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The #MeToo movement has arrived in China. The Communist Party is worried.
WHEN Luo Xixi was studying for a PhD at Beihang University in Beijing, her supervisor, Chen Xiaowu, asked her to go with him to his sister’s house to look after her plants. Women, she recalled him saying at the time, are innately better at domestic chores. Once in the house, she says, he demanded sex, letting her go only when she pleaded she was a virgin. As she left, he warned her not to tell anyone, claiming he had merely been testing her to see whether she was “a well-mannered student”.
Thirteen years later, in October 2017, Ms Luo was working in Silicon Valley as news spread of a social-media campaign by victims of sexual harassment using the hashtag #MeToo. With a handful of fellow Beihang graduates, she formed a group on WeChat, a messaging app, to discuss the abuse they had suffered. Ms Luo decided to take her case to the university. For three months, the college remained silent while Mr Chen began his own campaign, warning possible accusers not to let themselves become “agents of evil foreign forces”.
