Hutong Cat | How gender violence and misogyny played out on a street in China

A graphic video showing a woman being kicked and punched by a group of men at a barbeque shop on June 10 in Tangshan city triggered a wave of fury across China, igniting a debate on gender violence and gang attacks

A gender-reversing Chinese fantasy drama, The Romance of Tiger and Rose, notched up high viewership on television and a huge response online in China in 2020.

The protesting woman was dragged out of the restaurant — in a way considered most humiliating — by her hair; outside, the kicking and punching continued as she lay on the road crumpled like a piece of cloth.  (@badiucao/Twitter)

A 14-episode period drama, it imagined life in a Chinese city with a twist – it showed a matriarchal society where women ruled and men dreamed of being courted by a princess charming and settling down to a life of domestic bliss. Or reconciliation.

According to the Sixth Tone website, the series had a combined 580 million views until the end of May 2020, and “…a related hashtag on the microblogging platform Weibo” was viewed “more than 3 billion times”.

Cut to Tangshan, a city some 100 km from Beijing, two years later.

A graphic video — taken from surveillance footage and mobile phone recordings of witnesses — showing women, one in particular, being repeatedly kicked and punched by a group of men at a barbeque shop in the early hours of June 10 in Tangshan city triggered a wave of fury across China.

Fantasy drama had been rudely pushed aside by reality footage.

Why were the women assaulted?

Because one of them – the one targeted most viciously – stood up in protest when one man, a boss-type in the pack of men involved in the assault, touched her in a sly attempt at harassment – as if it was his right to do so.

Except, it wasn’t. The woman told him so. Angrily.

What he and his cronies did next wasn’t their right either.

The protesting woman was dragged out of the restaurant — in a way considered most humiliating — by her hair; outside, the kicking and punching continued as she lay on the road crumpled like a piece of cloth. Shocked passers-by looked on. Women tried to help, but were stopped by their male companions. Many took videos.

Soon, the videos went online and viral. So did the outrage.

At first, Chinese official media reports on the assault mentioned gender violence.

“Even at a time when male violence against women has regularly made headlines in China, the video — which appeared on the Chinese internet yesterday and instantly went viral — struck a chord with many Chinese women,” the State-run China Daily newspaper reported on June 11.

The report added that the brazenness of the attack, and the indifference of the bystanders, “…unleashed a renewed wave of fear and fury among them, prompting them to take to social media to call for an end to what they described as ‘an epidemic of gender-based violence in the country.”

There were reasons for the footage to go viral.

For one, many who commented online thought that kind of assault could happen to anyone, anywhere — it took place at a restaurant where couples, friends, families, everyone went; that it took place within the range of functional CCTVs and under the glare of mobile phones worried them even more.

One user on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, said the incident, which reflected the vulnerabilities of women, crossed a moral line.

Soon the tone in State-run Chinese media changed: Articles continued to condemn the incident, but began to call it a case of gang violence and not a case of crime against women, not as an example of a man’s sense of entitlement.

Here’s an example of Chinese State media’s twist to the tale:

“The series of recent grievous incidents hit a raw nerve of the public when they happened against the background of a national campaign of cracking down on gang crimes. Many people questioned why the law lost its deterrent in Tangshan,” said the tabloid, Global Times.

The focus of the mainstream narrative changed to link the incident to gang-related crimes and how the prime suspect, Chen Jiezhi, had a criminal record.

The narrative explained it as a public security incident. Which it was. But it was much more: It was an example of a criminal attack by a man who attempted to sexually harass a woman, a clear case of gender violence.

“The problem, according to this state-backed narrative, is less gender-based violence than lax public security and the lingering influence of ‘black society,’ a catch-all term for criminal elements and a target of the now concluded 'Sweep Away Black and Eliminate Evil' campaign,” wrote China Digital Times, a website that tracks China.

The reason why the Tangshan assault case was reduced to only a law and order slip-up could be an insidious one – give less space to voices talking and debating about gender violence in China.

“The government denies that this is a gender violence issue. The purpose of downplaying the gender perspective is arguably to avoid giving legitimacy to feminist discourse,” Lu Pin, a US-based feminist activist, who founded the influential communication platform Feminist Voices in China, said.

“Feminist discourse is mobilising and accountable, so it is unpopular with the government and is being delegitimised. It is also to absolve the government of its inaction on gender violence and to use the opportunity to reassert the power of authoritarianism,” Lu added.

About two weeks into the incident, Tangshan’s “National Civilised City” status, a high-sounding award handed out by the ruling Community Party of China's propaganda department, was withdrawn.

“The honour of a civilised city belongs to all citizens and cannot be smeared or desecrated. All sectors of the society should cherish and jointly protect the goodwill of civilisation and the warmth of the city,” State-backed daily China City News, said, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

(In all, 290 of China’s 600 cities, districts, and towns had won the much sought-after title as of last October, the SCMP report added).

Withdrawing a fairly meaningless tag, arresting the suspects, and the launch of a campaign against criminals in Tangshan followed the assault. Commendable, surely. But the more civilised way to deal with the aftermath of the incident would have been to allow discussions on gender violence in China to play out across platforms and not try to manipulate or censor it.

As Lu, quoted earlier, explained, due to issues such as censorship, there is a growing lack of public discourse in China that is not dominated and manipulated by the government.

“On the one hand, voices concerned with gender violence want to take the opportunity (following the assault case) to raise the issue and gain legitimacy as well as visibility that is not generally available; on the other hand, there are voices that downplay or deny gender violence.”

“Clearly the latter is stronger. And the former is angry, fragmented and vulnerable, easily censored and not allowed to be associated with advocacy and action,” she said.

It seems fans are eagerly waiting for the second season of the fantasy drama The Romance of Tiger and Rose. In a world of brazen misogyny, a 45-minute daily break from reality should be fine.

Sutirtho Patranobis, HT’s experienced China hand, writes a weekly column from Beijing, exclusively for HT Premium readers. He was previously posted in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he covered the final phase of the civil war and its aftermath, and was based in Delhi for several years before that

The views expressed are personal