Hostname: page-component-68c7f8b79f-b57wx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-01-18T01:20:38.529Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

#MeToo in China: How Do the Voiceless Rise Up in an Authoritarian State?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Xiong Jing  and
Dušica Ristivojević
Xiong Jing
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Dušica Ristivojević
Affiliation:
University of Helsinki
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Amid the global #MeToo movement, the #MeToo movement in China started in early 2018. For over a year, several influential cases, broad civic participation and engagement, as well as extensive discussions shocked and shook the whole country, creating a sociopolitical dynamic that was unusual in the context of persistent suppression of civil society and strict restrictions on freedom of speech. As feminist activists and researchers—Jing living and working in China, Dušica doing her fieldwork in Taiwan at the time—we were astounded by the powerful challenge that #MeToo has posed to misogynistic societies around the globe. What we have been trying to understand is how the #MeToo movement emerged and grew even as so many other social movements were suppressed in China, and what strategies the survivors, volunteers, and activists in the #MeToo movement used to break through the overwhelming censorship and restrictions.

Information

Type
Critical Perspectives on Gender and Politics
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 490 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Abbott, Jason P. 2019. “Of Grass Mud Horses and Rice Bunnies: Chinese Internet Users Challenge Beijing's Censorship and Internet Controls.” Asian Politics & Policy 11 (1): 162–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Committee to Protect Journalists. 2019. “10 Most Censored Countries.” https://cpj.org/reports/2019/09/10-most-censored-eritrea-north-korea-turkmenistan-journalist/#5 (acccessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Freedom House. 2019. “Freedom on the Net 2019: China.” https://freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-net/2019 (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Fu, Diana. 2016. “Disguised Collective Action in China.” Comparative Political Studies 50 (4): 499–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guangyan. 2019. “The Story of My Experiences in Last Year's #MeToo Movement: An Activist's Notes.” [In Chinese.] September 26. https://theinitium.com/article/20190926-opinion-mainland-ngo-metoo/ (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Kagal, Neha, Cowan, Leah, and Jawad, Huda. 2019. “Beyond the Bright Lights: Are Minoritized Women Outside the Spotlight Able to Say #MeToo?” In #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change, eds. Fileborn, Bianca and Howes, Rachel Loney. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 133–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Zhongxuan, and Yang, Liu. 2019. “‘Me Too!’: Individual Empowerment of Disabled Women in the #MeToo Movement in China.” Disability & Society 34 (5): 842–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lion. 2018. “An Insider on the Edge of the #MeToo Whirlpool: How Do I Fight Sexual Harassment in My Anthropology Department at Sun Yat Sen University?” [In Chinese.] July 18. https://theinitium.com/article/20180718-opinion-sunyetsan-university-sexual-harassment/ (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Mistreanu, Simina. 2019. “China's #MeToo Activists Have Transformed a Generation.” Foreign Policy, January 10. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/10/chinas-metoo-activists-have-transformed-a-generation/ (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Mu Chunshan. 2018. “China's Sudden #MeToo Movement.” The Diplomat, July 31. https://thediplomat.com/2018/07/chinas-sudden-metoo-movement/ (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Pils, Eva. 2018. “From Independent Lawyer Groups to Civic Opposition: The Case of China's New Citizen Movement.” Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal 19 (1): 110–52.Google Scholar
Pin, Lü. 2019. “Finding a Voice.” ChinaFile, March 28. https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/finding-voice (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Reporters without Borders. 2019. “World Press Freedom Index: China.” https://rsf.org/en/china (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Safeguard Defenders. 2020. “Rampant Repression: A Data Analysis of China's use of Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (2013–2020).” https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/rampant-repression (accessed June 30, 2021).Google Scholar
Sun, Wei. 2019. “Rice Bunny and #WoYeShi: Online Reactions of Overseas Chinese to the #MeToo Movements in China and the West.” Howard Journal of Communications 31 (3): 245–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 2018. “Concluding Observations on the Combined Rourteenth to Seventeenth Periodic Reports of China (Including Hong Kong, China and Macao, China).” https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1638955?ln=en (accessed June 30, 2021).Google Scholar
Xiong, Jing. 2018. “From Margin to Center: Feminist Mobilization in Digital China.” In Gender Dynamics, Feminist Activism and Social Transformation in China, eds. Wu, Guoguang, Feng, Yuan, and Lansdowne, Helen. London: Routledge, 215–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xu, Beina, and Albert, Eleanor. 2017. “Media Censorship in China.” Council on Foreign Relations, February 17. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/media-censorship-china (accessed June 1, 2020).Google Scholar
Zeng, J. 2019. “You Say #MeToo, I Say #MiTu: China’s Online Campaigns Against Sexual Abuse,” In #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change, eds. Fileborn, B. and Loney-Howes, R., Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 71–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15213-0_5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Z., and Cao, Y.. 2017. “Report on the Ecological Changes of China's Investigative Journalists in New Media Environment.” Modern Communication (Journal of Communication University of China) 11: 27–33.Google Scholar