Towards the end of last year, there were a few unrelated incidents that became talking points regarding the #MeToo movement. China watchers started following one of them with great interest not only because it’s a micro cosmos into the #MeToo movement of the Chinese-speaking world but also because it happened during the time when the world is about to cast its eyes on China and the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Unless you have lived under a rock, you must have heard the name Peng Shuai, a Chinese tennis star who wrote on the internet something forbidden: an accusation that Zhang Gaoli sexually assaulted her and coerced her to have sex with him. Zhang Gaoli was the Senior Vice-Premier of China between 2013 and 2018, meaning at the height of power in the CCP. So naturally, Peng Shuai’s post was eradicated from the Chinese internet, any mentions of the allegations was cleansed and even’tennis’ was censored because that just how the CCP operates. There are also several pathetically clumsy attempts by the party and its massive propaganda apparatus, CGTN, to trick other countries to think that everything is fine, Peng Shuai is safe and doesn’t wish to be interviewed – because the CCP forced her to wish so and will force her into any staged appearance they need her to.
Now, what you have to understand that despite calling itself a socialist state, China is very much divided into two kinds of people: the untouchable CCP elite and the expendable riff-raff, aka everybody else. For a CCP higher-up, whatever crimes you commit will go unpunished provided they didn’t involve the party or its power, of course. On the other hand, a regular Chinese person seeking justice is going to get screwed badly. Were it not due to the fact that Peng Shuai is a high-profile superstar in tennis, she would have disappeared into the system and none of us would ever have heard that name in the first place. There are tens of thousands of Peng Shuais disappearing in China every year.
On December 1st, the Women’s Tennis Association finally decided to suspend all tournaments in China and Hong Kong. The WTA specifically named Peng Shuai in its press release. Now, it’s January 2022, the Beijing Winter Olympics are weeks away and we don’t know where she is. And there are still decent countries that haven’t announced joining the diplomatic boycott. The Olympics will go ahead as if nothing happened, and you know why. Because Zhang Gaoli, the man accused of sexually assaulting Peng Shuai, was the one who welcomed the International Olympic Committee into Beijing in 2016 when the 2022 Winter Olympics were handed to Beijing. Zhang Gaoli is buddies with the IOC and buddies stick together, right?
Meanwhile, on the other side of the strait, people accused of sexual assaults actually get investigated. In the beginning of December, a Taiwanese lawmaker Kao Chia-yu (DPP) filed a criminal report against her boyfriend for domestic violence. Kao is a rising star in Taiwanese politics and a very high-profile politician. Not only was she the youngest person ever elected to the parliament in 2005, she also gets a lot of mentions in different online discussion.
When the domestic violence allegations became public, Huang Ching-wei, member of KMT central committee, decided to sink to the level of victim blaming, stating that the beating was deserved. He then went on writing that a ”woman surnamed Tsai” shouldn’t defend Kao since this lady called Tsai herself hasn’t been beaten by a man. Tsai refers to the sitting Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, who is the country’s first woman in the office and is unmarried and childless. When she was first elected to the presidency, she got her share of disrespectful comments from none other than the CCP and its mouthpieces.
Taiwan has already started the process of criminalising stalking and harassment. And unlike in the mainland, in Taiwan the law is the same for everyone. And Taiwan doesn’t even have a major international sporting event to host, which would put pressure on officials to take care of people’s safety and making sure they get justice.
So, these are two very different reactions to sexual harassment allegations. And the differences can’t be dismissed as cultural differences since we are dealing with the Chinese-speaking world in both cases. The differences stem from two different political systems and political cultures: in the one-party dictatorship, where the beloved leaders are gods, things like this won’t get investigated but censored instead. In a multiparty country where power can be changed by the ballot, and where politicians face scrutiny just as the regular folk, the victims have the support of the law and their community.