’s demands are making China’s economy grow even faster.

[...] But some argue that women aren’t necessarily benefiting. Leta Hong Fincher is writing a book on gender and home ownership in China. She believes women are being excluded from what may be the biggest accumulation of real estate wealth in history.

“There are three main ways in which I argue that women have been shut out of the accumulation of real estate wealth: the first is that parents tend to buy homes for sons, not daughters; the second is that homes tend to be registered in men’s names only; the third is that women often transfer their life savings over to the man to finance the purchase of a marital home, which is then often registered solely in the man’s name,” she says.

See more on women’s rights, “leftover women,” and gender imbalance, via CDT.

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Post tags: abortion, gender imbalance, leftover women, marriage, sex-selective abortion, urban life, weddings, women's rights
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Given the incredible diversity of China, the strategy of rule sketched out above has never worked for everyone or applied equally to all parts of the country. Many Chinese in rural areas have been frustrated by how long it has taken for the rising tide that was supposed to lift all boats to reach them, and large numbers of members of ethnic groups, most famously Tibetan and Uighurs, have never accepted the mythic notion that in 1949 the Communist Party, whose leaders treated them much like colonized subjects, had gloriously “liberated” all citizens of the People’s Republic of China from foreign control. A third key grievance driving the protests of 1989—anger at corruption and nepotism—has never gone away.

Most recently, an additional challenge has emerged: discontent among many of those who once seemed most ready to accept the post-1989 consumerist bargain, as long as it meant that life kept improving materially. After a series of tainted-food scandals and an ongoing pollution crisis, epitomized by the wretched smog that blanketed many cities this past winter, many who have been doing relatively well materially in recent years are now questioning whether their quality of life really is improving. They hunger for a government they can trust.

How can we move beyond the tendency either to underestimate the resilience of the Chinese Communist Party or fail to understand the important challenges it faces? Helen Gao, Leta Hong Fincher, Alec Ash, and Ross Perlin show us a valuable way to proceed, charting out an alternative path of analysis that will also be explored in later contributions to Dissent, which is committed to publishing similar behind-the-headlines reportage and analysis on China in future issues. These four deeply informed writers pay attention to the attitudes of ordinary people; to individuals who are neither part of the government nor locked into a directly antagonistic relationship to the regime; to women as well as men; to the young as well as the old, keeping in mind that for two thirds of China’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, Chairman Mao has always been dead.

Specific articles include:

- Land of Many Nationalisms by Helen Gao
- Women’s Rights at Risk by Leta Hong Fincher
- China’s Youth: Do They Dare to Care about Politics? by Alec Ash
- Chinese Workers Foxconned by Ross Perlin

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Post tags: ethnic minority, migrant workers, quality of life, social unrest, Tibet, wealth gap, women's rights, Xinjiang
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In one instance, she was told her physical evidence was inadmissible because she had visited the wrong hospital. Another time she was told that the correct police official was not present to take her evidence. And she was also informed that voice recordings were needed of her husband’s threats against her.

“The whole system here is designed to pressure women to give up and just drop it. But I didn’t. I just didn’t give up,” Lee says. “So that’s why when they read the decree and they issued the protection order, I just really sighed. I think I earned it.”

Li didn’t attend court the day of the judgment, and he didn’t respond to NPR’s request for an interview. Throughout the process, Lee — who’s also a teacher — has been guided by the example she’s setting for their daughters.

“I made a conscious decision. I used a Chinese lawyer, I used Chinese courts,” she says. “To be honest, a lot of my American friends did not understand this. They were like, ‘You’re crazy. You’re American. Go to the embassy immediately.’ But I did not want to teach my daughters, ‘No one can beat you because you’re American.’ I wanted to teach them, ‘No one can beat you because you’re a person, you’re a woman.’ “

On Huffington Post, Abby Huntsman, daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, interviewed Lee as well:

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Post tags: domestic violence, Kim Lee, Li Yang, women's rights
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Domestic violence is a pervasive problem in China, as Christina Larson reports for Bloomberg Businessweek:

It is difficult to measure the extent of domestic violence in China. Although most officially cited studies are thought to underestimate its prevalence, even those numbers are deeply unsettling. In 2011, the All China Women’s Federation, a state-steered non-governmental organization, released its findings that 25 percent of women in China have been victims of some form of domestic violence. A survey by the China Law Society put that number at 35 percent. An academic study published in 1999 in the International Journal of Gynaecology and Obstetrics found that 16 percent of pregnant woman admitted to the clinic of Hong Kong’s Tsan Yuk Hospital had suffered domestic abuse in the preceding year. By any yardstick, the problem is severe.

In an op-ed in the Guardian, writer Lijia Zhang writes about the “epidemic” of domestic violence in light of these two cases:

These two high-profile domestic violence cases are far from isolated; in fact, they are part of an epidemic. Traditional wisdom in China is to deal with domestic violence as something “best kept inside the house”. In September 2011, when Lee first broke the silence by posting the pictures of her battered face on the internet, her husband and like-minded male observers accused her of “airing the dirty laundry”. He also argued that it was “no big deal,” and that domestic abuse was part of Chinese culture. But now Lee has become an unlikely hero for having the courage to speak out.

Lee’s victory is hard-won. There were four hearings before Sunday, but her case was undoubtedly helped by the fact she is an American – and because of her determination and intelligence. More ordinary cases have to meet evidential standards before a court can even consider accepting it. When the case does go forward, punishment for the abuser tends to be light. A few years back, I interviewed a victim named Sun Xueqing, from Hangzhou. Her husband Mo Wenhui received a six-month jail sentence for throwing her from a balcony. Her spine was broken. Her lawyer explained : “My personal guess is that the court saw it as a family dispute. He wouldn’t have gotten away with it so easily if he had thrown a woman other than his wife from the second floor.”

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Post tags: domestic violence, Kim Lee, Li Yang, women's rights
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Supporters say a reprieve for Li Yan would send the message that authorities are serious about confronting domestic violence. The 41-year-old from Sichuan had repeatedly begged for protection from her spouse.

According to Amnesty International, Li’s husband, Tan Yong, stubbed out cigarettes on her face, cut off part of her finger and locked her out on the balcony of their home in wintertime while she was only partially clothed.

She killed him in November 2010 by repeatedly hitting him over the head with an airgun to stop him from beating her. More than 100 legal experts and academics have signed an open letter calling for her sentence to be commuted.

The supreme people’s court has reportedly upheld Li’s death sentence, but her lawyer, Guo Jianmei, a well-known women’s rights advocate, said the defence team had not received formal notification. “Even if there is only a little hope, we want to fight for her to have a chance to live,” she said. “She killed her husband in fear that her life was seriously threatened.”

According to the South China Morning Post, more than 400 lawyers and women’s rights activists have called for a re-examination of the case against Li Yan in a petition sent to the Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate:

Teng Biao, director of China Against Death Penalty who launched the petition campaign, said they were calling on the judiciary to re-examine the domestic violence that led to the killing and take it into full account in a new decision showing due respect for human life.

He said the death sentence was flawed because it failed to take account of complaints Li had lodged with the local women’s federation and statements she gave to police in the months before the killing, as well as testimony from her neighbours, which all pointed to her having been a victim of domestic violence since the couple married about two years prior to the fatal incident.

“She had no excuse to kill her husband, but she’s nothing like a cold-blooded killer who planned the killing,” Teng said.

Human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig translated an article by lawyer Zhang Peihong in which he argued that there are sufficient legal grounds to reconsider Li’s punishment.

Li’s case has raised concerns about the criminal treatment of abused women who injure or kill their spouses in self-defense. The New York Times reports on the extent of the problem:

Women’s jails are filled with women who have injured or killed abusive husbands, according to the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, citing studies by local women’s federations and scholars. They account for 60 percent of inmates in one jail in Anshan, in Liaoning Province, and 80 percent of women serving heavy sentences in a jail in Fuzhou, in Fujian Province.

In a study by Xing Hongmei of China Women’s University, of 121 female inmates in a Sichuan jail who were serving time for attacking or killing abusive partners, 71 were originally sentenced to life in prison or to death (sometimes commuted, delayed or overturned on appeal), and 28 more were sentenced to at least 10 years. This means more than 80 percent received the heaviest possible sentences for murder or bodily harm, the study said.

For months before she killed Mr. Tan, Ms. Li sought help from the authorities in Anyue County, in Sichuan Province, where they lived, her brother said.

“She telephoned the police in, I think, May 2010, after a beating, but they said it was an affair between married people and hung up,” he said.

Women’s rights advocates have long fought for a domestic violence law to protect abused women. With a draft law now in the works, 12,000 people have signed a petition to the National People’s Congress which calls for transparency in the drafting process. From the New York Times blog:

Fed up with being excluded from the decision-making process, Chinese feminists not only want a law against domestic violence, they also want to know exactly what’s going into it, in a new push for accountability from their opaque government. The petition, “Asking for Openness and Transparency in the Process of the Anti-Domestic Violence Law,” spells that out.

Bai Fei, a university student from Shanghai, is one of three women behind the petition. Signatures were gathered online, the Yunnan Information News reported.

Ms. Bai grew up in a family where her father beat her mother. She wanted to know if the new law would help people like her mother, the newspaper wrote.

“When the law comes out, will my mother be able to get legal protection?” asked Ms. Bai. “What level of protection will the law afford her? If I can’t know what’s going into it, I won’t feel at all safe.”

Domestic violence was thrust into the national spotlight last year when the American wife of celebrity English teacher Li Yang posted gruesome photos on weibo of her injuries from his abuse.

Read more about domestic violence in China.

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Post tags: crime, death penalty, domestic violence, women's rights
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As the Lunar New Year approaches, many young people in China are heading home to visit their families. Those who are single often don’t want to confront family pressure to find a spouse, and so to avoid it they hire strangers to play the role of love interest for family visits. The New York Times blog reports:

On Taobao, this man, who didn’t give his name but supplied a photograph, said he was born in 1991, was a B.A. student, an extrovert, 170 centimeters (5 feet, 6 inches) tall and 60 kilograms (132 pounds), offered a relatively simple list of extra services.

“Boyfriend for rent, 300 yuan a day, holding hands and hugs free, appropriate kisses 50 yuan, talking to old people 30 yuan an hour, others we’ll talk about it when we meet,” his post said. Also: “accommodation and transport costs paid by the woman.”

Often, services are worked out in minute financial detail. This man, charging 800 renminbi ($128) a day, had a long list of extras: shopping (15 renminbi per hour or 150 a day, minimum two hours); chatting (10 renminbi an hour or 100 a day); watching a movie (10 renminbi an hour, double for horror films); attending parties (20 renminbi an hour, will not go to dangerous places). And he charges for drinking, based on the spirit content (drinking alcohol is de rigueur for men at festive banquets): 100 renminbi per 100 milliliters of white spirits, 50 renminbi for 100 milliliters of red wine, 20 renminbi for 500 milliliters of beer.

Just in case you’re wondering if it’s all for real, or just a cruel hoax — it’s true. My colleague Dan Levin wrote about the phenomenon a few years ago, and even people.com.cn, the racier, online version of the Communist Party-run People’s Daily newspaper, recently carried a report.

Meanwhile, Shanghaiist reports that marriages between women and men who later come out as gay may soon be able to be anulled in order to give the women a greater chance of remarrying. Some gay men in China who fear they will not be accepted by their families marry women to fulfill societal expectations:

The First Intermediate Court of Beijing submitted a report earlier this month recommending changing the law for women who discover their husbands are gay so that they are not branded as ‘divorced’ which would make it even harder to find a new man in a society that insists on labelling any woman unmarried after 27 a ‘left over woman’.

Reportedly, an estimated 70 percent of all gay men in China marry women, resulting in about 16 million women who are now labelled ‘tongqi’, which would loosely translate to ‘homo-wife’. Homosexuality is still very controversial in China (it was listed as a mental illness until 2001) and many people enter into heterosexual marriages just to appease their families and to have children.

The new legislation would presumably apply to anyone but does not explicitly state what happens if the couple already have children, or if the man only realises his sexuality after the marriage, or if the woman is a lesbian and her straight husband finds out.

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Post tags: chinese new year, leftover women, marriage, women's rights
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A picture of the protest on Monday, which appeared in the state-run Legal Daily newspaper, shows seven women standing outside a provincial government office, arms crossed defensively. They wear what look like giant underpants, each emblazoned with the Chinese character meaning “examine” – struck through with a red line.

The regulations that provoked the protest have been in force since 2005, and require women applying for civil service jobs to undergo invasive testing for sexually transmitted diseases and malignant tumours. Applicants have also been asked to provide information on their menstrual cycles.

[...] In March, the Beijing-based non-profit social justice group Yirenping Center sent an open letter to government agencies including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security protesting against the gynaecological examinations, but it received no reply.

Earlier this year, some female activists in southern China occupied men’s stalls to protest against the shortage of public female restrooms.

See more on women’s rights in China via CDT.

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Post tags: civil service, Gender discrimination, gender equality, protests, women's rights
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Asia Times Online: What’s changed in China since Northern Girls was published in 2004? How different would the story be if you were writing it today?

Sheng Keyi: Northern Girls was my first novel, written in 2002. A decade has passed since I began my writing career and China has undergone significant changes over the past decade. Social behavior is getting worse: devotion to money is widespread; social values are distorted; individuals give up their moral bottom line; the media is no longer guided by justice and conscience; materialized and self-materialized “New Women” and ignorant, morally degenerated “Successful Men” can be seen everywhere; people work exclusively for profit.

[...] ATol: Northern Girls depicts a male-dominated society. To what extent does that represent China today? To what extent are the situations of characters Qian Xiaohong and Li Sijang consequences of their gender and to what extent are they consequences of their class, their rural origins and lack of education?

SK: This male-dominated society not only refers to the real men, but also refers to the combination of power, wealth and an unreasonable social system and values. It is almost impossible for women from all social classes to escape such social pressures. Thousands of years of political traditions and social customs are deeply rooted in Chinese society and prevent women from overcoming the limitations caused by their sex. Northern Girls depicts the life circumstances of women from a specific social class.

In June, Sheng also spoke with Allison Carol Goldman for Danwei:

When you were living in Shenzhen, did you encounter the same kind of situations and struggles as the characters in your book?

Yes, naturally. I was fired, jumped between jobs, resigned, dealt with temporary residency permits and, for a long time, suffered discrimination as a temporary worker. I wished in vain that I could be promoted to a full time worker at my company, feel proud and elated, and become equal with everybody. But I failed. Eventually I quit the magazine where I was working and moved up north to write and control my own future.

[…] Towards the end of the novel, Qian Xiaohong’s breasts start to enlarge, and won’t stop growing. What does this symbolize for you?

It symbolizes the female identity, and how much it has become a burden. Also, how women cannot escape the confines of their gender.

[…] When can we expect the next translation of one of your pieces?

Well, my next piece to come out in the English language will be my sixth novel, “Death Fugue.” The plans have already been discussed, and it should be on the shelves next year.

See more on women’s rights in China via CDT.

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Post tags: contemporary literature, Gender discrimination, gender equality, gender imbalance, women's rights, writers, writers and literature
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Chinese women continue to make strides in corporate settings, but they’re still a rare sight at the helm of Chinese companies – particularly at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) — according to a new study by Yan Zhang, a management professor at China Europe International Business School.

Among companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, the proportion of female board chairs increased a modest 0.3 percentage points, to 4% in 2010 from 3.7% in 1997, while women made up just 5.6% of CEOs in 2010 (compared with 4.6% in 1997), Ms. Zhang found.

Despite the Chinese government’s official stance that women are just as capable as men in the workplace, women fare quite a bit worse at state-run companies: They made up 5.4% of non-SOE board chairs in 2010, but just 2.9% at SOEs, and they filled 13.7% of director seats at non-SOEs, compared with 10% in SOEs.

At the same time, higher barriers are set for female students in college admissions. Caixin reported last month that several girls shaved their heads bald to protest against gender discrimination in late August. Didi Kirsten Tatlow at New York Times investigates further:

On the last day of August, Xiong Jing and two friends shaved their heads in Beijing to protest a growing trend in Chinese universities in which women increasingly must score higher than men to get in and face unofficial but widespread gender quotas that favor men.

[...] The practice began at least as early as 2005, according to Chinese news reports, and was in response to the rising numbers of women getting into universities, where they are starting to outstrip men in some areas, especially languages.

[...] “In science courses at the China University of Political Science and Law, the bar is at 632 points for women but 588 for men,” the newspaper said, providing other similar examples from other colleges.

[...] The rules affected students like Ouyang Le, according to Ms. Xiong. A fresh graduate from a Guangzhou high school, Ms. Ouyang had wanted to study at the University of International Relations. She scored 614 points on the gaokao, but as a woman, needed 628. If Ms. Ouyang had been a man, she would have needed just 609.

As Leta Hong Fincher showed in a recent International Herald Tribune op-ed, women are also discouraged from attaining higher education by official voices, including the All-China Women’s Federation, which encourages women to marry and start a family before acquiring an advanced degree.

The underrepresentation of women transfers up to the political arena as well. As a result, feminists hope that the possible promotion of Liu Yandong, the only female member in the 25-member Politburo, could send a positive signal in gender equity. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

Besuited and fiercely disciplined, with a powerful family background and experience in the Communist Youth League, Liu Yandong appears much like other cadres jockeying for position in China’s pending leadership transition, bar one very obvious difference: her gender.

She is the only female member of the 25-member politburo and would be the first woman to reach its standing committee, the country’s top political body. Though she is regarded as a long shot, “the door is not closed”, said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution.

[...I]n Chinese politics women remain a glaring absence. The annual session of the National People’s Congress shows banks of dark-suited men; only a fifth of the largely rubber-stamp legislature is female, and barely one-sixteenth of the party’s central committee. There is one female provincial party secretary and one governor. At the grassroots 2%-3% of village party chiefs and 22% of committee members are female.

Feminists say better representation is crucial to addressing enduring, or even increasing, inequality. Many fear women face a deterioration in their status, citing changes to marital property rights that have disadvantaged women, incomes shrinking in comparison to men’s and increasing gender stereotyping.

However, other critics believe that Liu Yandong is essentially no more than a rubber stamp and her chances of bypassing the systematic obstacles are slim. From Leslie Hook at The Financial Times:

“She seldom . . . expresses her political opinions. Her role is not at the head of the table,” said Pu Xingzu, a politics professor at Fudan University in Shanghai.

[...] Liu has never been a provincial governor, a key resume item for most of China’s top leaders. Her age could also count against her, because the party prefers to install younger people. The current nine-member standing committee could be shrunk to seven, reducing her chances further.

See more on the women’s rights movement in China via CDT.

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Post tags: college entrance exam, Gender discrimination, gender equality, liu yandong, universities, women in politics, women leaders, women's rights
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After knocking some good sense into those misguided women who pursue a higher education, the column accuses educated, single women of sleeping around and having degenerate morals:

Many highly educated “leftover women” are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most “leftover women” do not deserve our sympathy.

Glad we got that straight. Now, why would China’s state feminist agency conduct a scare-mongering campaign against single, educated women?

Curious, I searched the Women’s Federation Web site and found that it posted its first article on “leftover” women in 2007, shortly after China’s State Council issued an edict on strengthening the Population and Family Planning program to address “unprecedented population pressures.” These pressures include the sex-ratio imbalance — which “causes a threat to social stability” — and the “low quality of the general population, which makes it hard to meet the requirements of fierce competition for national strength,” according to the State Council. The State Council names “upgrading population quality (suzhi)” as one of its key goals, and appoints the Women’s Federation as a primary implementer of its population planning policy.

What better way to upgrade population quality than to frighten “high-quality” women into marrying and having a child for the good of the nation?

Read more about “leftover women” and about women’s rights in China via CDT. See also the All-China Women’s Federation website.

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Post tags: all china womens federation, higher education, leftover women, marriage, women's rights
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IN 2006, when she was seven months pregnant, Kim Lee was kicked so hard in the abdomen by her husband that she needed hospital treatment. Such domestic violence, though shocking, is not uncommon in China. Around a quarter of Chinese women have experienced domestic abuse, according to the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF), a state-controlled NGO, but experts say the real figure is probably much higher. Concerns about losing family “face” mean many incidents go unreported, and few offenders are ever punished.

What makes Ms Lee different is that she is a white American. Her husband is Li Yang, the celebrity founder of Crazy English, a wildly popular English-language training institute, which encourages students to learn English by shouting it at the top of their voices.

The few people Ms Lee confided in, including her Chinese sister-in-law, told her to stop provoking her husband. When she complained to the police, after suffering concussion and bruised ribs, they told her to “relax and go home”. Frustrated, she turned to the internet, posting photos on a Chinese microblog last August. One showed a lump the size of a golf ball protruding from her forehead. Another showed a bloody ear. The photos caused a sensation. Hundreds of thousands of comments were published about them on microblogs. Since then, many more victims of domestic violence have come forward, and the issue has been reported and discussed more widely in Chinese media.

China.org.cn reports from outside the courtroom last Friday, noting the gathering of activists outside the courtroom showing their support for Lee and her cause:

At 8:40 am, as Lee walked into the court, she was surrounded by the activist group. The volunteers painted fake injuries on their face and held a banner saying “Zero Tolerance to the Domestic Violence – Anyone Could Be the Next One,” also presenting a scroll with over 1,000 signatures to Kim.

In response to the display, Li Yang called the tactic a publicity stunt, saying “A Lawsuit is a lawsuit, you can’t engage in such planning” to reporters encircling him outside the court.

Li Yang insisted that his actions did not constitute domestic violence, saying the incident with Lee was an isolated spat of anger which had been building up over a long period. “I don’t think that I’m a [perpetrator] of domestic violence. I think I did a good job in taking care of my family,” Li said.

[...]“When I walked into the court, Li Yang threatened me and said that you have to shut up today because this is in China. He also demanded that I shut down my Weibo,” Lee said.

“I’m so touched and very happy because so many people paid attention to me and helped me,” Lee said of the support she received after news of the incident broke.

China Daily reports on what was on the table at the hearings:

According to Lee’s lawyer, Lee gave up real properties that had been transferred by Li before the trial because she did not want to spend much more time on the suit and hoped to end her relationship with Li as soon as possible.

“My client gave up dividing stock and brand rights of Li’s company, Crazy English, since it will cost her more energy and make the trial longer,” Qi said.

“The transferred real properties were also hard to divide, so Kim Lee will also give up the appeal on them.”
However, for nine estate properties that Li did not transfer or that he changed to other names,Lee will ask to have eight of them divided, the lawyer said.

In addition, Lee is insisting on custody of the couple’s three children who are living in Beijing with her, Qi said, adding that the court will likely make decisions on all issues by the end of August.

[...]When reporters asked Li whether there was domestic violence, Li did not answer directly. Instead, he added the perceived violence might be a difference between Chinese and Western cultures.

Currently, there is no strong legal mechanism protecting women from domestic abuse in China. As public concern grows around this issue, that may soon change.

Also see CDT coverage of how Lee’s public outcry has stimulated a debate about domestic violence in China.

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Post tags: divorce, domestic violence, family, Kim Lee, Li Yang, women's rights
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Kate Ba is in her late 20s and works at a public relations firm in Beijing. While men might still wield a lot of the power, says Ms Ba, more women are rising through the ranks and they are not afraid of pursuing their own career goals. “My generation are just now starting to become managers, and in the future I think we’ll see more women as presidents and CEOs, far more than in my mother’s generation.”

Yet, according to the article, women with successful careers have their worries as well:

Those women who do want to start a family can find it difficult to break out of the newfound career track. Many women complain that the more successful and financially independent a woman becomes, the harder it can be to settle down. This prompts the fear of becoming a shengnü or “left-behind woman”.