What Is the Significance of China’s #MeToo Movement?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Aaron Halegua, Kevin Lin & more on March 20, 2018

As the #MeToo movement has swept America, it has also made waves in greater China. On the mainland, the most widely publicized incident involved Luo Xixi’s allegation in a January 2018 Weibo post that her professor at Beihang University, Chen Xiaowu, sexually harassed her over a decade ago. The allegation lead to Chen’s dismissal. Since then, Chinese women have organized at least 70 open letters to universities and have posted some of their stories of sexual harassment on social media, with the #MeToo hashtag attracting over 4.5 million hits on Weibo. The government has tried to suppress some of this, blocking the #MeToo hashtag and deleting posts, and China’s social media movement has had difficulty moving “offline,” as it has outside of China. Nonetheless, some Chinese officials have acknowledged that sexual harassment is a problem and are discussing how universities and government agencies should respond. Hong Kong women have similarly been taking to social media to air their grievances.

County in Yunnan ‘Cleans Up’ Foreign NGOs and Foundations

on March 20, 2018

The Discipline Inspection Commission website for Qujing City, Shizong County, Yunnan province recently posted an article describing the actions the county took in response to the recommendations of a provincial discipline inspection team that inspected the county last summer. The “rectification” actions taken by the county are grouped into three categories: Party leadership, Party building, and Party governance. Under the Party leadership section, one paragraph details the measures the county took to deal with two specific “evil cults,” including a “clean-up” campaign aimed at foreign NGOs and foundations.

Sophia Huang Xueqin

on March 19, 2018

Sophia Huang Xueqin is a freelance journalist, an Asia Journalism Fellow, and a feminist activist. She previously worked for national news agencies and newspapers in China. Last October, she started a WeChat public account called ATSH (Anti-Sexual Harassment) to conduct national online surveys on workplace sexual harassment, to share her findings, and to publish essays on women’s stories and other human right issues.

Tillerson’s Last Act: ‘Do as I Say, Not as I Do’ Advice for Africa

A China in Africa Podcast

By Eric Olander & Brooks Spector on March 19, 2018

There is a certain irony when a U.S. envoy travels to Africa to warn his hosts about the dangers of borrowing money from China. The United States, after all, is the world’s most indebted country and borrows more from China than any other nation in the world. In fact, China owns more than a trillion dollars of U.S. debt, nearly 20 percent of Washington’s $6.3 trillion of outstanding debt owned by foreigners.

Young China

By Zak Dychtwald on March 16, 2018

St. Martin’s Press: The author of Young China: How the Restless Generation Will Change Their Country and the World, who is in his twenties and fluent in Chinese, examines the future of China through the lens of the jiu ling hou, the generation born after 1990.

Excerpts

03.12.18

A Chinese Mayor-to-Be Tells His Story

Zak Dychtwald
When I lived with Tom in the city of Chengdu in 2015 and into 2016, he was a 23-year-old probationary member of the Chinese Communist Party, on his way to joining the organization’s nearly 90 million full members. He wanted to embark on a career in...

A close-up look at the Chinese generation born after 1990 exploring through personal encounters how young Chinese feel about everything from money and sex to their government, the West, and China’s shifting role in the world―not to mention their love affair with food, karaoke, and travel. Set primarily in the eastern second-tier city of Suzhou and the budding western metropolis of Chengdu, the book charts the touchstone issues this young generation faces. From single-child pressure to test-taking madness and the frenzy to buy an apartment as a prerequisite to marriage, from one-night-stands to an evolving understanding of family, Young China offers a fascinating portrait of the generation who will define what it means to be Chinese in the modern era.

Book Review: 

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, The Wall Street Journal (February 14, 2018)

Randy Dotinga, The Christian Science Monitor (February 13, 2018)

Brendan Driscoll, Booklist Online (February 13, 2018)

Kirkus Reviews (December 10, 2017)

Related Reading:

“China’s 400 Million Millennials Balance Expectations of Family, Culture and a Modern World,” Zak Dychtwald, WBUR, February 27, 2018

“Chinese Millennials Are about to Kick US Millennials’ Butts,” Zak Dychtwald, New York Post, February 17, 2018

Author’s Recommendations:

A Billion Voices: China’s Search for a Common Language, David Moser (Penguin Specials, 2016)

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Peter Hessler (Harper Perennial, 2006)

The Great Chinese Revolution: 1800-1985, John King Fairbank (Harper & Row, 1986)

Yizhi Huang

on March 16, 2018

Yizhi Huang is a Chinese public interest lawyer who focuses on anti-discrimination issues. She graduated from the Tsinghua University School of Law in 2007 and obtained her Master’s degree in international human rights law from the University of Hong Kong in 2015. She has worked at a rights advocacy NGO and litigated many public interest cases, including impact cases on hepatitis B discrimination, the first case on genetic discrimination in China, and China’s first case on gender-based employment discrimination.

Di Wang

on March 16, 2018

Di Wang is a feminist researcher and advocate from China. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin−Madison, and the Scholar in Residence of CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York. She has worked on projects that evaluate the impact of law on women’s and LGBTQ rights in China and in the U.S. with organizations such as PILnet, Gender Equality Advocacy and Action Network (GEAAN), and the University of Wisconsin Law School.

Lü Pin

on March 16, 2018

Lü Pin（吕频）is a Chinese feminist activist focusing on strategic advocacy to combat gender-based discrimination and violence. She started her work on women’s rights in the late 1990s. In 2009, she founded Feminist Voices, China’s largest new media platform on women’s issues. Since 2012, she has been devoted to supporting the activism of young feminists across China. She now resides in Albany, New York, where she continues to follow the feminist movement in China closely.

Kevin Lin

on March 16, 2018

Kevin Lin is the China Program Officer at the International Labor Rights Forum. His work is focused on labor rights and civil society in China.