Sexual harassment and assault

Ten years after she was groped by a man on a Beijing bus, Wanda is still haunted by the memory. Now 31, Wanda – who asked to be identified only by her first name – said she froze when a man pressed himself against her on the bus and began thrusting his lower body at her. That was but one of several times she experienced sexual harassment on public transport. Wanda said she had also been flashed at in public and, just last year, was forced to block a man with her purse when he tried to touch her leg on a train. Wanda’s experience is not unusual, but attempts to address the problem of sexual harassment on public transport in China have met with mixed results. Two major cities in southern China

Last month, the Supreme People’s Court of China published four so-called typical cases of sexual abuse of children. The top court vowed to use all means, including the death penalty, to punish child sex offenders. I feel encouraged by the news as it shows China is adopting a zero-tolerance attitude. I was also a victim of child sex abuse, one of many girls molested by a teacher at my primary school in the eastern city of Nanjing. This is a hidden but growing epidemic. News portal Caixin.com reported that some 8% to 12% of China’s 270 million minors might have experienced sexual assault, including rape for 1%.  “It means that nearly 30 million Chinese children could have been the victims of s

Public outrage has followed a police decision not to press charges against a father who was filmed kissing and caressing his young daughter on a train in southeastern China. In a video, which went viral this week, the 30-year-old man is seen fondling a young girl sitting in his lap. The man lifts the child’s shirt, strokes her back and tries to kiss her on the mouth. The girl appears to be trying to push the man away. “The father then put his hands under her pants. The girl then said, ‘father, you are touching my buttocks again, it’s painful.’ She continued to struggle,” a female passenger who filmed the video told the Hangzhou-based newspaper City Express, adding that she had not filmed thi

It was just past 10am on a Friday morning in late August, and a 16-year-old girl by the name of Zhang had to go to the bank. So she did what 20 million Chinese people do every day: she hailed a taxi through the popular Didi Chuxing ride-booking app, China’s biggest hailing platform. Soon enough she received a notification that a “Master Sun” was en route to her home in the eastern port city of Yantai. Minutes later, he called to confirm the pickup point. She got into the taxi, which turned out to be unlicensed. The driver’s name was not Sun, as the Didi app had showed, but Zhang Weixing, 36. As he drove off, he told the teenager how much he liked her. He said he wanted to go to the seaside w

Warning: this story contains details that some may find distressing. The suicide of a 19-year-old girl in northwestern China has prompted a collective wave of soul-searching online. Last week, the teenager, identified as Ms Li by police, was discovered sitting on the edge of a building in Qingyang, a city in Gansu province. Rescuers spent hours trying to convince her to return to safety. The same couldn’t be said for some of the onlookers. They shot videos and live-streamed the incident from their mobile phones. In one of the most circulated videos, a woman said the girl was being a coward for not jumping. In some of the social media posts, some onlookers said she should take her own life so

China’s ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing will soon resume its nighttime carpooling service – but only if the drivers and passengers are of the same sex. Didi limited the Uber Pool-like service, called Hitch, to 6am to 10pm last month after a driver was suspected of raping and stabbing to death a 21-year-old female passenger. On Wednesday, the company announced that it plans to expand Hitch’s operating hours to cover from 5am to midnight, starting from June 15. But between the hours of 5am to 6am and 10pm to midnight, Hitch drivers will only be allowed pick up passengers of the same sex, Didi said in an online statement. Like Uber and Airbnb, Didi, which recorded 7.4 billion rides last year,

Police in Los Angeles are investigating dozens of sexual abuse allegations against a gynecologist at the University of Southern California, who may have targeted students from China. The authorities are looking into complaints from 1990 to 2016, during which Dr George Tyndall may have treated more than 10,000 women. The authorities are encouraging all potential victims to come forward. “LAPD stands ready to listen, respond, investigate, and ultimately work with prosecutors where the facts may lead us,” Assistant Chief Beatrice Girmala told reporters at a press conference. Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times published an investigation into Tyndall, the sole full-time gynecologist at the

Chinese internet users have expressed outrage over an escalating scandal at the University of Southern California, in which professors are now calling for the resignation of the university’s president. Last week, the Los Angeles Times published an investigation into Dr George Tyndall, the sole full-time gynecologist at USC’s student health clinic. It reported that he had quietly left the university, after allegedly having sexually abused female students for decades. The doctor was particularly suspected of targeting international students from China. More than 5,000 students from China study at USC. They’re the biggest group of international students there and comprise more than one-tenth of

Her family name, Gao, means “high” in Chinese. Yan, her given name, means “a rock.” Gao Yan. A tall rock. In life as in name, Gao stood out among her peers. In the summer of 1995, she earned a place at the prestigious Peking University to study Chinese literature. She was a star student, but she was known among her friends for her brilliance as much as for her warmth. And then she wanted out. In the second half of her freshman year, Gao told her mother that she didn’t want to go to school any more. Two years later, in 1998, Gao turned on the gas in her apartment and suffocated herself. For 20 years, the suicide of one of China’s brightest students had gone largely unnoticed, until a global

The day before International Women’s Day in 2015, women's rights activist Wu Rongrong was dragged off a plane from Shenzhen and taken to a police station in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. She was locked up for 37 days, interrogated by day and left to sleep on the floor at night. And all because she planned to hold up signs at local bus stops to protest pervasive sexual harassment on public transport.  “The police officers asked me ‘why are you against sexual harassment?’,” Wu recalls. “I told them: ‘it is a real problem, and I’m scared of it.’” ​ The detention of Wu and four other female activists ahead of International Women’s Day triggered an international outcry, with US and Europ