China Insight
Academic Exploitation in China: Online Voices Help Three Victims Speak from beyond the Grave
“How many still need to suffer in universities over inappropriate behavior by their professor?”, online voices say.
On March 11 of 1998, a 21-year-old female Peking University student named Gao Yan (高岩) committed suicide. Twenty years after her death, some of Gao’s old classmates, most importantly a woman named Li Youyou (李悠悠) who now lives in Canada, have come forward on Chinese social media.
They have linked Gao’s suicide to the behavior of Professor Shen Yang (沈阳), who had since moved on to work in the Literature & Language department of Nanjing University.
Gao Yan when she was going to university.
According to South China Morning Post, Gao’s classmates have since long claimed their former classmate had been raped by the professor on multiple occasions over a two-year period, and had been called “mentally ill” by him, before taking her own life. Gao’s old friends have been calling for a re-examination of the case.
The case has drawn much attention on Chinese social media over the past week. Although Shen has denied all accusations through a statement on April 7, Peking University stated it did serve Shen a disciplinary warning in 1998 based on a police report about his inappropriate conduct.
The professor has now been sacked by two of his employers, Shanghai Normal University and Nanjing University’s liberal arts school.
More University Suicides: Yang Baode 杨宝德
The Shen Yang case has been placed into the larger framework of the ‘Metoo movement in China‘ by various online media such as the New York Times or SCMP.
Li Youyou, the Canada-based former friend of Gao, also told Chinese media that she wanted to expose the two-decade-old sexual assault case because she was inspired by the #MeToo movement and by Luo Xixi, who came forward about a sexual assault case earlier this year, which involved her former Beihang University Professor Chen Xiaowu.
But on Chinese social media, rather than a ‘#metoo’ movement, netizens link the story with that of two other recent university suicides and the bigger problem of exploitation of students in Chinese universities. More than sexual abuse, it is also about emotional and verbal abuse, and official misconduct in academic circles – regardless of gender.
One of these stories is that of Yang Baode (杨宝德). In December of 2017, the 28-year-old Yang Baode, a male PhD student at Xi’an Jiaotong University, went missing and was later found drowned in a river 10 kilometers from campus, as noted by Sixth Tone.
Yang Baode (image via Weibo).
Yang’s girlfriend Li Xin (李欣) and relatives then came forward and said Yang had drowned himself because of the enormous pressure he faced at the university, as his female supervisor Zhou Jun practically treated him as a slave, making him clean and shop for her for years.
In a letter from Yang to his previous Master thesis supervisor, he also complained about Zhou, writing: “I’m suffering every single day.”
The Wuhan Case: Tao Chongyuan
The third suicide case that has attracted the attention of Chinese social media users is that of the 25-year-old Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) post-graduate student Tao Chongyuan (陶崇园), who jumped to his death on March 26.
According to an account on social media written by Tao’s sister (@陶崇园姐姐), Tao committed suicide to break away from the control of his supervisor, Professor Wang Pan (王攀). (Also see detailed report on this case by SupChina‘s Tianyu Fang.)
Tao Chongyuan
Tao was allegedly required to call his supervisor “father,” buy lunches for him, wash his clothes or give him wake-up calls. A former classmate of Tao told Chinese reporters that Wang used a “tough military style with his students”, “putting immense mental pressure on them.”
State newspaper People’s Daily reported that Professor Wang Pan was stripped of his title by the university on April 8, after the university found enough evidence indicating that Wang acted highly inappropriately towards his student.
Traditional Teacher-Student Relations “Unsuited to Modern Society”
“Yang Baode, Gao Yan, Tao Chongyuan – three names, three crying voices,” one Weibo netizen writes: “All I can do is warn, alert, and care about my child.”
“The power of the supervisor over PhD students in China is too big,” other commenters on Weibo write. “How many people still need to die because of this reason?”, one blogger asks.
In February of this year, Professor Yang Chunmei wrote that “inappropriate relationships between faculty and students have deep historical roots.”
In this article, she traces the Chinese teacher-student relations back to Confucian thought and China’s history, in which the notion was internalized “that a good teacher was akin to a good father.” Yang writes:
“Because children were expected to show deference to their fathers, students were obliged to treat their teachers in the same way, regardless of whether their teachers were right or wrong. This principle introduced the notion of hierarchy into teacher-student relationships.”
Yang argues that these traditional student-teacher relationships are “unsuited to modern society”, and many netizens express similar sentiments and worry about the future of their children.
One commenter noted that in a highly competitive academic environment, Chinese parents do everything they can to give their children the opportunity to get into a prestigious university. But if they are not safe there and driven into depression, then “what’s the point” to all their endeavors?
“Students Must Unite”
The issue is also a hot item of debate on Chinese Q&A platform Zhihu.com, where a top commenter promoted the platform teacher-ranking platform mysupervisor.org as a solution to expose inappropriate behavior by professors and to empower students caught in unhealthy relations with their supervisors. They write:
“Students only have limited power, and the relationship between students and teachers is naturally imbalanced. So we have to unite ourselves. This website is anonymous. Please evaluate [your professor], and don’t let those creepy ones get away easily. More importantly – even if teachers force students to give positive comments, it will still not diminish our power. After all, the effect of a string of negative evaluations will surpass that of 100 good reviews.”
Through mysupervisor.org, Chinese students can evaluate their teachers.
The call by the Zhihu user has received nearly 800 comments and 2600 upvotes in two days time.
Meanwhile, the stories of Gao Yan and the others keep generating discussions on Weibo, WeChat, and other online platforms.
“Our state education is rotten,” one person writes: “From Gao Yan’s death to that of Yang Baode and Tao Chongyuan, what more is needed to wake up our country that our education is corroded? Students, come forward and offer more evidence … society, wake up!”
By Manya Koetse with contributions from Miranda Barnes and Richard Barnes
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China Insight
Modern-Day Yugong or Greedy Wolf? Critical Discussions after Ningxia Land Owner Goes Viral Begging for Water
Is Sun Guoyou the victim of bad coal mine practices or did he throw dust in netizens’ eyes? The viral Ningxia story is getting more complex.
This week, the story of Ningxia land owner Sun Guoyou (孙国友) went completely viral on Chinese social media.
Various Chinese media outlets, from Sina News to Beijing News and The Paper all covered the story of the old man who was seeing his enormous land destroyed because a nearby coal mine had cut off water supplies. Although they had allegedly promised Guo to resume water supplies on March 27, they did not follow through.
A video of Sun kneeling on the ground and begging for water went viral on Douyin and Weibo, where dozens of hashtags relating to the story received millions of views (read our earlier story here).
One crucial aspect of the story is how Sun Guoyou allegedly has been combating desertification and improving the soil conditions of the barren land through afforestation, by planting trees and irrigating the land.
This is one of the various reasons why netizens initially felt sorry for Sun and wanted to help him out. People were rooting for the underdog, supporting the seemingly weaker Sun against the more powerful coal mine company and local authorities.
He was also called the ‘modern-day Yugong’ by some, referring to the old Chinese fable about an old man who was called foolish for persistently trying to move a mountain, yet finally succeeded in doing so. The Chinese idiom about “the foolish old man moving a mountain” (愚公移山 yúgōng yíshān) is often used as a figure of speech for persisting despite hardship.
But the more viral Sun’s story went since March 29, the more people started doubting his story and called into question whether Sun was genuinely an underdog or just a business owner exploiting his land and, through the help of social media, manipulating the circumstances to his benefit.
On March 30, Weibo knowledge blogger ‘PYGZ’ (@平原公子赵胜) was among many other netizens accusing Sun of planting the wrong species of trees and raising cattle and sheep on his land, causing more soil erosion instead of improving soil quality. Rather than controlling desertification (“治沙”), Sun’s practices are creating sand dunes (“造沙”) instead, the blogger argued.
Why would Sun do such a thing? According to PYGZ, the state subsidizes windbreak forests that help prevent desertification (“防沙林”): 500-800 yuan ($72-$116) per Chinese “mu” (亩), which is about 666 square meters / 0.165 acre. With a land as big as Sun’s, the annual subsidy would be millions of yuan (or more than $1M per year).
“This is what combating desertification in Ningxia actually looks like,” charity blogger Sui Jiao (@碎叫) wrote, sharing photos of desert control work: “If you are concerned about desertification control, you can donate money to the China Green Foundation (中国绿化基金会) to plant trees.”
Desert control work in Ningxia, image via Weibo @碎叫
Desert control work in Ningxia, image via Weibo @碎叫
Another thing that came up in critical discussions on Sun’s case is how he previously received over seven million yuan (more than $1M) in compensation from the Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group (神华宁夏煤业集团) for economic losses caused by them occupying forest land (#孙国友此前727万判决书曝光#).
As more netizens are starting to dive deeper into the facts behind Sun’s desperate kneeling video, Sun’s family stated that they did not want to further escalate the issue and were just focused on saving their trees for now (#跪地求水林场主家属称不想事情升级#).
The nationalist Weibo blogger Ziwuxiashi (@子午侠士), who has over one million followers, posted an image of a wolf sneaking away, writing: “They want to get away, but I’m afraid it’s too late, the [wolf’s ] tail has already been exposed.” The blogger suggested that the Sun family might have enjoyed the spotlight, but do not want people to dig deeper.
Many others agreed, suggesting that Sun and his family staged the dramatic video to draw attention to their case, but now want to retreat before more details come out showing that Sun might not be the underdog he made himself out to be.
“Netizens are not like toilet paper that you can wipe your ass with and get rid of once no longer needed,” one Weibo user wrote.
Chinese political commentator Hu Xijin (@胡锡进) also commented on the issue – as he does whenever social stories go viral like this, – and wrote that he understood why netizens would doubt Guo’s sincerity or even say the entire video was staged.
At the same time, he reminded people that issues such as these are never black and white, arguing it is understandable that Guo earns income from his land and that it would only be right for the coal mine company to supply water to Guo if that is what they legally agreed on.
Hu suggested that, while many details in this story still have not come out, netizens might want to wait to make an absolute judgment in the case since issues such as these are usually not clear-cut and can be more complex than they initially seem.
More updates will follow.
By Manya Koetse
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China Insight
Pregnancy Discrimination in the Workplace: Three Major Problems Faced by Chinese Female Workers
Weibo discussions about a woman from Wuhan who was fired after sharing news of her pregnancy for “inability” to do her job.
The official Weibo account of Legal Daily (法治日报), a Chinese state-owned newspaper, recently launched a social media hashtag about employers not being allowed to terminate female employees because they are pregnant (#不得因怀孕辞退女职工#).
Legal Daily reported that a female employee in Wuhan was fired from her job due to her pregnancy earlier this year (#武汉一女子怀孕后遭公司辞退#). After returning to work after the Spring Festival break, the woman informed the company about her pregnancy. In early February, the company asked her to accept a demotion and salary reduction, which she declined. Later that month, she received a termination letter from the company, stating that the employee was being terminated due to her “inability to do her job.”
A screenshot of a video posted on Weibo reporting the news about the female Wuhan employee terminated from her job because of her pregnancy. In the video, the woman disagreed with the company’s statement that she could not perform her duties.
Legal Daily‘s Weibo account cited Article 5 of the “Special Provisions on Labor Protection for Female Employees,” which prohibits employers from reducing the wages of female employees or terminating their employment contract due to them being pregnant, giving birth, or breastfeeding. It also stipulates a basic maternity leave of 98 days.
The female employee in question is currently suing the company for terminating her job. While this case may have a positive outcome, the issue of workplace discrimination against female employees due to pregnancy is more complicated than it appears, regardless of the Chinese laws designed to protect female workers.
Despite legal prohibitions against pregnancy discrimination in employment, some employers still circumvent the rules in various ways and in doing so, continue to engage in discrimination against female workers. This topic has recently also generated discussions on Chinese social media about the problems women face in the workplace.
Problem #1: Companies Not Hiring Female Workers At All
“It [the law] is not very useful,” one Weibo user wrote under the related hashtag: “Companies do not usually fire female workers who are pregnant. They will solve the problem from the beginning by not hiring female workers at all.”
Some smaller private companies do not want to take the risk of dealing with potentially prolonged maternity leave and pregnant workers that they cannot fire nor reduce their wages.
They also fear that workers who are pregnant or are taking care of young children will have reduced energy and might face challenges in the workplace. To avoid the presumed risk that comes with hiring a female worker, Weibo commenters discuss how many companies would “rather hire men directly” to evade the issue of dealing with pregnant workers altogether.
Weibo users commenting that small companies would rather hire men than afford the potential cost of female workers’ maternity leave.
Some voices note how female job-seekers are facing gender discrimination in hiring, regardless of their marital status or the number of children they have.
Another post under the same hashtag (#不得因怀孕辞退女职工#) mentioned:
“It is so hard for females to find jobs. [From the company’s perspective:] 1. Unmarried female: they’re here for the marriage leave; 2. Married but no children yet: they’re here for the pregnancy leave; 3. Married and have one child: here to have their second child (and the maternity leave); 4. Married and have two children: here to have their third child (and the maternity leave); 5. Married and have three children: they have no time for work because need to take care of the family; 6. Do not want to marry: they are having problematic thoughts [思想有问题].”
Problem #2: Going to Extremes to Avoid Paying for Maternity Leave
Despite Chinse labor law prohibiting companies from reducing wages or terminating the contracts of pregnant employees, some companies still attempt to circumvent paying for maternity leave through various means, as was the case with the Wuhan company.
One extreme way to avoid dealing with maternity leave pay is to cancel the company’s registration altogether, which is also called “dying together” (“同归于尽”, also: “to perish together with one’s foe”).
A recent news story about a boss who canceled his company’s registration overnight due to a female employee’s pregnancy received widespread attention on the internet.
According to a March 5 report by Netease (网易), the woman informed her boss that she was three months pregnant right after signing her work contract. The boss was so afraid of the potential costs for maternity leave pay and other benefits that he decided to immediately cancel the company’s registration.
While the boss claimed that the cancellation was due to the fact that the company was operating at a loss for the past two years, he reportedly spoke with each employee and compensated them accordingly. However, the pregnant female employee in question refused to leave. After the cancellation, the boss formed a new company including all the former employees – except for the pregnant one.
While some netizens expressed concerns over the extreme actions of the company, others also blamed the woman for “blackmailing” the company into supporting her pregnancy and childbirth. Additionally, many netizens argued that the woman’s actions also make it more difficult for other job-seeking females to find employment, especially with small companies that may become more cautious about hiring female workers.
Problem #3: Maternity Harassment on the Workfloor
“Dying together” is not the only way for companies to get rid of “troublesome” pregnant workers. There are many other low-cost ways to avoid dealing with pregnant employees and working mothers, such as making life in the workplace so difficult for them that they will voluntarily resign.
In Chinese, this kind of ‘maternity harassment’ is also called “chuān xiǎo xié” (穿小鞋), which literally means giving someone tight shoes to wear and making them uncomfortable. The phenomenon is also widespread in Japan, where the word ‘matahara‘ was coined as an abbreviated form of the words ‘maternity’ and ‘harassment’ to describe the unfair treatment of pregnant women and young mothers in the workforce.
Image showing Chinese comedian Papi Jiang talking about women in the workplace being afraid to get pregnant as it might cost them their career.
By pushing employees to resign voluntarily, the company not only saves on the costs of female workers’ maternity leave pay but also avoids paying for a severance package.
Under the report by Jingshi Live-Streaming (经视直播) about the woman in Wuhan who was fired from her job due to her pregnancy, one Weibo user commented that many companies fire female workers who are pregnant, but they usually do not state it upfront and instead secretly force them to leave.
This comment received over 1500 likes, with many sharing their own similar experiences. One person wrote: “I was in that situation. The company explicitly persuaded me to resign and covertly marginalized me.”
Weibo users sharing their experiences of being forced to “voluntarily resign.”
Another person shared: “After I announced my pregnancy, my year-end bonus was reduced by more than half, and my colleagues immediately treated me with coldness.” One woman mentioned that “companies overtly use polite language while covertly giving the lowest performance evaluation to force employees to resign.”
One Weibo user complained about how female workers first face nagging questions about their future plans to have children, then face criticism from employees and colleagues after announcing their pregnancy and then have to worry about getting fired or seeing their salary reduced after giving birth.
No Way Out?
Despite laws and regulations requiring companies to provide maternity leave for female employees, there are still loopholes that are used by businesses to avoid responsibility. This leaves women in a vulnerable position in the workplace and limits economic opportunities. Weibo users come up with several suggestions in recent online discussions on how to solve the problems female workers face.
Some suggest that women should “just be realistic” and settle for a second-best option (“退而求其次”). One Weibo post argued that since it is difficult for women to secure permanent positions in both government institutions and big private companies, they should consider becoming temporary workers in government departments as a secondary option.
Others disagreed with this hot take, stating that the average wages and benefits for temporary workers in government departments are not enough to make a living.
Another suggestion raised to combat pregnancy discrimination is to offer equal parental leave to both men and women. However, this proposal was also met with resistance from some who argued that it does not solve anything since fathers have the option to forgo paternity leave, but women do not have that choice. They also cited examples of male colleagues who voluntarily waived their 15-day paternity leave.
Some are skeptical about finding a solution to the problem of women facing pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, and also raise the issue of this problem decreasing women’s willingness to have babies at all. Some netizens jokingly comment: “Do women need to provide their certificate of sterilization from the hospitals?” or “I suggest females just remove the uterus [as a solution].”
Facing low fertility rates and a large aging population, boosting birthrates is a priority for Chinese authorities. While Chinese experts look for ways to motivate couples to have (more) children at an earlier age, combating pregnancy discrimination in the workplace is also more important than ever.
One Weibo user bitterly joked about the apparent contradiction of boosting national birth rates while also promoting equal positions in the workplace:
“Women say: “If I get pregnant, I will face workplace discrimination.”
The government says: “How dare companies discriminate against women? I will fine them.”
Companies say: “You’re good at playing tricks. I won’t hire women anymore.”
Women say: “If I have a child, I can’t even find a job. I won’t have children in the future.”
Society says: “China is getting old before it gets rich. What should we do?”
The media says: “There is news every day. It’s great!”
By Zilan Qian
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◼︎ 同归于尽 Tóng guī yú jìn
Dying together; suffering a downfall together; perishing together with one’s foe
◼︎ 穿小鞋 Chuān xiǎo xié
Giving someone tight shoes to wear; making things hard for someone by abusing one’s power
◼︎ 退而求其次 Tuì ér qíu qí cì
To settle for the second best thing
Images in featured image:
http://www.xinqtech.com/startup/201806/291055.html
https://www.maxlaw.cn/n/20220316/10379852097730.shtml
https://www.maxlaw.cn/n/20180823/923419931554.shtml
https://www.sohu.com/a/325722786_120156585
http://k.sina.com.cn/article_2090512390_7c9ab00602000n007.html
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