#MeToo Supporters in China Discouraged as Accuser Faces Court Delay
By Chao Deng, 5/22/21, Wall St. Journal

When a former intern at China’s state broadcaster accused
one of the country’s best-known TV anchors of sexual harass-
ment in 2018, it energized women’s rights activists in the
country, who saw it as a sign the #MeToo movement was gaining
momentum in China.

But 3 years later, many supporters of #MeToo say they are
pessimistic about the prospects for cases filed by accusers
& the willingness of more people to come forward, as some
face defamation suits & the former intern, Zhou Xiaoxuan,
objects to way the court is handling her lawsuit alleging
sexual harassment against CCTV presenter Zhu Jun.
Zhu denies wrongdoing.

On Fri, hours before a scheduled hearing in Zhou’s case,
she published a post on China’s Twitter -like Weibo service
saying the court had notified her lawyers that her case
would be delayed.

It couldn’t be determined why the court delayed the case.
The Chinese court system is sometimes opaque & often doesn’t
make its processes & reasoning for decisions public.
Regardless of the reason, many of her supporters
expressed disappointment about the delay.

“We don’t know what’s happening,” Zhou said in an interview,
adding that the court hadn’t offered an explanation for the
delay or given her a new court date. The Beijing court
didn’t answer phone calls.

Darius Longarino, an expert on Chinese law at Yale, said
Zhou’s case is sensitive for the govt because it involves
a high-profile state media personality & is generating a
large amount of attention & discussion. He said it's
difficult to know why her case was postponed or how frequent
delays are in the Chinese legal system. “Political pressure
is exerted in sensitive cases,” he said. “However, no official
is going to tell you if a decision was the result of
political pressure.”

The delay came after Zhou released a number of details
about her case on Weibo on Thurs, saying she was upset the
court hadn’t classified her case as a sexual-harassment
claim or made the court hearings public.

Zhou filed her lawsuit in 2018 claiming an infringement
on personal dignity, because that was the legal option
available at the time to those alleging sexual harassment.
After the country’s Supreme People’s Court allowed sexual
harassment to be listed as a cause for action in 2019, she
sought to have her case amended.

Acc. to Zhou’s description released Thurs, the judge at a
hearing in Dec had rejected her request on the grounds that
the category applied only to disputes at education institutions.

Longarino said that the court had no basis to reject Zhou’s
request to classify her claim as a sexual-harassment case,
& that other court cases in which alleged sexual harassment
didn’t take place in an educational facility have proceeded
under such a classification. “They’re clearly getting to the
result they want thru ungrounded reasoning,” he said.

Discussion of #MeToo in China took off in 2018, after a
series of allegations & petitions by university students &
alumni complaining of sexual harassment by professors.
Since then, though, the movement has collided with what
activists say are cultural norms that frown on questioning
the status quo & deep-seated biases against women in society.

Many women who have come forward with sexual-harassment
allegations also have ended up being the target of threats
& defamation cases by the men they accused. Women in other
countries have also faced defamation lawsuits after making
accusations.

Beijing has sought to keep a lid on grassroots campaigns
of all kinds, including those for women’s rights.

More than a dozen feminist social-media accounts were
deleted from Chinese social-media sites last month. At the
time, Weibo said in a post on its verified official account
that some accounts were taken down because they were related
to "illegal or hurtful info,” without elaborating.

Feng Yuan, a prominent feminist scholar & co-founder of
Equality, a Beijing-based nonprofit for women’s rights &
gender equality, says censorship of #MeToo discussions on
the Chinese internet is a challenge for the movement.

“They think people raising awareness of the problem are a
threat to social stability,” said Feng. “Almost all cases
that come out are treated as a PR issue.”

China’s cybersecurity admin, the internet watchdog,
didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Feng said she was angry that the court had informed Zhou
of the delay just a few hours before the hearing, saying
courts are required to give 3 days’ notice. She said
authorities may need more time to respond to the details
that Zhou made public the night before the scheduled hearing.

In 2018, an essay Zhou had written containing her alle-
gations against Zhu went viral on Chinese social media.
After that, Zhu lodged a defamation case against her. The
suit alleges that Zhou posted slanderous & inaccurate
material on Weibo out of ill will. Zhou denied his
allegations in the defamation suit.

After that suit was filed, Zhou filed her suit in Sept
2018, alleging that Zhu forcibly groped & kissed her
4 years earlier when she was an intern for his program,
acc. to the complaint she submitted to the court.

Zhu’s lawyer declined to comment. Zhu said on Weibo last
Dec that he never touched Zhou & had been subjected to
unfair humiliation.

Zhu hasn’t appeared on CCTV’s programs recently but remains
listed as a host on the broadcaster’s website. CCTV didn’t
respond to a request for comment. Zhou is now a freelance
screenwriter.

Her supporters said they were disappointed about Friday’s
delay. Chen Mi, a college student in Beijing, said she had
planned to show up outside the Beijing court on Friday with
friends to support Zhou. She said she didn’t see much of a
future for #MeToo in China because of the trial’s delay
& the way Zhou said her case was being handled.

Xiong Jing, a former editor at Feminist Voices, a Chinese
media platform that no longer publishes, was following news
of the trial from Hong Kong. She said that the difficulties
Zhou has encountered, including the defamation case & the
refusal of the court to classify her suit as sexual
harassment, were a blow to other Chinese victims of sexual
harassment who might be thinking about whether to make
their accusations public.

“It’s discouraging,” she said. Referring to the nickname
Zhou goes by among her supporters, Xiong added, “I think
for many of them, Xianzi is like their role model.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/metoo-supporters-in-china-discouraged-as-accuser-faces-court-delay-11621681201