MCLC: a beginning for battered women

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Ying Zhu <Ying.Zhu at csi.cuny.edu>
Subject: a beginning for battered women
*******************************************************

Source: China File (2/11/13):
http://www.chinafile.com/beginning-china-battered-women

A Beginning for China’s Battered Women
By YING ZHU

Like it or not, it takes an American woman to give a face, bring a voice,
and deliver a victory to battered women in China. On February 3, a
milestone court decision
<http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-02/03/content_16197041.htm> in
Beijing granted a divorce to Kim Lee, a victim of domestic abuse, from her
celebrity Chinese husband Li Yang, a motivational speaker and the founder
of a hugely popular and officially sanctioned English learning program
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/28/080428fa_fact_osnos> that
fuses language learning with Chinese patriotism. After enduring years of
an increasingly loveless and volatile relationship—during which Li spent
most of the time away from Lee and their three daughters, visiting home
only two days most months—the desperate Lee took to the Internet for help
in September 2011, posting a graphic account of their most recent
altercation and photos of her bruises on China’s microblogging service
Sina Weibo. Li was unperturbed by her wounds, rebuffing Lee in public for
defying Chinese tradition by taking a domestic matter public. The case
aroused strong reactions among China’s Netizens. While many women wrote to
relay their own sufferings at the hands of men or to express sympathy and
show support, some questioned whether Lee was making too big a fuss over
what they took as routine. Indeed for many in China, especially in rural
areas, physical violence within the confines of the family is an accepted
part of a marital relationship where wife-beating is a man’s natural right.

The case reminds me of a conversation I had with Zhang Yue, the host of a
women’s program on China Central Television (CCTV) called Half the Sky
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/world/asia/holding-up-half-the-sky.html?
_r=0>—whose name, before the show was canceled in 2011 after sixteen
years, was a reference to Chairman Mao’s famous proclamation that “women
hold up half the sky.” In 2009, Zhang recounted how a series of
gender-consciousness training sessions helped to inject progressive gender
politics in the program’s otherwise-resistant production crew. She told me
how, during one intense discussion, a male colleague broke down, tearfully
confessing that he beat his wife. He lived in a small town in northern
China where men routinely beat their wives, Zhang recalled. “He was much
ashamed about the belated awareness of domestic abuse and later apologized
to his wife. But many men still consider wife-beating an honorable thing
to do,” she said. “I was in northeast China the other day, and a group of
men confronted me, telling me that our program was misguided and that
there was nothing wrong with beating up one’s wife because how else can
one turn a woman into a good wife.”

Though domestic violence is illegal in China, many still consider it a
private matter in which the state has no business interfering. Zhang said
that her program was up against deep-rooted traditions in rural China. She
interviewed Li Yang in 2009 when rumors surfaced that he had hit his wife.
But Zhang softballed the interview and later was criticized online by
regular Netizens for taking lightly the pride of a battered woman, and an
American, no less. Interestingly, the sharpened focus on women’s
empowerment on Half the Sky owes much to another American woman: Hillary
Clinton.

Half the Sky debuted on January 1, 1995 in anticipation of the Fourth
World Conference on Women
<http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/beijingdeclaration.html> that
would take place in Beijing in September of that year. It was a special
topics program that was put on the air hastily and temporarily for a
special occasion. Yet a speech made by Clinton, who was then First Lady
and the honorary chair of the U.S. delegation, would give the program a
prolonged life and a renewed purpose. To the dismay of the White House,
which was wary of offending the Chinese Communist Party leadership,
Clinton catalogued a litany of abuses
<http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hillaryclintonbeijingspeech.htm>
that afflicted women around the world and sharply criticized China for
limiting free and open discussion of women’s issues. Her talk and the
ensuing discussions served as an inspiration for new ideas and
perspectives on gender equality for the new women’s program on CCTV. The
program was eventually cancelled due to low ratings in 2011, not long
after Zhang conducted the less-than-critical interview with Li Yang. By
then, Zhang knew that her program had worn out its welcome at the station,
as CCTV wanted to make room for commercially viable programs able to
compete for viewership with newly popular programming from local and
provincial broadcasters.

China had changed. Years of accelerating economic growth had brought
unprecedented social and geographic mobility, as well as pressure on men
to strive to succeed and follow the trail of power and money, leaving
behind their women. While living with Li in Beijing, Lee had no bank
account, no property under her name, not even a driver’s license. She
relied solely on the cash Li delivered to her in an envelope each month.
Economic growth has exacerbated the gender gap, often reviving cultural
traditions that can reduce women to sub-human status. Women are still
supposed to obey their fathers when young, their husbands upon marrying,
and their sons when their husbands die. All too often, the defiant are
punished with a beating. The choices for unattached women are stark: they
either become “leftover women,” stigmatized for remaining unmarried at
thirty or older; join the army of kept women under the thumbs of wealthy
businessmen and ranking party officials; or are held captive by rural
bachelors in desperate need of brides, as men greatly outnumber women in
contemporary China 
<http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/opinion/china-challenges-one-child-brooks>.

The contempt for women that I have witnessed in China in recent years is
alarming. While passing through Shenzhen several years ago, an old male
acquaintance who is now a ranking party official hosted a banquet in my
honor at a private villa. The rest of the invitees were all local party
officials and all male. Halfway through the banquet, a few young girls
were ushered in. Several men promptly disappeared into the adjacent room.
There were sounds of struggle and muffled screams. I told my acquaintance
that whatever was going on in the next room had to stop immediately. While
complying, he seemed surprised at my strong reaction. “My guys are just
having a little fun,” he said, “and they pay these women well.” The irony
was not lost that this was supposed to be a banquet in honor of a woman.

On September 25, 2011 shortly after Kim Lee took her case public, another
CCTV program, the weekly news magazine show Eyewitness, persuaded Lee and
her husband Li Yang to appear on the program, albeit separately, to talk
about marriage and domestic relations. The interviewer, Chai Jing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai_Jing>, an empathetic young woman, was
incredulous when confronted with Li’s utter lack of emotion. At one point,
Li said that he was kind enough to grace his home with his presence once
or twice a month. “I did not have to go home at all,” he said
matter-of-factly. The contrast between Lee’s devastation and pleading and
Li’s chilly lack of emotional response or genuine remorse was shocking.
Footage of Li’s female fans reassuring him that he had done no wrong and
that his wife had blown things out of proportion was jarring to say the
least. Yet this is the reality of China. While Lee, an American woman, at
last triumphed with a court-granted divorce and $1.9 million in
compensation on February 3, millions of Chinese women continue to suffer
in silence. The same month when Lee walked out of the Beijing court a free
and empowered woman, the Sichuan High Court in Southwest China rejected an
appeal from a woman who was sentenced to death
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/28/chinese-officials-domestic-vio
lence> in August 2011 for killing her husband after suffering years of
unimaginable abuse. Hopefully, another occasion will soon arise for a
Chinese woman to become the standard-bearer for battered women in China.