China is finally hearing #MeToo accusers out

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August 10, 2021

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Jen Psaki gets the Vogue treatment, things are going downhill fast for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and a #MeToo scandal rocks China. Have a productive Tuesday.
– Hearing them out. The #MeToo movement triggered seismic shifts in some places—the U.S., especially—but it only caused small ripples elsewhere. One such example is China, where victims of sexual assault or harassment are asked to provide video evidence, accusers are sued for defamation, and allegations are considered a threat to the social order that the government holds dear.
At the same time, harassment and workplace discrimination aimed at women is arguably more blatant in China than elsewhere. As my Fortune colleague Yvonne Lau reports,job postings for high-skilled positions often denote a preference for men, while lower-skilled jobs seek out women. Some adverts are overtly sexist, like an Alibaba ad in 2015 that sought female candidates for the position of “programmer encouragement specialist.” One requirement: a “stunning appearance.”
Women who take their accusations online are often met with skepticism or worse.
Recall the case of Liu Jingyao, the 21-year-old University of Minnesota student who in 2018 accused Richard Liu, founder of China ecommerce giant JD.com, of rape. (The two are not related.) Liu, the billionaire, said the sex was consensual and U.S. prosecutors declined to charge him. He remains chairman and CEO of JD.com. Once the allegations of Liu the student were public, she was pilloried online, called a slut and a gold digger, among other insults. The New York Times says the victim-shaming of Monica Lewinsky is a good comparison for what happened to Liu—had the Clinton affair taken place in the digital age.
So it was somewhat surprising this past weekend when a female employee of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba accused her superior of rape and received widespread support—while he experienced swift consequences.
The woman, who hasn’t publicly identified herself, says her boss raped her after an alcohol-fueled outing with clients in late July. (He hasn’t commented publicly on the allegations, but she says he told police that she initiated physical contact.) She says she told senior managers what happened, but they didn’t take any action. She published her account on Alibaba’s intranet on Sunday; it later popped up on Chinese social media platform Weibo and went viral. Seven of the top 30 trending topics on Weibo on Sunday afternoon referenced Alibaba, with most users expressing support for the accuser. More than 6,000 Alibaba employees on Sunday wrote an open letter to management, asking that the company establish a separate team to handle sexual assault cases and a hotline for reporting such abuse.
Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang on Monday said that the alleged perpetrator would be fired along with two senior managers who failed to respond to the accuser’s complaints.
So what made the difference this time? Maybe it’s that the accuser was so thorough in her account of the alleged assault, detailing her experience over 11 pages. Maybe it’s that police seized surveillance video that allegedly shows the woman’s boss entering her hotel room four times. Maybe it’s that Alibaba is already under fire from Chinese regulators, priming the public to pile criticism on the Big Tech firm and motivating Alibaba to spring into damage control.
Yaqiu Wang, researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Yvonne that the role of the broader #MeToo movement can’t be discounted. Even though #MeToo didn’t make a splash in China the way it did in the U.S., it’s still inspiring women to come forward with accusations of wrongdoing—and inspiring the public to listen.
Claire Zillman
claire.zilllman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Kristen Bellstrom.

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PARTING WORDS

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