#MeToo? Silence, shame and the cost of speaking out about sexual harassment in China

Xu Yalu, 28, was sexually harassed in public by the same elderly man on three occasions during the four years she spent working in Jingansi, one of Shanghai’s poshest business districts. The police told her there was not a thing they could do about it.

“Each time police would tell me he is too old for detention or he could not help himself because of his neurological condition,” Xu told the South China Morning Post.

Inspired by the global #MeToo movement, she posted an article on WeChat on November 27 detailing how she was groped by the man in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The article went viral within two days. It was viewed more than 1.19 million times, received more than 17,000 likes and nearly 9,000 comments before it was deleted by Chinese censors.

The #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment, that began in the US, has been translated into multiple languages around the world and prompted countless women to come forward with their own stories. But in China, the narrative is very different.

Even as more women try to come forward, they face a host of barriers: police inaction, a legal system ill-equipped to address their claims, state crackdowns on activism and immense pressure both from society at large and those closest to them.

The women who spoke to the South China Morning Post for this article may have come from different cities and backgrounds, but their stories were strikingly similar: in one way or another they felt they had been silenced and shamed for speaking out.

Many of the comments on Xu’s article said she must have been asking for it, while some asked if she had been wearing revealing clothes. But as she dug through the pile of hurtful comments, Xu discovered accounts by more than 100 women of harassment by the same man, with the earliest – involving a victim who was only 14 at the time – dating back two decades.