(Foreign Policy)
By Simina Mistreanu January 10, 2019, 2:24 PM
GUANGZHOU, China—Sophia Huang’s fingers were racing over her two iPhones at a restaurant in downtown Guangzhou, southern China, as her food went cold.
Huang had just found out that the professor Chen Xiaowu, whose sexual harassment of a student ignited China’s #MeToo movement in January 2018, had been awarded the country’s most prestigious research grant. She was furiously posting on social media while at the same texting the representatives of Chen’s university.
“He wants to resurface,” she said, eyes on her screens. “We can’t allow it.”
Huang is among a group of feminists, working mostly out of Guangzhou, who have launched and nurtured China’s #MeToo movement. A wave of righteous anger that started on campuses has breached the heavy barriers of internet and media censorship.
But for Huang and the other leaders of the movement, that has meant walking a careful line: balancing the unleashed anger and frustration of women against an authoritarian, patriarchal regime that has cracked down fiercely on any group that might threaten its power. China’s #MeToo campaign has already brought real change—but it has also imposed limits on itself to avoid spurring a reaction that could end the movement while seeking ways to leverage what power it has.
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