SHANGHAI — The video appeared on Chinese social media platform Weibo Nov. 25 — the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Posted by He Yuhong, the popular beauty influencer known as Yuyamika to her over 1 million followers, the 12-minute piece included shocking surveillance footage showing a topless man dragging He through the doors of an elevator as she struggled to free herself.

Accompanying the video, the star wrote a short message: “I’m a victim of domestic violence. I seemed to be living in a nightmare the past six months. I need to speak up about domestic violence!”

Yuyamika’s post generated an enormous response. On Weibo, a related hashtag received over 2 billion views within 24 hours of the video going live. It also sparked an intense debate over China’s continued failure to crack down on domestic violence, which affects nearly 1 in 3 married women in the country.

Three years ago, China implemented its first anti-domestic violence law, which covers physical and psychological abuse toward spouses, children, and the elderly. It also grants courts the power to issue personal safety protection orders, banning abusers from contacting victims. 

Yet the reforms have had limited impact in practice. Low public awareness, lenient punishments, and failures in the justice system have undermined the law’s effectiveness and discouraged victims from reporting abuse to the police.

Supreme People’s Court data suggests that in the vast majority of cases, victims of domestic violence are not attempting to obtain personal safety protection orders. Chinese courts granted a total of 3,718 such protection orders between March 2016 and December 2018. 

Experts say the low number of protection orders reflects a failure to publicize the rules, and that the penalties for breaking a protection order are inadequate. Violations typically result in a fine of up to 1,000 yuan ($145) and a 15-day detention. As a result, many victims doubt whether a protection order would successfully deter abusers.

When victims do come forward, meanwhile, they often struggle to obtain a protection order. In 2019, Weiping, a Beijing-based nonprofit that focuses on women’s rights issues, analyzed Shanghai’s handling of personal safety protection order applications between March 2016 and September 2019. The study found that Shanghai courts accepted just over half the applications, with 34% rejected and 12% withdrawn.

Insufficient supporting evidence was the most common reason cited for an application’s rejection, but Weiping also found multiple examples of judges refusing to grant protection orders based on personal value judgements with no legal validity. Cited grounds for rejection included the applicant and the respondent not living together, the low frequency of the violence, and the abuser’s active admission of wrongdoing.

Lin Shuang, a researcher who worked on the Weiping report, tells Sixth Tone the deficiencies of China’s legal system are driving women to social media to speak out about their abuse.

“A lot of times you go to the police and you can’t even get a receipt (confirming the victim has reported a crime),” says Lin. Failing to obtain a police receipt makes it difficult for victims to apply for a protection order or a divorce, she adds. “It lets the perpetrator know it’s useless for you to go to the police.”

In the days following Yuyamika’s expose on Weibo, other women spoke up online about their experiences of abuse. On Nov. 26, Julieta Benavid accused Chinese actor Jiang Jinfu of assaulting her — a charge the star denied. In 2018, Jiang was detained in Japan after admitting to abusing his then-girlfriend Haruka Nakaura.

Campaigners hope the enormous public attention generated by the Yuyamika case will prompt authorities to fast-track reforms making it easier for victims of domestic violence to obtain justice. There is a precedent for this. In 2011, Kim Lee, the then-wife of celebrity English teacher Li Yang, accused the Crazy English inventor of beating her and filed for divorce, sparking public outrage against Li.

“Li Yang’s domestic violence, which was widely discussed by the public, directly contributed to the formal implementation of the anti-domestic violence law in 2016,” says Fang Gang, founder of White Ribbon, a Beijing-based advocacy organization campaigning to end violence against women. “Anti-domestic violence campaigners had been arguing for this legislation for years before that, but little progress had been made. If it wasn’t for Kim’s act, the legal process might have been delayed for several years.”

Lee, however, was heavily criticized for her response to the Yuyamika video. On Nov. 28, the U.S. national wrote on Weibo: “I will always love my husband. Domestic violence is wrong and intolerable. These two facts exist at the same time, although they seem to contradict each other. Why? Because of forgiveness.”

The post received more than 18,000 comments, most expressing disappointment and anger toward Lee. “Your self-righteous reasons and love will mislead many people who are hesitant to get out of marriages full of violence,” wrote one Weibo user. “There are so many difficulties in enforcing the law … You saying, ‘we are family’ will just cause the precious little progress made to reverse itself,” commented another. 

Yet progress appeared at the local level in 2019, as several Chinese provinces adopted new policies designed to fix problems with the existing anti-domestic violence law. 

In March, the central Hunan province introduced a reform enabling the provincial branch of the All-China Women’s Federation — a quasi-official women’s rights group — to help both male and female victims of domestic violence secure personal protection orders.

Then, Guangdong province drafted a new domestic violence regulation in December expanding the scope of abuse and adding measures to protect minors from such acts. The draft rule has defined humiliation, slander, privacy violations, threats, stalking, and harassment as non-physical forms of domestic violence. It has also classified minors who witness domestic violence as victims of such acts.

In interviews with local media, Guangdong officials made clear they considered domestic violence a priority issue. Xu Guang, chairman of the Social Construction Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress, told reporters there was “an urgent need to solve the outstanding problems in Guangdong’s anti-domestic violence work” — characterizing the problems as “large in number, wide in range, and various in form.” 

Guangdong’s proposed regulation also attempts to prevent situations in which victims have no way to report abuse. The rules would introduce a “first responsibility system” that would effectively prevent public institutions from handing off cases to another department.

Authorities were, at least, quick to respond to Yuyamika’s case. Three days after she published the video, local public security officials stated the blogger had been granted a personal safety protection order and her attacker had been put under administrative detention for 20 days.

For anti-domestic violence campaigners, the goal is to ensure every victim receives similarly swift support. The 2016 law was a first step toward that, but there is a long way to go. “At least you can tell the police there is a legal basis (for action) now,” says Lin. “You have some room to argue with them.”

Editor: Dominic Morgan.

(Header image: Dreamstime/Tuchong)