Former Chinese university vice-president fired, kicked out of party after #MeToo allegation
- Cai Xiang found to have maintained ‘inappropriate sexual relationships, accepted bribes and misused public funds’
- He was accused of sexual harassment in a 2018 social media post and a six-month investigation into his conduct followed
A former vice-president of a top Chinese university has been sacked and stripped of his Communist Party membership after a six-month investigation into sexual harassment and corruption allegations.
China’s education disciplinary commission and the party’s disciplinary watchdog for Beijing municipality found that Cai Xiang had maintained “inappropriate sexual relationships with several women, accepted bribes and misused public funds”.
“[The commission] has removed Cai’s party membership, terminated his university post and confiscated his illicit gains,” said a statement posted on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the country’s top graft-buster, on Wednesday.
Cai was vice-president of the Communication University of China between 2014 and January 2018, according to the statement. He was then assigned to the role of doctorate and master’s student supervisor at its Institute of Communication Studies.
The university is well known for training talent in the television and film industry at its campus in Beijing. In recent years, allegations of sexual misconduct involving staff and students at the campus have circulated on social media platforms.
In July 2018, a woman claiming to be one of Cai’s former students accused him of sexual harassment in a social media post that was widely shared on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.