More needed to stop child abuse - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Sexual child abuse, especially those left behind by their migrant parents, needs more attention, writes author Zhang Lijia, who wrote a bestseller on prostitution in China in the South China Morning. She applauds actions taken by the Supreme People's Court of China but sees it only as a start.

Zhang Lijia:

Last month, the Supreme People’s Court of China held a press conference following the publication of four so-called typical cases of sexual abuse of children. It vowed to use all means, including the death penalty, to punish child sex offenders. I was also a victim of child sex abuse, one of many girls molested by a teacher at my primary school in Nanjing. 

This is a hidden but growing epidemic. News portal Caixin.com reported that some 8-12 per cent of China’s 270 million minors may have experienced sexual assault, including rape for 1 per cent.

“It means that nearly 30 million Chinese children could have been the victims of sexual abuse,” Shang Xiaoyun, director of Beijing Normal University’s Family and Child Research Centre, was quoted as saying. 

I believe various factors contribute to the worrying trend. As is the case elsewhere, the internet has become an increasingly treacherous place for young minds. In two of the cases presented by the court, the perpetrators met their victims online; one was promised a starring role in a film.

Left-behind children are particularly vulnerable. In the past four decades, some 300 million people have moved from their villages to seek work in the city, leaving millions of children behind, often without adequate care.

More at the South China Morning Post.

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Also at universities: women stay in the shadow of men - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Female students have been accusing their teachers and supervisors of sexual harassment at Chinese colleges and universities. Author Zhang Lijia of Lotus: A Novel on prostitution in China, tells NewsChina she is not really amazed.

NewsChina:

Zhang Lijia, a feminist writer and social commentator based in Beijing, told NewsChina that sexual harassment on campus shows that despite improvements, women – including the highly-educated – remain largely in the shadow of men in traditionally maledominated China. Zhang said sexual harassment was prevalent in many places and was rooted in “the Confucian ideology that has dominated China for centuries.” 

“It places women in an inferior position. The issue of campus harassment attracts more attention partly because educated women are less willing to put up with it, and more willing to speak out,” she said. “But sadly, male chauvinism still dominates in today’s China.”... 

“The authorities should establish a mechanism that includes specific measures to prevent, investigate and punish. And more importantly, we need an atmosphere that doesn’t place pressure on victims,” Zhang Lijia told our reporter. “The perfect relationship between an academic adviser and a graduate student is respect for each other.”

More at NewsChina.

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Sexual abuse on the agenda is not enough - Zhang Lijia

+Lijia Zhang 

Author Zhang Lijia and her female class mates were the victim of sexual abuse when she studied in Nanjing, she recalls in the New York Times. Scandals have put sexual abuse on the official agenda, but that might not be enough, she fears.

Zhang Lijia:

When I was 13, living in the outskirts of Nanjing, my math teacher molested all the girls in our class, including me. Under the pretense of checking my work, he would lean over me, his face so close that I could smell his garlic breath, and he’d move his hand up my shirt, touching my chest.

Apart from trying to avoid him, we didn’t take any action. We knew what he was doing was wrong, but it never occurred to us to report him. A teacher in a Chinese classroom holds tremendous authority over students, and we didn’t even know the term “sexual abuse.” Most of us made it through the trauma, except for his main target, a plump girl who dropped out of school before she turned 14...

China is infamous for having strong laws that go unenforced. And compared to Western countries, Chinese courts tend to give sex offenders, well-connected officials in particular, light sentences. Changing some laws is a first step. More concrete actions should follow.

Governmental social services are essentially nonexistent. Beijing should set up a child-protection network, including a national department for child protection. Social workers, legal workers and psychologists need to be brought into the system.

A change in attitude is essential. A new emphasis on sex education would help. The subject is mostly ignored by teachers, and children seldom hear “the facts of life” at home. Lack of sexual knowledge and the awareness of potential abuse make young girls, like the group in my elementary school class, prone to exploitation.

Toxic traditional beliefs are another hurdle. A long-held Chinese myth says that having sex with a virgin can boost a man’s virility. The modern version has it that deflowering a girl can enhance a man’s chance of promotion because the word “virgin,” chu, is contained in the term chuzhang, which means section chief.

Chinese society will have to continue to open up, enabling more victims and their families to come forward. Up to now, a large number of cases went unreported, and few victims took legal action because the battles were so hard to fight, the punishment to abusers so lenient, and compensation extremely low. Victims’ families are still often stigmatized.

Today’s China is a much better place than the country of my childhood, but we have a long way to go. I often wonder what became of my classmate, the victim of the child abuse. Would she fare any better today?

More at the New York Times.

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