On Sunday, Renmin University Ph.D. candidate Wang Di publicly accused her doctoral supervisor Wang Guiyuan (no relation) of sexual harassment and assault in a video that went viral on Chinese social media. Her supervisor was previously the Party secretary and vice dean of Renmin University’s School of Liberal Arts. Displaying her university ID card and using her real name, Wang Di presented detailed evidence, including audio recordings and screenshots of messages, to describe the harassment and appeal for support. Kanis Leung from the Associated Press provided more information about Wang’s accusation:
The woman, who identified herself as Wang Di, said she is studying in a doctoral program at Renmin University of China’s School of Liberal Arts. She posted a 59-minute video on Sunday on the Weibo social media platform in which she said her supervisor, an ex-vice dean and former Communist Party representative at the school in Beijing, physically and verbally abused her.
She also said that for more than two years after she rejected him, he assigned her many tasks, scolded her and threatened that she would not graduate. She also posted audio clips which she said were evidence of the harassment. In one, a man could be heard trying to kiss a woman, who kept saying, “No, no, teacher.”
“At this moment, I can no longer endure it and have nowhere to retreat, so I am speaking out,” she wrote. She demanded that the professor be punished and a new supervisor be appointed for her. She wore a mask in the video, but held up an identification card.
Her post drew 2.2 million likes as of Monday evening, with many users leaving comments in support of the student. [Source]
The very next day, Renmin University announced that it had set up an investigation into the matter, and later that day it concluded that the student’s allegations were true. The university stated that it had expelled Wang Guiyuan from the Party, revoked his professorship, canceled his qualification as a graduate-student supervisor, and fired him from the university. Police in Beijing’s Haidian district, where the university is located, also posted on Weibo that they will launch an investigation into Wang Guiyuan’s suspected illegal behavior.
Wang Di then published a Weibo post expressing her gratitude to the university for its swift handling of the matter and to all the netizens who voiced their support for her. However, her initial video describing the accusations has been removed from Bilibili and Weibo. It is not clear whether authorities pressured her into deleting it.
In the wake of her accusation, many netizens expressed frustration that the burden is always placed disproportionately on #MeToo victims to ensure their safety. WeChat public account Ai Daxun wrote in an article that was later censored: “A society that protects victims’ rights would never require them to display their scars to the public. Weibo’s transformation into the only place where victims can seek help illustrates the dysfunction of our social system.” The author expounded upon the need to provide greater support to victims of sexual harassment:
I hope everyone can stay focused and angry. As long as the status quo remains unchanged, we must continue to ask: How did this happen? Why is there such a lack of social support systems that victim after victim must rip open their scars in the glare of the spotlight in order to get our attention?
In this case, the doctoral student who reported Wang Guiyuan was able to tell her story in a rational and restrained manner, and even produced a nearly hour-long video in which she displayed relevant evidence and narrated the events that occurred. But does every victim have the ability to tell their story, preserve evidence, produce videos, and inform the public in this way?
Rather than expecting victims to constantly demonstrate their innocence by behaving flawlessly, we should endeavor to provide each and every victim with our support and trust.
Each of us is a vital part of that social support system. [Chinese]
Following Wang Di’s accusation, Zhou Xiaoxuan (better known as Xianzi) wrote a long Weibo post critiquing the lack of clear and robust processes to aid and support students who have been the victims of harassment. She wrote: “If the only way to resolve sexual harassment in colleges and universities is for students to appeal to the public for help, that is a disgrace, a dereliction of duty on the part of schools and society as a whole.” Zong He wrote a similar post on WeChat, arguing that it should not be this difficult for universities to protect the rights of their female students:
As with other cases of students reporting teachers, there will always be contrarian voices, those who demand to know why the students did not report the incident to the police immediately or seek help from the school first, and those who claim that public reporting will only tarnish a university’s reputation and destroy morale. But has it ever occurred to these people that if there were smooth, efficient rights-protection mechanisms within academic institutions, students would not have to resort to the desperate measure of putting themselves at the center of a public opinion storm?
[…] Although public reporting can help achieve a just outcome, it is not a normal way to handle disputes. The normal state of affairs would be to open up feedback channels, improve sexual-harassment prevention mechanisms, and promptly punish teachers who cross the line so that students are free from the fear of “not being able to graduate.” [Chinese]
Wang Di’s resolution appears to be a rare victory for China’s #MeToo movement, given the lack of justice in many high-profile incidents. Tennis star Peng Shuai was disappeared, forcibly re-appeared, and forcibly retired after her November 2021 sexual-assault accusation against former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Gaoli. In August 2022, Xianzi lost her appeal in a landmark sexual harassment case against CCTV host Zhu Jun. And last month, #MeToo journalist and feminist activist Huang Xueqin (who was arrested and tried alongside labor-rights activist Wang Jianbing) was convicted of inciting subversion and sentenced to five years in prison.
It is also somewhat rare for such a viral #MeToo accusation to avoid censorship. Peng Shuai’s Weibo post was censored within 30 minutes. Xianzi’s Weibo account has been repeatedly suspended. Friends of Liu Jingyao, a student who accused the billionaire founder of JD.com of rape, said that their social media accounts and posts were deleted by censors. Poet Yu Xiuhua’s accusation of domestic violence at the hands of her estranged husband in 2022 was deleted shortly after it was published to Weibo. Weibo has censored thousands of accounts for “creating gender opposition,” with many of them commenting on #MeToo-related issues.
Under Xi Jinping and his all-male Politburo, #MeToo cases have experienced continued censorship and suppression. Last year, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) critiqued China’s progress in implementing the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. In addition to highlighting its concern about cases of sexual harassment of girls at school, the committee also mentioned that many judges “apply gender stereotypes and give little weight to women’s testimony, evidence and claims,” and noted that there is a “lack of information on the number and outcome of cases of discrimination against women brought before the courts and competent authorities.” For more about how women’s rights in China have evolved over the past decade, see CDT’s most recent interview with Leta Hong Fincher.
