Beijing (TIP): The controversy surrounding Chinese tennis star PengShuai’s accusations of sexual assault against a former top politician continues to cast a shadow of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games in the run up to their official kickoff on February 4. Within China, however, her case has drawn little attention amid the crushing force of official censorship. Yet it points also to the barriers Chinese women face when raising such claims, both in the courts and within a male-dominated social and political culture that regards any dissent as a threat to the tightly-controlled, Communist Party-dominated system. While the #MeToo movement gained some initial traction when it launched in China in 2018, recent cases show those early hopes for a significant change in official attitudes may have been unrealistic.

Paying the price for going public : Coming forward publicly with allegations can expose victims to a host of perils from online abuse to job loss, countersuits from those they accuse and simple disappearance into the judicial system.

In the case that first defined the Chinese #MeToo movement, activist Zhou Xiaoxuan sued state TV host Zhu Jun only after he sued her for defamation first. She accused him of groping her when she was a young intern at CCTV. After initially receiving public support and media coverage, Zhou now gets messages attacking her every day and has been banned from positing on her Weibo account — a Twitter-like platform — for a year. Other cases reflect the perils as well. Huang Xueqin, who publicly supported a woman when she accused a professor of sexual assault, was arrested in September. Wang Jianbing, who helped women report sexual harassment, was detained along with her. Neither has been heard from since. Peng disappeared from public view last year after accusing former Communist Party official Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. (AP)