[Joint House and Senate Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


     THE FUTURE OF WOMEN IN CHINA; #ME TOO, CENSORSHIP, AND GENDER 
                               INEQUALITY


=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             MARCH 1, 2022
                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
 
 

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              Available at www.cecc.gov or www.govinfo.gov
              
                              ___________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
47-073 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2022                


              CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

                    LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

Senate

                                     House

JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon, Chair          JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts,  
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California                 Co-chair
MARCO RUBIO, Florida                 CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma             THOMAS SUOZZI, New York
TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 TOM MALINOWSKI, New Jersey
STEVE DAINES, Montana                BRIAN MAST, Florida
ANGUS KING, Maine                    VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
JON OSSOFF, Georgia                  RASHIDA TLAIB, Michigan
                                     JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
                                     MICHELLE STEEL, California


                     EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS

                           Not yet appointed

                      Matt Squeri, Staff Director

                   Todd Stein, Deputy Staff Director

                                  (ii)


                            C O N T E N T S

                               __________

                               Statements

                                                                   Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Jeff Merkley, a U.S. Senator from 
  Oregon; Chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.....     1
Statement of Hon. James P. McGovern, a U.S. Representative from 
  Massachusetts; Co-chair, Congressional-Executive Commission on 
  China..........................................................     2
Statement of Hon. Chris Smith, a U.S. Representative from New 
  Jersey.........................................................     3
Statement of Leta Hong Fincher, author, ``Betraying Big Brother: 
  The Feminist Awakening in China''..............................     6
Statement of Aaron Halegua, research fellow at NYU School of 
  Law's U.S.-Asia Law Institute and its Center for Labor and 
  Employment Law.................................................     7
Statement of Mei Fong, Chief Communications Officer, Human Rights 
  Watch and author, ``One Child: The Story of China's Most 
  Radical Experiment''...........................................     9
Statement of Tursunay Ziyawudun, detention camp survivor and 
  advocate for Uyghur human rights...............................    11

                                APPENDIX
                          Prepared Statements

Hong Fincher, Leta...............................................    31
Halegua, Aaron...................................................    34
Fong, Mei........................................................    36
Ziyawudun, Tursunay..............................................    37

Merkley, Hon. Jeff...............................................    38
McGovern, Hon. James P...........................................    39

                       Submissions for the Record

Excerpt from article by Leta Hong Fincher entitled ``Why Peng 
  Shuai Has China's Leaders Spooked''............................    40
Article by Aaron Halegua and Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee 
  entitled ``Are Countries Fulfilling the Promise of the Violence 
  and Harassment Convention?''...................................    40
Report by Aaron Halegua entitled ``Workplace Gender-based 
  Violence and Harassment in China''.............................    42
CECC Truth in Testimony Disclosure Form..........................    72
Witness Biographies..............................................    73

                                 (iii)

 
     THE FUTURE OF WOMEN IN CHINA: #ME TOO, CENSORSHIP, AND GENDER 
                               INEQUALITY

                              ----------                              


                         TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2022

                            Congressional-Executive
                                       Commission on China,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m. 
in Room 562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Jeff 
Merkley, Chair, presiding.
    Also present: Representative James P. McGovern, Co-chair, 
Senator Ossoff, and Representatives Smith, Steel, and Wexton.

   OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MERKLEY, U.S. SENATOR FROM 
   OREGON; CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA

    Chair Merkley. The Congressional-Executive Commission on 
China's hearing entitled ``The Future of Women in China: 
#MeToo, Censorship, and Gender Inequality'' will come to order.
    One week from today the world will mark International 
Women's Day. This is an occasion not only to celebrate the 
critical role women and girls play in families, communities, 
and societies across the globe but to also reflect on how those 
societies can better protect the fundamental human rights of 
women and girls. Governments that fail to treat women equally 
prevent their countries from reaching their full potential. 
Those that empower women in political, social, and economic 
life are more prosperous and peaceful. Over 70 years ago, Mao 
Zedong acknowledged the importance of women in Chinese society 
with his famous statement that women hold up half the sky. Yet, 
as this Commission fulfills its mandate to monitor human rights 
in China, we continue to find a mixed picture when it comes to 
the status of women. While the Chinese government implements 
laws and regulations intended to address persistent issues 
related to gender-based violence, discrimination, and 
harassment, women face significant challenges in all of these 
areas.
    In recent months, several high-profile cases shined a 
bright spotlight on the vulnerability of women to violence. In 
November, tennis star Peng Shuai accused a senior Chinese 
Communist Party official of sexual assault. In January, a video 
appeared showing a rural woman--reportedly the mother of 
eight--chained by her neck in an outdoor shed, sparking serious 
concerns about human trafficking, the impact of policies of 
population control, and the treatment of persons with mental 
disorders. These stories come on the heels of other cases of 
domestic violence and workplace harassment that reinvigorated 
the #MeToo movement, as well as horrifying reports of rape 
committed against Uyghur women in intrusive homestay programs 
and mass internment camps. A brave survivor of these camps will 
tell her story to us today.
    While many of these reports generated intense interest 
within China, the Chinese Communist Party worked to suppress 
them and stifle expression related to women's rights, just as 
it constricts freedom of expression and civil society more 
broadly. It's been seven years since China jailed five female 
activists for publicizing sexual harassment on public 
transportation, and feminists--that is, advocates for improving 
the condition of women in China--continue to be denied the 
space to speak up and to organize, as demonstrated by the 
coordination of online attacks and the shutdown of feminist 
social media accounts last spring.
    In political life, women are excluded from positions of 
power, with not a single woman serving on the Politburo 
Standing Committee and only one woman serving on the 25-member 
Politburo and few women serving at senior levels of county, 
municipal, and provincial governments.
    Many of the most egregious abuses deny the fundamental 
freedom of families to decide if, when, and how to have 
children. Forced sterilizations and forced abortions, such as 
those prompted for years by the one-child policy and those 
reported in recent years by the Uyghurs and other Turkic 
Muslims, are atrocities. The move to a three-child policy 
raises the specter of new coercive tools and tactics denying 
freedom. This all adds up to a complex landscape for women's 
rights in China, deserving close scrutiny through today's 
hearing. This is the first time the Congressional-Executive 
Commission on China has held a hearing dedicated to this set of 
issues and it shouldn't be the last. I look forward to our 
witnesses helping us understand ways we can better stand up for 
women in China.
    Now I recognize Congressman McGovern for his opening 
remarks.
    [The prepared statement of Senator Merkley appears in the 
Appendix.]

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
MASSACHUSETTS; CO-CHAIR, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON 
                             CHINA

    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, 
for holding this hearing on ``The Future of Women in China: 
#MeToo, Censorship and Gender Inequality.'' I am proud that 
this is the Commission's first-ever hearing specifically on the 
status of women. It is timely, given the spotlight on the Peng 
Shuai case of sexual assault and coverup and changes in the 
Party's policy on gender. Since 2005, the Commission has 
included a stand-alone section on the status of women in its 
annual report. That initial section on the status of women 
found that while the Chinese constitution and laws provide for 
equal rights for women, in reality women have fewer employment 
opportunities than men, and their educational levels fall below 
those of men. Today we find this dynamic much the same. The 
Chinese government continues to implement laws and regulations 
aimed at equality. For example, in January of 2021, a specific 
definition of sexual harassment was codified in the civil code, 
creating liability for employers and detailing the kinds of 
conduct that would fall under the definition of sexual 
harassment. But in their everyday experience, women continue to 
face discrimination in employment, education, wages, and legal 
redress. Last September, authorities detained Sophie Huang 
Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, advocates of the Chinese #MeToo 
movement, under the charge of ``incitement of subversion of 
state power.'' Why in the world would advocating for women's 
rights be considered a crime against the state? Repression of 
women has also been documented in the Commission's annual 
report's population control section, on the Chinese 
government's heavy-handed policies to limit births, including 
the human rights abuses of forced abortion and forced 
sterilization. We have monitored these horrific practices that 
are part of the government's campaign against Uyghurs and other 
Turkic Muslim women, and we will hear testimony from a survivor 
today.
    For others in the People's Republic of China, however, 
these population policies are evolving, as authorities respond 
to the social and economic consequences of demographic change. 
We would like to know where these policies are headed and 
whether Chinese authorities' heavy-handed approach will 
manifest itself in a different way.
    I welcome the witnesses and I look forward to your 
testimony. Again, I want to thank Chairman Merkley for 
coordinating this hearing. I think it is long overdue.
    With that, I yield back my time.
    [The prepared statement of Representative McGovern appears 
in the Appendix.]
    Chair Merkley. Congressman Smith now wishes to deliver some 
opening comments. Congressman?

                 STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS SMITH,
             A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY

    Representative Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 
you for convening today's important hearing.
    I'd like to concentrate my remarks on the most coercive, 
horrific, and systematic abuse of women's rights by the Chinese 
Communist Party. For decades, the women in China were subjected 
to the brutal one-child-per-couple policy under which countless 
numbers of women were forcibly aborted and sterilized against 
their will. I chaired dozens of hearings, including as chairman 
of this Commission and my Subcommittee on Human Rights on the 
Foreign Affairs Committee, on this egregious abuse and heard 
directly from many women who were forcibly aborted. I would 
note parenthetically, I led the successful effort to reverse a 
Clinton administration policy that denied asylum to those 
fleeing forced abortion and also offered an amendment back in 
1985, that is still the law, that we will not contribute to any 
organization that supports or co-manages a coercive population 
control program. That was back in '85.
    The trauma of being abducted and forcibly brought to an 
abortionist by police and family-planning cadres has few 
parallels in the world. At one of my congressional hearings I 
chaired in 2009, for example, a Chinese college student named 
Wujian said that she was brought to a hospital against her will 
and she testified that, and I quote her in part: ``As soon as I 
was taken out of the van I saw hundreds of pregnant moms there, 
all of them just like pigs in the slaughterhouse. The room was 
full of moms who had just gone through a forced abortion. Some 
moms were crying. Some moms were screaming and one mom was 
rolling on the floor in unbearable pain. Then it was my turn. 
It was the end of the world for me,'' she said. ``When the 
surgery was finished, the nurse showed me part of my baby's 
bloody foot with her tweezers.''
    As I think those who will be testifying today and members 
of our Commission know, the girl child particularly was 
targeted in the womb, given the cultural preference for boys. 
If only one child or two or even three was allowed, there was a 
girl who was exterminated, something we all called and call 
``gendercide.'' This has led to the world's most significant 
gender imbalance anywhere in history. According to the 
Congressional Research Service, as of 2021, there was a 
reported 689 females for every 723 males in China, leading to 
``the world's most skewed sex ratio at birth with 111 males for 
every 100 females,'' per the 2020 data. This has only been 
partially ameliorated by the CCP's belated recognition that 
they have created a demographic time bomb and the change to a 
two-child policy in 2015 and now a three-child policy as of 
last year. The coercive hand of the state is nonetheless still 
present. Indeed, this Commission conducted a series of hearings 
following the adoption of the two child per couple policy. The 
conclusion drawn from those hearings was that the two-child 
policy should not be lauded because it did not change the basic 
structure of coercive population control in China, and it 
appears the same is true with the three child per couple 
policy. The policy still violates international human rights 
norms. Women in China still endure coercive pregnancy 
monitoring, fines, and the immense psychological burden of 
enforced birth limits. At least as of 2017, China was the only 
country in the world where the female suicide rate is higher 
than the male. Experts differ on the exact number, but 
estimates indicated that between 25 and 40 percent more women 
killed themselves each year through suicide than men. That 
doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. A contributing 
factor has been the coercive power to destroy their children 
while in utero.
    Let's not forget the bureaucracy that has been created, 
mobilized, and invested in population control. The new policy 
does not dismantle the brutal machinery of enforcement, nor 
does it remove the pernicious incentives given to local 
officials to pressure mothers to abort a child if the birth 
hasn't been approved by the state. And even if the situation 
has ameliorated somewhat for women from the ethnic Han Chinese 
majority, the CCP's ruthless anti-natalism is still played out 
with a vengeance, as we all know, Mr. Chairman, in genocidal 
policies aimed at reducing Central Asian populations, including 
the Uyghur minority, and others--the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz.
    Last year, in an independent tribunal in the United Kingdom 
chaired by Geoffrey Nice--who led the prosecution of former 
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic--to determine whether the 
CCP's policies amounted to genocide, one of the witnesses, 
named Razi, presented testimony regarding how she was forcibly 
aborted and told a similar story that I have heard since 1983, 
when I first started my effort to combat this heinous abuse of 
women's rights. A female OB-GYN named Dr. Gafur told how if a 
household had more births than allowed, they would raze the 
home; they would flatten the house and destroy it.
    I also had at one of my hearings a woman who we were able 
to get out of the country who ran a family planning program in 
Fujian Province. Her self-description was: ``By day I was a 
monster, by night a wife and mother of only one,'' and that she 
would have women in their eighth and ninth pregnancy pleading 
with her to allow them to carry their baby to term, but she 
said, with resoluteness, ``We would abort each and every one of 
them.''
    Let me just conclude by pointing out that at one of our 
hearings--and you know this, Mr. Chairman; it was our 
Commission--we heard from Mihrigul Tursun who recounted her 
ordeal of torture, abuse, and detention in the Chinese camps. 
We've heard from many others over time. As we all know, Xi 
Jinping is continuing his genocide.
    And let me just say, I asked repeatedly--during the Obama 
administration and even the Bush administration, as the author 
of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and four other laws 
that combat human trafficking--what the linkage is between 
forced abortion, the gendercide of the girl child, and 
trafficking. And finally the Trafficking in Persons Report 
recognized that not only is there a linkage, one of the reasons 
so many women are being trafficked into China is the dearth, 
the lack, of women and the extermination of the girl child as a 
result of this horrible policy.
    So thank you again for calling this hearing. I think we 
have to be very clear that this is not over, despite what Xi 
Jinping and others might have said. The machinery of the 
forced-abortion policy remains intact and that is cause for 
great, great concern.
    I yield back, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    [The prepared statement of Representative Smith appears in 
the Appendix.]
    Chair Merkley. Thank you, Congressman.
    Now I'd like to introduce our panel of witnesses, starting 
with Dr. Leta Hong Fincher. She is a journalist and author of 
``Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China,'' as 
well as ``Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality 
in China.'' She is an adjunct professor at Columbia 
University's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. 
She won the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta 
Chi Award for her China reporting.
    Aaron Halegua is a lawyer and research fellow at New York 
University Law School's Center for Labor and Employment Law, 
and the U.S.-Asia Law Institute. In 2021 he authored the report 
``Workplace Gender-Based Harassment and Violence in China: 
Harmonizing Domestic Law and Practice with International 
Standards.'' He has worked on labor rights issues for nearly 20 
years, including consulting on labor issues in China, Thailand, 
Burma, Malaysia, and Mexico.
    Mei Fong is chief communications officer at Human Rights 
Watch and a former Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal 
China correspondent. Her book, ``One Child: The Story of 
China's Most Radical Experiment,'' won a nonfiction award from 
the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Foreign Policy 
magazine named her to its top 50 list of U.S.-China 
influencers. She was previously director of communications and 
strategy at the Center for Public Integrity.
    Tursunay Ziyawudun is a survivor of the Chinese 
government's mass internment camps in the Xinjiang Uyghur 
Autonomous Region. As one of the very few survivors of these 
camps who has reached safety in another country, she has 
provided testimony to human rights groups and to researchers 
and journalists investigating the genocide against Uyghurs and 
other Turkic Muslims. Her brave voice exposed to the world the 
sheer depravity of the mass internment camps and their horrific 
treatment of women.
    We will now hear directly from our witnesses, starting with 
Dr. Hong Fincher.

    STATEMENT OF LETA HONG FINCHER, AUTHOR, ``BETRAYING BIG 
           BROTHER: THE FEMINIST AWAKENING IN CHINA''

    Ms. Hong Fincher. Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern, and 
distinguished members of the Commission, thank you for holding 
this important and timely hearing and for inviting me to 
testify.
    While the entire world watches Russia's horrifying invasion 
of Ukraine, the Chinese government refuses to call Russia's 
actions an invasion. President Xi Jinping appears to be 
aligning himself with Vladimir Putin, further undermining the 
rules-based international order. There are many reasons that 
China's Communist regime has survived for over 70 years in 
spite of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and 
Eastern Europe, but it is impossible to understand the 
longevity of China's Communist Party without recognizing the 
patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism. In short, Xi 
Jinping views patriarchal authoritarianism and the subjugation 
of women as critical for the survival of the Communist Party. 
China's economy has entered a protracted slowdown just as the 
country is beginning to face the demographic crisis of an aging 
population, falling birth rates, and a shrinking workforce. In 
response, the government has revived sexist elements of 
Confucianism, upholding the male-dominated family as the basic 
foundation of a strong nation. State propaganda praises Xi 
Jinping's traditional ``family values'' and presents him as the 
father of the Chinese nation in a ``family-state under 
heaven,'' in which obedient wives and mothers in the home are 
key to solving China's most pressing social problems. China's 
propaganda apparatus began a crass campaign in 2007 to 
stigmatize single, educated Han Chinese women in their late 
20s, mocking them as ``leftover'' women to push them into 
marrying and having babies for the good of the nation. This 
pro-marriage, pro-natalist propaganda has only become more 
intense with the adoption of the two-child policy in 2016 and 
the three-child policy last summer. China's population-planning 
policies also have a strong undertone of eugenics. Even as 
officials urge Han Chinese women to marry and get pregnant in 
order to ``upgrade population quality,'' they are slashing 
birth rates among ethnic minority women, in particular Uyghur 
women and other Turkic women in Xinjiang, with forced 
sterilizations and abortions, as witness Tursunay Ziyawudun 
will describe in her testimony.
    The government is carrying out a sweeping crackdown on 
feminist activists, who pose a unique challenge to China's all-
male rulers. As a result, the #MeToo movement against sexual 
violence has been the target of aggressive censorship. Take the 
heavy-handed reaction to Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai's Weibo 
post last November 2nd, accusing China's former vice premier 
Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Peng Shuai's post was deleted 
within half an hour and she herself disappeared for weeks, only 
to reemerge in a series of undoubtedly coerced appearances 
coinciding with Beijing's Winter Olympics.
    We are about to mark the seventh anniversary of the Chinese 
government's jailing of five women's rights activists in March 
2015, for planning to commemorate International Women's Day by 
handing out stickers against sexual harassment on subways and 
buses. Since then, feminist activists have tapped into the 
broad discontent felt by Chinese women and developed a level of 
influence that is highly unusual for any social movement in 
China since 1989. Even though the government persecutes 
activists, shuts down women's rights and LGBTQ rights centers, 
and censors feminist social media content, China's feminist 
networks have actually grown in recent years instead of being 
wiped out.
    The shrinking space for civil society in China makes it 
even more extraordinary that a feminist movement is able to 
survive at all. While prominent male human rights activists 
have emerged over the years, very few Chinese citizens knew 
about them or could relate to their abstract goals. By 
contrast, feminist activists today take up causes that have 
broad resonance with young women and LGBTQ people across 
China--issues such as sexual violence, intimate partner 
violence, and gender discrimination.
    China is an autocracy with no press freedom, no internet 
freedom or freedom of assembly, and effectively no rule of law. 
Yet when feminist activists organize around issues that affect 
the personal lives of millions of ordinary women, even the all-
powerful, male-dominated Chinese Communist Party struggles to 
quash the movement.
    Thank you again for inviting me to testify.
    [The prepared statement of Leta Hong Fincher appears in the 
Appendix.]
    Chair Merkley. Thank you.
    And we'll now turn to Mr. Halegua.

 STATEMENT OF AARON HALEGUA, RESEARCH FELLOW, CENTER FOR LABOR 
 AND EMPLOYMENT LAW, U.S.-ASIA LAW INSTITUTE, NYU SCHOOL OF LAW

    Mr. Halegua. Chairman Merkley, Co-chair McGovern, and 
members of the Commission, good morning and thank you for the 
opportunity to testify before you on this important topic. I 
was asked to address the subject of sexual harassment in China. 
My testimony draws upon my nearly 20 years of studying Chinese 
labor issues. Last summer, I published a report on workplace 
gender-based violence and harassment in China, which describes 
the current state of Chinese law and practice and also makes 
recommendations to the Chinese government, Chinese employers, 
and global brands on how to better comply with international 
standards. The full report has been submitted to be part of the 
record. Today, I will share a few high-level findings from my 
research, and I will start with my basic conclusion. It is my 
view that in recent years China has, in fact, made important 
rhetorical commitments and taken some positive legislative 
steps towards eliminating sexual harassment. However, there has 
not yet been sufficient action by officials, courts, or 
employers to realize those commitments. In practice, Chinese 
women still routinely suffer sexual harassment at work and have 
little hope of obtaining meaningful redress. In terms of 
prevalence, like in many countries, sexual harassment remains a 
serious problem in China. While survey results vary, one study 
by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1990s found 
that 84 percent of female workers reported being harassed.
    So what has been China's response? At the international 
level, China recently supported the adoption of ILO Convention 
190 on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World 
of Work, which seeks to create a zero-tolerance environment for 
sexual harassment. China even agreed that adopting a convention 
was preferable to a non-binding resolution. However, since 
Convention 190 was adopted in 2019, it has not yet been 
ratified by China. Domestically, China continues to improve its 
legislation. In 2020, like Congressman McGovern mentioned, 
China adopted a new civil code that included a provision 
specifically on sexual harassment. However, while the provision 
establishes clear liability for individual harassers and 
requires employers to take measures to prevent sexual 
harassment, it still does not create any legal liability for 
employers when they fail to do so.
    Turning to the implementation of these laws, there is 
evidence that some Chinese employers are taking sexual 
harassment more seriously. More employers are adopting sexual 
harassment policies and there is a considerable number of court 
cases involving employees who have been fired after the company 
found that they engaged in sexual harassment. Far more 
troubling, though, is the very small number of sexual 
harassment victims that ever bring a case in court. Only 6 of 
the 83 sexual harassment court cases decided between 2018 and 
2020 involved victims bringing lawsuits against their 
harassers. Moreover, victims who do sue rarely win, and if they 
do, the remedies are paltry, sometimes just a few hundred 
dollars or maybe just an apology. What's worse, sexual 
harassment victims who complain often face retaliation. It is 
also common for them to be sued for defamation by the alleged 
harasser. Indeed, far more cases are brought against sexual 
harassment victims than by these victims. One female worker who 
published an online account of being forcibly kissed, groped, 
and undressed by her supervisor was later ordered to pay the 
equivalent of $1,800 for hurting the supervisor's feelings. 
Already in this culture of silence, very few victims are 
willing to come forward and complain. If there continues to be 
little to gain from filing a complaint but a great deal to 
lose, it is unlikely that more victims will come forward.
    So what can be done? In closing, I will just mention a few 
recommendations from the more comprehensive list in my report. 
First, the Chinese government should explicitly make employers 
liable for failing to prevent or address sexual harassment, 
should modify evidentiary rules that make it difficult for 
victims to prevail in court, and should protect victims from 
retaliation and defamation claims. Chinese employers should 
establish procedures to investigate and resolve complaints, and 
global brands should ensure that Chinese partners have such 
mechanisms in place. And the U.S. Government should commend 
China for the steps it has taken thus far, but encourage it to 
do more to harmonize its domestic law and practice with the 
most recent international standards.
    Thank you all again for your attention to this important 
set of issues. I look forward to answering any questions that 
you have.
    [The prepared statement of Aaron Halegua appears in the 
Appendix.]
    Chair Merkley. Thank you, Mr. Halegua.
    And now we turn to Ms. Fong.

  STATEMENT OF MEI FONG, CHIEF COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, HUMAN 
  RIGHTS WATCH, AND AUTHOR, ``ONE CHILD: THE STORY OF CHINA'S 
                   MOST RADICAL EXPERIMENT''

    Ms. Fong. Thank you very much, Chairman McGovern, Chairman 
Merkley, and members of the Commission. I appreciate this 
opportunity to testify on the impact of China's population 
planning policies and the effect it has had on women, in China 
and beyond.
    Now, the one-child policy began in 1980; it has shaped 
China's population-planning policies for well over 30-plus 
years, and then it was replaced in rapid succession with the 
two-child policy in 2016 and then the three-child policy in 
2021. Now, this sudden about-face that went from limiting 
births to boosting births was the result of the ruinous 
consequences of this inhumane policy. In short, it created a 
population in China that was very imbalanced: too male, too 
old, too few. When I say ``too male,'' what do I mean? There 
are 30 million more men than women in China, and that's about 
the population of Australia. When I say ``too old,'' that means 
you have a shrinking workforce and you have more retirees in 
China than you have in the population of Western Europe.
    And so what does all this mean for women in China? Well, 
Mao may have said that women bear up half the sky, but as far 
as the one-child policy and the consequences of this, women 
have borne far more than their share of the burden of this. 
We'll start with the one-child policy.
    As a journalist at The Wall Street Journal, my years 
reporting in China, and while researching for the book, I spoke 
to many women who recounted tales of being forced to have 
abortions, some as late as seven months. I spoke to officials 
who described how they cornered and chased women like prey, 
pregnant women, and I spoke to many, many mothers who had very 
heartbreaking stories to tell about being forced into acts of 
abandonment and infanticide, killing their own children, all to 
conform with the one-child policy. Now, of course, there's been 
a switch to the two- and three-child policy, but even so, these 
have inflicted new wounds on women.
    Now, for example, this whole move to boost births in China 
is done to ask women of China to shore up the shrinking 
workplace, but they themselves are now being forced to contend 
with problems in the workplace. Since the introduction of the 
two-child policy, Human Rights Watch has documented a rise in 
pregnancy-related discrimination against women in the 
workplace. Employers now fear that women might take two or 
three slots of maternity leave, instead of only one during the 
one-child era, and so some companies have sought to avoid this 
through job ads or interviews or workplace treatment that 
discriminate against women with no children, women with just 
one child, or simply women in general. Women have been fired 
for getting pregnant, they've had their pay docked, they've 
been asked to sign agreements pledging not to have children, 
and while such practices are illegal under Chinese law, the 
enforcement is lax, and redress and compensation so rare that 
these practices largely remain unchecked.
    Elsewhere, as well, while of course it is much easier to 
use force to prevent women from having children, it does not 
mean that the Chinese government isn't taking that same 
approach, stick versus carrot, to try and boost births, and how 
this is shaping up is in the form of growing curbs on divorce 
and abortion. These are both human rights abuses. Last month, 
authorities said they would reduce unplanned pregnancies and 
abortions among adolescents and single women. Now, this follows 
tightened overall restrictions on abortion in general that 
began in 2018, and also there have been reports of a clampdown 
on male vasectomies.
    Now authorities say these moves are motivated by welfare 
concerns, but such explanations have been met with both 
suspicion and, in some cases, derision from the Chinese public, 
given the state's long history of coercive birth practices. And 
it is also, of course, important to note at this point that 
there still continue to be coercive practices for many Uyghurs 
in China, with forced sterilization, and women held in camps, 
of which we will hear more on in a bit.
    Last but not least, it is not only the women of China who 
have borne the brunt of Beijing's population-planning policies. 
The one-child policy has created a huge shortage of women and, 
hence, a surge in bride trafficking in China as well as from 
countries across the region, including Myanmar, North Korea, 
Cambodia, and Pakistan. Human Rights Watch has documented how 
hundreds of women and girls in Myanmar have been sold to 
Chinese families for anywhere between $3,000 and $13,000, and 
once purchased, they are pressured to produce babies as quickly 
as possible. Now, you have heard the case of the woman in 
chains who was held and forced to bear something like eight 
children. This went viral in the weeks before the Beijing 
Olympics and threatened to derail the feel-good stories of the 
Olympics. This is a signal or a representation of some of the 
ongoing concerns with human trafficking.
    Now there is a whole host of recommendations that I have 
submitted in my prepared statement. I won't go into it in 
detail at this point. I think suffice it to say that it is 
almost unimaginable to think that any government should be in 
the business of regulating, making, or forcing women to choose 
how many children they should have. It needs to stop. Thank 
you.
    [The prepared statement of Mei Fong appears in the 
Appendix.]
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much for your work and for 
your testimony.
    And now we turn to Ms. Tursunay. Delighted to have you and 
appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge and your 
experience.
    [Note: Ms. Tursunay's remarks are made through an 
interpreter.]

                STATEMENT OF TURSUNAY ZIYAWUDUN,
                 FORMER XINJIANG CAMP DETAINEE

    Ms. Tursunay. I am very thankful that you have given me 
this opportunity to talk about what I have been through and 
what has happened to my people. I am very grateful for the 
opportunity to speak today.
    Ms. Tursunay. Thank you, Chair Merkley, and thank you, Co-
chair McGovern. I am very grateful for the opportunity to 
testify and to tell the world about my experience and the 
experience of Uyghur women. It is painful to speak about my 
experiences, but I see it as my duty to be the voice for those 
who are still in the camps and in prison and those who died in 
front of my own eyes.
    I was locked up in camps two different times. The mental 
and physical torture I have experienced have left deep scars on 
my heart. I was taken into a camp for the second time in March 
2018 and stayed for nearly one year. We always lived in fear. 
We feared beatings if we could not memorize the propaganda 
lessons correctly. Every day we heard screaming and crying 
voices. Then it happened to me. Several times the guards took 
me out of the cell and into an interrogation room, and they 
beat me. Once, they took me out in the middle of the night, 
along with a young woman in her 20s. In addition to police 
officers, there was a man in a suit wearing a mask. I don't 
know where he came from. These men raped the young woman. Three 
police officers raped me as well. They were always taking 
girls. Sometimes they brought a woman back near the point of 
death. Some of the women disappeared. I saw some bleed to death 
with my own eyes. Some lost their minds in the camp. Every time 
I think about these things, my heart feels like it's been 
sliced with a dagger. My nightmares make me relive that fear 
every day.
    I thank the CECC commissioners for speaking out for Uyghur 
women. We are grateful to Congresswoman Wexton for advocating 
for Ms. Gulmira Imin. We are very grateful for the resolution 
condemning the genocide and the forced labor bill that passed 
in December.
    I ask you to do more. Please do more to accept Uyghur 
refugees. I came to the U.S. with the help of the U.S. 
Government and the Uyghur Human Rights Project. There are more 
people like me who managed to escape China, but they are still 
afraid to speak. Living in neighboring countries, they are 
still living in fear of being deported to China at any time.
    Please also investigate what can be done to help Uyghur 
asylum seekers. I know many Uyghurs who have been in the U.S. 
since before the crackdown in 2017, which is already five years 
ago, and they still have not received their asylum interview. 
The U.S. is doing so much because of your great sympathy for 
the Uyghurs. Can you also investigate why so many Uyghurs are 
waiting for years for a decision on asylum? I also hope 
Congress can do more to help Uyghur torture survivors get 
medical care and counseling. My nightmares and the mental 
anguish are constant. Camp survivors like me need help for 
extreme trauma. Other Uyghur Americans are also suffering 
terrible mental trauma.
    Finally, I want to ask for more support for human rights 
groups and Radio Free Asia to do more programs to help women 
who are victims of the Chinese government's atrocities. For 
example, I listen to Radio Free Asia Uyghur service every day. 
I hope there can be more news stories about women in the 
genocide and information about how Uyghur women can survive our 
mental torment. More stories about achievements of strong 
Uyghur and Kazakh women can help give us inspiration and hope 
for the future. Thank you again for inviting me.
    [The prepared statement of Tursunay Ziyawudun appears in 
the Appendix.]
    Chair Merkley. Thank you so much for your testimony about 
these conditions. Thank you to all of our witnesses. We're 
going to turn to a period of questions now. Ms. Tursunay, let 
me begin with you. Could you clarify for those who are seeking 
to understand your experience whether the camp you were put 
into was a strategy by the Chinese government to separate women 
and prevent them from having children? Was it a strategy for 
forced labor? Were you forced to work? And at what point, and 
why, did the government release you from the camp?
    Ms. Tursunay. I don't know what kind of strategy the 
Chinese government wishes to implement, but one thing that I 
know--and it's clear--is the Chinese government wants Uyghur 
women to not have children. They imposed sterilization on every 
woman. It's just amazing that they want to destroy Uyghur women 
in different ways.
    In different ways, the Chinese government tries to separate 
the families--family members. For example, this picture that I 
am showing you, this woman was separated from her children. The 
only thing is that they just try to destroy the Uyghur families 
and Uyghur women.
    Chair Merkley. And if you could, at what point were you 
released from the camp and--I know you were admitted or put 
into a camp a second time--what was the strategy of the Chinese 
government? Why were you released?
    Ms. Tursunay. I don't know what purpose the Chinese 
government has in its mind, but the only thing that I know is 
that my husband was living in Kazakhstan, and he advocated for 
me. I have seen that the Chinese authorities have shown me that 
my husband was campaigning for my release from the camp, and he 
was holding my Chinese ID card, and talking about me, saying 
that I am innocent and I should be released from the camp. And 
my understanding is that because of my husband, and he 
campaigned for me from Kazakhstan, that that's why the Chinese 
government had to release me.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. No one should ever have to go 
through what you endured and what other Uyghur and Turkic 
Muslim women are experiencing. You are a voice for so many, and 
you are doing a great service by helping shine a light on this 
inhumanity in this strategy of genocide being conducted by the 
Chinese government. So thank you. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Tursunay. Thank you for giving me this opportunity, and 
our people back home--many people are very hopeful that the 
American Government will help us. They are really looking 
forward and are really hopeful that you will support Uyghur 
people. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. I'm going to now turn to Dr. 
Fincher.
    Dr. Fincher, I was very struck by your description of the 
patriarchal authoritarian views of Xi Jinping and that the 
subjugation of women is critical for the survival of the 
Communist Party, which is an interesting way to characterize Xi 
Jinping's views--that subjugation is critical for the survival 
of the Party.
    I do certainly understand your followup in which you talk 
about the elements of Confucianism and the strategy of a male-
dominated family and this belief that China will thrive with 
obedient wives, but why is the subjugation of women critical to 
the survival of the Party? Why do you put it that way?
    Ms. Fincher. Thank you for your question, Senator Merkley.
    It is multifaceted. The Chinese government faces all of 
these economic problems: the shrinking of the workforce, aging 
of the population, the sex ratio imbalance which is related to 
a lot of--tens of millions more men who are considered to be a 
grave threat to political stability because they are not able 
to find wives, domestic violence.
    The Chinese government passed an anti-domestic violence law 
in 2016, I believe largely to make itself look like a more 
responsible global power, but that law has basically not been 
enforced. And after many years of doing research on women in 
China--more than a decade--I've come to the conclusion that 
basically the Chinese government wants the violence against 
women to continue as long as it is happening within the home.
    According to this old Confucian ideology, which is now 
being resuscitated in Chinese state media today, there is such 
an emphasis on everybody playing their proper role within the 
family that is very hierarchical. There is this aggressive 
propaganda about how women need to be wives and mothers, very 
docile and obedient within the home. So women then take over 
the harmony within the home. The Communist Party continues to 
emphasize in its propaganda how a harmonious family is the 
basic cell of society; that as long as the violence is 
contained within the home, then that violence is not likely to 
be directed at the state. So that's one of the ways in which I 
believe that the subjugation of women is very important.
    I mean, if you compare China with surrounding countries 
like Japan, for example, Japan is also highly patriarchal and 
yet they've adopted this Abenomics policy of trying to 
encourage more women's participation in the workforce, and 
they've actually succeeded in raising female labor force 
participation rates.
    But in China we see the absolute opposite where female 
labor force participation is falling. There is no effort on the 
part of the government to decrease or reverse that trend in any 
way. China is the only major economy, I believe, in the entire 
world where female labor force participation was falling before 
the pandemic and the gender income gap was increasing. And why 
is it that there is so little female political representation? 
Not only is it abysmally low, it's actually falling within the 
Central Committee.
    There are so many different signs--and the severe crackdown 
on this extraordinary feminist movement ever since 2015. Why is 
it that China's leaders are so threatened by feminism? It's in 
large part because marriage rates are falling, birth rates are 
falling. Young women today--particularly college-educated young 
women--do not want to marry or even have one child, let alone 
two. And so they are--in advocating for the emancipation of 
women, these feminists are actually posing a real threat to the 
whole agenda of the Communist Party, and there are many ways in 
which this basically threatens the ability of China's leaders 
to control the entire population.
    Chair Merkley. I am now way over my time, which I'm shocked 
about. How did seven minutes go by so quickly? I apologize to 
my colleagues, and we'll turn to Representative McGovern.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Fong, you testified that ``the Chinese state switch to 
purportedly pro-natal policies has inflicted new wounds on 
women.'' You recommend that the Chinese government fully 
respect reproductive rights, stop regulating women's bodies, 
and provide free access to safe and legal abortion and 
contraception.
    You know, we're all against China's human rights abuses, 
against its heavy-handed intrusion into the lives and bodies of 
women. I think it's important that when we are talking about 
opposing China's denial of basic reproductive rights that we're 
talking about whether they are coercive anti-natal policies or 
pro-natal policies.
    You know, the abuse of women, the taking away of women's 
rights, is the heavy-handed role that the Chinese government is 
playing in saying you can do this, and you can't do that, or 
you can do this.
    Can you expand on your recommendation?
    Ms. Fong. I'm sorry. Could you clarify that question?
    Co-chair McGovern. I guess what I'm trying to say is kind 
of reemphasizing the importance that--when we talk about 
opposing China's heavy-handed approach in dealing with women 
that it is important that we are talking about not only their 
coercive anti-natal policies but also their pro-natal policies, 
and if you could just maybe comment on that.
    Ms. Fong. Yes, I think China is unusual among many 
countries. I mean, China is not the only countryongat is facing 
falling birth rates, This is a reality in most modern societies 
where women are educated and in the workforce and having 
smaller families, and delaying when they start reproducing as 
they go on and go to college.
    China, however, is unusual in that it is adopting very 
different tactics from the rest of the world in terms of trying 
to increase family size. It isn't spending a lot of money on 
ancillary services like childcare, schooling--all the things 
that are necessary when you are in the business of promoting 
equality for women and promoting equal parental rights in the 
workplace. It is unusual in that respect, and I think this goes 
towards Dr. Hong Fincher's point. It isn't so much about 
births; it is about control. Thank you.
    Co-chair McGovern. I appreciate that. I just think it's 
important that that point be emphasized because it is about 
control, and women should decide whether they want to marry, 
whether they want to have children, whether they want to have 
one child or five children--whatever.
    Ms. Fong. Or no children.
    Co-chair McGovern. Yes, or no children. That is up to the 
woman; not up to the government to decide how a woman deals 
with her life.
    Mr. Halegua, women or men who suffer sexual harassment or 
abuse are often burdened with mental trauma from the 
experience. Does the Chinese system--whether legal or social--
provide psychosocial or other support for those who suffer 
trauma? Is mental health covered under the Chinese health 
system or readily available?
    Mr. Halegua. It's not a subject that I'm particularly 
expert on. I will say in the legal system, in looking at sexual 
harassment cases--and part of our study was to analyze every 
court case we could find that mentions the words sexual 
harassment--what did become clear in trying to figure out when 
courts would actually award damages to sexual harassment 
victims is that courts often required that victims have some 
kind of psychological evaluation and that there be actual 
documented psychological trauma before they would be willing to 
award some kind of damages to that victim.
    In terms of the adequacy of services, the things I've read 
suggest that certainly they are falling short in terms of 
providing these services. I think a big piece of it is that 
many people never really want to come out and complain and talk 
about what happened to them. There's obviously a certain stigma 
attached to being a victim of sexual harassment, and oftentimes 
it leads to problems at work--you have become the problem if 
you complain about sexual harassment; and this could lead to 
problems in one's own family or social groups, the stigma that 
comes with being someone who complains about sexual harassment. 
So a lot of people aren't really coming forward and seeking out 
the help for the trauma that they might have suffered.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Dr. Fincher, you testified that China's feminist networks 
have grown in recent years despite the overall trend in 
restrictions on civil society. To what do you attribute this 
dynamic? Is there a way that those of us outside China can 
support the movement, and is there a way that we can hurt it? 
Because one of the struggles we always have when it comes to 
supporting human rights defenders and those struggling for 
their human rights is how, despite our best intentions, we do 
something that makes it more difficult for them.
    Ms. Fincher. Thank you for your question, Chairman 
McGovern.
    There are many reasons why the feminist movement is so 
transformative today. One, at its core, there's a very radical 
political feminist movement. Those political activists at the 
very core are extremely savvy organizers. They're very 
imaginative. They're located in many different places. It's a 
rather large community. It has increased significantly since 
the jailing of the so-called Feminist Five in 2015. And so this 
core radical base of Chinese feminists is actually part of a 
global diaspora of Chinese feminists as well, who keep the 
momentum of the movement going.
    It is very different from these isolated--in the past--male 
heroes who were very well known, but then the Chinese 
government may kick them out of the country and then they lose 
all relevance. The movement does not rely on a single heroic 
leader and it has become the mainstream ideas about just 
speaking out against widespread sexism and misogyny in Chinese 
society. It has become so mainstream. These are very popular 
ideas now. They've caught on among millions and millions of not 
just young women but LGBTQ people, young men. There are many 
allies.
    So these are ideas that, really, hundreds of millions of 
people in China can endorse. And so it's popular. There's a 
radical core. The activists themselves, the most active 
feminists, are themselves persecuted. Sometimes they're jailed. 
Some of them are in jail right now.
    What can we do to help? Well, certainly, I would agree as 
well with Tursunay Ziyawudun in that the U.S. should do much 
more to provide a refuge for those fleeing persecution in 
China, and I know that those who manage to make it to the U.S. 
still have a lot of difficulty.
    In fact, I've helped a lot of these people with their 
visas. They have problems with visas, problems staying here. We 
can open our doors and welcome more of these people fleeing 
persecution and help give them the resources they need to make 
a new life in the U.S. when it is really impossible for them to 
live back in China.
    And the thing is that there's a lot of this communication 
because of the internet. Of course, there's no internet freedom 
in China, but the global diaspora of Chinese feminists and 
Uyghurs, I might add, has become so large. There's a lot of 
communication among these people. And so we can provide more 
resources for those who have fled China who have come to the 
U.S.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Congressman Smith.
    Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you to our panelists, and Tursunay, all of our hearts 
and prayers are for you, as you have suffered so much, and this 
Commission and all of us on this panel are absolutely committed 
to trying to end this genocide and to provide some relief, 
especially, as you pointed out, from the mental trauma that you 
suffer because of the terrible abuse that you suffered at the 
hands of the Chinese Communist Party. So thank you for having 
the courage to come and testify and, again, to keep the focus 
on what Xi Jinping is doing in Xinjiang so that we're all 
focused on it. Thank you.
    Mei Fong, I appreciate the comments you made about the fact 
that some 30 million men are single. I remember I chaired 
hearings at which the predictions were being made 15 years ago 
that by 2020, 20 million men would not be able to find wives 
because of the extermination of the girl child through sex-
selection abortion as a direct consequence of the one child per 
couple policy. So thank you for reminding us of that ongoing, 
terrible debacle that has occurred, and also your point about 
how the officials chased pregnant women like prey.
    Again, I have chaired 75 congressional hearings on human 
rights abuses in China, offered a countless number of 
resolutions and amendments and bills on the issue of forced 
abortion, always with an idea that there are two victims 
involved--the mother, who is being horribly mistreated, and the 
baby, who is being dismembered or killed.
    I would disagree with you when you talked about abortion 
protecting unborn children as a human rights abuse on page two 
of your testimony. I believe that the abuse is when a child is, 
literally, dismembered--killed by dismemberment or chemical 
poisoning.
    You know, we know more about the magnificent life of an 
unborn child now than ever before. Ultrasound has shattered the 
myth that somehow an unborn child is not human and alive. We 
know that the baby has a wake cycle, grows, and develops, and 
birth is merely an event, just an event. An important one, but 
an event that happens in the life of a child.
    So our protection needs to extend prior to birth to ensure 
that these children are not, as I said, dismembered or 
chemically poisoned. We know that children before birth feel 
pain at least at 20 weeks, and now the evidence is strongly 
suggesting that as they're being dismembered at 15 weeks they 
feel that, too, and until they are dead they feel that pain in 
a most excruciating way. Now, some could just dismiss that or 
trivialize it or ignore it, but that's a terrible reality.
    Bernard Nathanson, the founder of NARAL and one of the 
leading pro-abortionists in the 1970s, said, ``I've come to the 
agonizing conclusion I presided over 60,000 deaths.'' He was 
the head of the biggest abortion clinic in New York City. And 
what caused him to change? Dealing with unborn children as 
patients in need of a blood transfusion and some other kind of 
benign intervention to enhance their lives, including those 
with spina bifida.
    So I disagree with you on that. But I would like to ask you 
on the issue of sex-selection abortion whether or not you 
support sex-selection abortion, and I say that because the 
terrifying impact on China and on Asia continues to be felt to 
this day.
    I had a hearing in 2016. I had several hearings. One of 
them was with Mara Hvistendahl, who said in 2013 that there 
were over 160 million missing girls in Asia--160 million as a 
direct result of sex-selection abortion. Almost none of them 
were killed at birth. They were killed after an ultrasound 
revealed at the fifth month that that child happened to be a 
girl and because she is a girl she is exterminated. A hundred 
and sixty million.
    And then she went on to say that that equates with the 
total number of all the women and girl children living in the 
United States of America. So every woman you ever see--my dear 
wife, my daughters--every woman in this country, add them all 
up. That's how many are missing as a result of sex-selection 
abortion in Asia. And, of course, that's not just China, but 
it's Asia. But China is missing tens of millions as a direct 
result.
    So my first question to you is about sex-selection 
abortion. Do you support it--I mean, the devastating impact on 
the girl child. I believe that not only violence against women 
but also discrimination against women starts in the womb. If 
you have a country where the girl child is construed to be less 
than human and should not continue living simply because she's 
a girl child, that is a terrible human rights abuse.
    But I would appreciate your thoughts on that.
    Ms. Fong. Thank you very much for that. And something that 
you may not know about my personal history is that if there was 
sex-selective abortion available at the time when I was born, I 
probably would not have been born. I am one of five daughters 
in a very traditional Chinese household. My father was one of 
16 out of 18 sons. They, clearly, cared a lot about sons.
    So on that position, at least, I certainly see the value of 
girls and I certainly see why it is a problem not just in China 
but in many parts of Asia and beyond where there has been a 
long patriarchal system valuing boys and how that has created 
all sorts of evils and problems, particularly, as we see in 
China and elsewhere with sex-selective abortions and gender 
imbalances.
    However, I think also as part of this culture and need to 
value women, we need to value women's choices, and I will say, 
in short, that while it takes a village to raise a child, it 
does not take a village to determine a woman's choices on how 
many children she has, if she has children at all. So those are 
my thoughts on that perspective. Thank you very much.
    Representative Smith. I appreciate that. If I could ask you 
further, one of the things that I brought out--and again, I go 
back to 1983 when I first heard about this issue, and I've 
worked with a number of NGOs--a lot of the NGOs wouldn't do a 
thing. I remember arguing with Amnesty International for years 
about why were they silent on forced abortion in China.
    There were people in 1985--there was a hearing held right 
here in the Capitol in which the argument was, it's all over. 
The high tides are over. And I said, absolutely not. Then 
Michael Weisskopf did a three-part series for the Washington 
Post in which he documented the horrific abuse of the one child 
per couple policy. And then amendments were offered by me and 
others that said any group that supports or co-manages it, 
including the U.N. Population Fund, should be disqualified from 
getting funds. We want no complicity whatsoever in this abuse 
of women and children.
    But one of the mainstays throughout all of this besides, 
again, women being forcibly aborted, was that all single 
women--any unmarried woman would be also forcibly aborted, and 
I've met with several myself, both in China and others here, 
part of the diaspora, some of those lucky ones who got refugee 
status. And I'm just wondering, you know, what is the status of 
that now? Can an unwed mother continue her pregnancy to term?
    Ms. Fong. Thank you for that question. Insofar as the 
status of unwed mothers in China and their difficulties 
obtaining all sorts of reproductive services, and it can be in 
both directions--in the past, abortions have been quite easily 
obtained in China and we both, of course, know many people who 
have used it, actually, as a form of contraception.
    Now that appears to be reversing now because of the Chinese 
government's stance to encourage births, at least among the Han 
population, like I said. Last month, there were new regulations 
unfolded that appeared to be winding that back insofar as 
giving abortion services for unmarried women and adolescent 
women.
    Now in either of these cases, what it amounts to is 
coercion and limitation on women's choices, and that is never a 
good thing. And as to your question on human rights groups and 
what they have said, I think, in principle, human rights groups 
are all about the opposition of force, the opposition forcing a 
woman to have the child, the opposition to forcing a woman to 
have sex, the opposition to forcing women in general. Thank 
you.
    Representative Smith. Yes, I appreciate that so much. And, 
again, we do have a fundamental disagreement on the unborn 
child. I think they are worthy of protection and, you know, 
I've----
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you, Congressman. We are----
    Representative Smith. I'll just finish up real quick, if 
you don't mind, Mr. Chairman. A number of women who are post-
abortive and wish that someone had said, you know, that much 
agony often follows those who've had an abortion; it's all 
about reconciliation and hoping that they can get on with their 
lives. But it is a tragic loss of life.
    So thank you, and I yield back.
    Co-chair McGovern. Thank you.
    Congresswoman Steel.
    Representative Steel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank 
you to all the witnesses for coming out today, and I'm just so 
grateful. I think it's appalling that the CCP refuses to call 
Russia's recent actions an invasion and it is also appalling 
that Chairman Xi Jinping is standing with Putin. Add this to a 
long list of actions by the CCP to cheat and abuse the global 
rules-based system and another example of their human rights 
atrocities.
    As we speak, the CCP still limits women's access to 
leadership positions and is virtually run and controlled by 
men. The CCP steals large volumes of information and censors 
its own people and information. The recent video of a chained 
mother of eight and the censorship of those who posted about it 
in China and sought additional information is a perfect example 
of the CCP's ongoing abuse of its citizens.
    A study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 
and the Kachin Women's Association Thailand estimated that 
about 21,000 women and girls from northern Myanmar were forced 
into marriage in just one province in China from 2013 to 2017.
    The United States must stand and fight for the women and 
girls of China who are being oppressed and prosecuted by the 
CCP. Women should not be prosecuted for speaking out against 
human rights abuses.
    Having said that, to all the witnesses, anybody who wants 
to answer, please help me to answer this. My first question is: 
China's labor force is declining; decades-long birth policies 
that we've been talking about today and its aging population 
will weigh on its economy. The CCP allows for gender inequality 
in education and health. What can the United States and major 
companies do to give these women voices and equality? And any 
witnesses----
    Ms. Fincher. I'll take a first stab at that. One of my 
great frustrations in just observing the international response 
to abuses by the Chinese government is that all of these 
multinational corporations seem to only be thinking about their 
bottom line.
    And so I don't know what the U.S. Government can do to 
affect the stance of these kinds of corporations or 
international organizations like the International Olympic 
Committee, for example. Perhaps go through the United Nations. 
But, of course, you know, the U.S. Government can come up with 
certain policies, perhaps sanctions, but I see those as having 
somewhat limited impact when you have so many American 
corporations that simply don't care about doing the right 
thing. So this is a very tricky question. I don't know who else 
wants to jump in.
    Representative Steel. Actually, I sent a letter out with 17 
other Congressmembers right before the Olympics to all these 
corporations. They are spending billions of dollars on 
advertising and I asked them to spend just a little bit for--
you know, let the whole world know that human rights violations 
in China--that's what's happening and I didn't get any 
responses from these 17 corporations. I was very, very 
disappointed.
    So if anybody wants to answer, that's good, but I can go 
into----
    Ms. Fong. I can jump into one here, very briefly.
    Representative Steel. Sure.
    Ms. Fong. I think there is one possibility--a sort of very 
simple request that's possibly doable. U.S. companies do a lot 
of business in China, as we know. U.S. companies partner with 
Chinese companies. I think one good ask is to ask them to stop 
participating in these discriminatory workplace practices 
against women in China, who make up quite a significant amount 
of their workforce and employees either by contract or through 
their partnerships. That is something that we can ask and we 
can push for that, I think, that that would make sense for U.S. 
companies. Ask that.
    Representative Steel. Thank you for that answer. And my 
second question is, after the events of tennis star Peng 
Shuai's wavering, Chinese women must be more fearful than ever 
about speaking out against abuses. What is morale and day-to-
day life like in the long-term for women in China?
    Ms. Tursunay. I would like to answer your previous 
question. I'm sorry. I was a bit late.
    Representative Steel. Go ahead. Thank you.
    Ms. Tursunay. I just would like to answer the previous 
question. The forced labor issue--the forced labor in the 
Uyghur region is still continuing. Many detainees from the 
concentration camps now are moved to factories to work as cheap 
labor. So it is still continuing. I really wish that the U.S. 
Government could do something to stop it. Implement the End 
Forced Labor Policy Act and just take practical action.
    I believe in the power of America because we, the Uyghurs, 
really believe in what America can do. We deeply believe 
because previously the U.S. Government was able to save Ms. 
Rebiya Kadeer from jail and brought her to America and later, 
myself. I was saved by America as well and I was able to leave 
the concentration camps, and through Kazakhstan I came to the 
United States as well. All of the Uyghur people deeply believe 
that if the American Government wants to do something, they are 
able to. So that's our hope. I mean, sometimes I really think--
like, it's been six years that we've been talking about 
genocide happening in the Uyghur region and we keep talking 
about it--it's already there. And my personal hope, my personal 
wish, is that America should take action and stop the genocide 
and stop the forced labor in the Uyghur region.
    Representative Steel. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Chairman, my time is up. Or do you think I can hear her 
on the second question?
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, Congresswoman. We do 
have two more Members of Congress waiting and so I think we 
should proceed and then come back to you if you're able to stay 
with us for a second round.
    Representative Steel. Thank you.
    Chair Merkley. I'll now recognize Senator Ossoff.
    Senator Ossoff. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our 
panel for your powerful testimony today. Ms. Ziyawudun, thank 
you for your courage and your testimony and for sharing your 
experiences.
    I'd like to ask you, what about the systematic mistreatment 
of women in detention camps in Xinjiang does the U.S. Congress 
need to know that you've not yet had the opportunity to share 
today?
    Ms. Tursunay. The mistreatment that women face at the 
concentration internment camps is extreme and sometimes I don't 
really wish to think about it. It's just really scary. I am one 
of the witnesses to the mistreatment. I personally have 
witnessed that a 21-year-old girl was raped and also some 
unmarried girls who were sterilized and some women died from 
bleeding.
    I have witnessed all this. The mistreatment toward Uyghur 
women is very systematic. It's very widespread and it's always 
there. So it's just horrifying to think about it. One unmarried 
girl was pleading, saying that, Look, I have not even gotten 
married yet; why would you do violence to my uterus?
    Senator Ossoff. Ms. Ziyawudun, thank you for your 
courageous testimony and for establishing for the historical 
record and for the information of the U.S. Congress your 
testimony with respect to these ongoing atrocities.
    With my brief remaining time, I would humbly invite you to 
make any comments that you believe should be heard by the 
broader American public--by the American people.
    Ms. Tursunay. I am begging the American Government to take 
action. Please, do more. Human rights violations are common in 
China, and the Chinese Communist Party is doing whatever they 
want to do, despite rules, pressure, and just by the world 
watching it. But I really wish that if the American Government 
wished to take action, just to take action, do more, because we 
believe that you can do more.
    To me, you know, while I was in the camp, the camp 
officials told us that within five years the world would be 
controlled by China. I mean, I don't know whether America is 
scared by China, as nothing practical or no action is happening 
right now. However, people really believe that America is very 
strong.
    I am really sorry if I am saying something wrong, because 
I'm not really a well-educated person. I don't know how 
politics works. But just as an ordinary woman, I am just 
speaking out what comes to my mind from what I have witnessed 
and what I have been through.
    Yes, the world is doing something, but the Chinese 
Communist Party and the Chinese government is still able to do 
whatever they want to do. Like, for example, we tried to stop 
the Olympics, but it happened, and we tried to stop many things 
from happening and stop China's violation of the Uyghur people, 
but it's still happening.
    So my question--sometimes I wonder whether the world or 
America is fearful of China, and just as the Chinese Communist 
Party said: the world will follow and obey us whatever we do. 
So I really wish to see action by the American Government and 
by the people.
    There are millions of people still in detention. I don't 
know why the world is still watching what's happening there. 
Look, those kinds of people, they are just among the millions 
who've been separated from their family members and--I'm really 
sorry if I'm saying something wrong. Sometimes I think that we 
have just disappeared from the Earth.
    Sometimes I lose my hope for the world. I don't know what's 
happening. I just wish to see some action. I don't want my 
people to disappear.
    Senator Ossoff. Ms. Ziyawudun, your testimony today steels 
the resolve of the United States and the world to confront 
these crimes against humanity, and please know that your 
testimony has been full of courage and that Congress, the 
American people, and the world are grateful to you and full of 
respect and admiration for you for speaking out, even at 
personal risk and risk to your family and for sharing your 
experiences and the experiences of your people with us.
    I thank you for your testimony. I ask, humbly, that the 
interpreter relay this message to the witness prior to 
returning the microphone to the Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Tursunay. Thank you. Thank you very much for giving me 
the opportunity. I'm really sorry I got really emotional.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you so much for your passionate 
testimony, and it makes a difference to have your voice heard, 
which is exactly why we invited you to join us in this hearing 
today. Many of us here on this Commission, all of us on this 
Commission, are fighting to draw attention to human rights 
issues in China and certainly today to focus on the treatment 
of women, and you've added a great deal to that conversation 
and the challenges that face us in trying to change the 
situation.
    I will now defer to Congresswoman Wexton, who, I believe, 
is waiting to join us.
    Representative Wexton. Mr. Chairman, thank you so much. I 
also want to applaud the brave women of China who are speaking 
out against harassment, violence, and discrimination. Ms. 
Tursunay, especially you. I know that it's extremely difficult 
to have to relive all of the horror that you went through in 
the camps and every time you come and testify here on the Hill, 
but it makes a huge difference and I just want to say thank you 
so much for everything that you do.
    We all know the story of Peng Shuai. I was honored to lead 
the resolution in support of Peng, which passed the House 
unanimously. Her story, rightly, got a lot of attention but 
that's because she's a famous athlete with very famous friends 
who worried about her, and for every Peng Shuai there are 
thousands of others who have been disappeared, charged with 
crimes, and trolled online for speaking out.
    I want to use some of my time to talk about a woman who is 
currently serving a life sentence in China, Gulmira Imin. 
Gulmira and her story were brought to my attention by the Tom 
Lantos Human Rights Commission. Gulmira is a Uyghur Muslim who 
served as a government employee. She was arrested in 2009 after 
authorities alleged she had organized a protest and leaked 
state secrets to her husband in Norway. Her family was never 
notified of her arrest and didn't even know where she was being 
held until they saw her in a Chinese documentary dressed in 
prison garb.
    In 2010, Gulmira was sentenced to life in prison after 
being tortured and forced to sign a confession. She was not 
allowed to meet with her lawyer until her actual trial date, 
and her appeal was rejected. She's being held in Xinjiang 
Women's Prison and is allowed one family visit every three 
months. And as shocking and heartbreaking as Gulmira's story 
is, it is far from unique. I've heard dozens of similar 
accounts from people in the Uyghur diaspora just outside of 
Washington, D.C., in northern Virginia, which I represent.
    Ms. Tursunay, as-salaam aleikum. It's wonderful to see you 
again.
    Ms. Tursunay. As-salaam aleikum. Aleikum salaam.
    Representative Wexton. I do want to thank you again for 
sharing your heartbreaking story. I'm so glad that you feel 
safe enough now to actually come out and tell your story and 
share it because it's so compelling and it's so important.
    Now, you talked a little bit in your testimony about the 
need for the U.S. to accept more Uyghur refugees because even 
if they make it out of China, they occasionally are at risk of 
being sent back to China to face charges if they're in a 
neighboring country. Can you speak a little bit more about 
that, please?
    Ms. Tursunay. Regarding the refugees or asylum seekers, 
personally I have come to the United States--it's been about a 
year now--and also I have witnessed other Uyghur people in the 
community who have problems in getting proper status in 
America. For example, many Uyghurs don't have proper status in 
America, and are unable to have their children study in the 
higher education system, and also many families are unable to 
reunite because they don't have enough status so they are 
unable to sponsor or bring back other family members that live 
in other countries.
    And, for example, there is one person, my friend Amirah 
Guterson, who is another camp survivor, and she's unable to 
reunite with her husband because of her status. And although I 
don't believe that the U.S. Government will deport any Uyghurs 
back to China, still some people fear this.
    Representative Wexton. And I know that that's something 
that's happening in other countries. So that's very concerning 
to me and that's why I have a bipartisan bill with Vice 
Chairman Chris Smith and also with Representative Deutch that 
would grant Uyghurs P-2 refugee status here in the U.S., which 
would, essentially, expedite their ability to apply for asylum 
here in the U.S.
    Now, I have people on my caseload here who have been in the 
process of trying to clarify their status and get asylum here 
in the U.S. for over 8 to 10 years. And so it's really, really 
sad that it's taking them so long to get their status and to 
have that kind of safe feeling.
    Now, it's very important that this legislation pass. It was 
rolled into the America COMPETES Act. But, you know, I'm hoping 
that the Senate will make sure that it stays in there in the 
final version of this legislation.
    Chairman Merkley, I'm asking you, please, to make it a 
priority of yours to make sure that this legislation ends up in 
the final version of whatever bill comes out through the 
conference process and that we have P-2 refugee status for 
Uyghur folks who have fled China.
    And that's all. With that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. And I certainly support that 
effort completely, and thank you for being such an advocate for 
it in the House.
    We have no other members of Congress who are waiting, but 
I'm going to ask a couple of final questions and I wanted to 
address, specifically, Mr. Halegua.
    You described the law on the protection of women's rights 
and interests, and then noted that very few people--very few 
women actually filed cases involving harassment or abuse--I 
think you cited 6 out of 83 cases, if I got the number right--
and then if they do file they are subject to retaliation and 
countersuits regarding defamation. And so the system is 
completely rigged against them and, certainly, the message that 
has been sent by the treatment of Peng Shuai seems to reinforce 
that, that the Chinese government is saying, You will be silent 
when you are abused and if you speak out you will suffer for 
doing so.
    Is that the message the Chinese government is sending?
    Mr. Halegua. Thank you for the question, Senator.
    Yes, I believe that they're certainly, at least in these 
high-profile cases--a mixed message at best. You know, on the 
one hand, the Chinese government is passing laws encouraging 
women to come forward and complain about sexual harassment. But 
then we see these other acts.
    There was one case involving an intern from CCTV that 
received a lot of attention--she goes by the name Xianzi--and 
years after she had completed her internship she posted 
something online about a TV news anchor who had sexually 
harassed her during that time. And one of the interesting parts 
of her account was that after she did so, eventually her 
parents were contacted. And according to her, the police or the 
other authorities had sort of intimidated her and tried to 
suggest that if she went forward and continued with her 
complaint, or went forward with her court case, there would be 
some repercussions for her parents.
    So this type of behavior, obviously, is just one more 
reason that makes it quite the uphill battle for women who have 
been victims of sexual harassment making that decision of 
whether to complain or whether to come forward, and I think 
that is the problem. The calculus--you know, in a system that 
largely relies upon victims being willing to come forward, 
being willing to talk about what happened, and talk about who 
they've been harassed by, there's already a lot of reasons to 
not take those steps, and if we keep piling on the reasons and 
making it less attractive, it's hard to see a path towards 
really getting at improving the situation around sexual 
harassment.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you.
    I now want to turn to the question that has been mentioned 
a few times, which is the potential role of U.S. companies 
operating in China. One can imagine that these U.S. companies 
would say, Hey, there's very capable and talented women who can 
strengthen our operations here and perhaps they're being 
ignored by Chinese companies; we will want to, certainly, give 
them an opportunity to come and strengthen our efforts. But do 
we see U.S. businesses that are operating in China really 
reaching out to promote the hiring of Chinese women and giving 
them opportunities, opportunities of leadership and management 
that they might be denied in many Chinese companies?
    I don't know, Ms. Fong, if you want to start with that 
conversation, or Dr. Hong Fincher.
    Ms. Fong. Thank you for the question.
    I believe U.S. companies want to hire the best people but 
they also want to work with the Chinese companies and they want 
to have an easy time and they also want to work with the 
Chinese authorities. So it's a question of which one is 
balanced out and which one is--I think the U.S. Government has 
a role in incentivizing U.S. companies to do the right thing 
with regard to their workforce and gender equality for women. 
Thank you.
    Mr. Halegua. Thank you, Senator.
    I would just echo--American companies in China really are 
in two roles. Many of them are employers, have their own 
operations there and so, I think, to the extent that they can 
be sort of ahead of the curve in complying not only with 
Chinese law but implementing practices, for instance, around 
sexual harassment, even though the Chinese law is quite weak in 
terms of any consequences if you don't live up to what the 
regulations demand, there's no reason that American companies 
can't be instituting the same types of anti-sexual harassment 
programs in terms of policies, training, complaint mechanisms, 
investigations, that we would expect them to implement here in 
the United States.
    The other role that they play is as purchasers of goods and 
services--and we've already seen in a lot of instances where, 
at least through codes of conduct and auditing--I'm not 
suggesting that those have always been particularly effective--
but the mechanisms are there for U.S. companies doing business 
to place requirements on their Chinese suppliers or, in a more 
positive light, work with their Chinese suppliers to make sure 
that they are doing the types of training and have the right 
types of policies and mechanisms even to live up to the Chinese 
law.
    So even if the Chinese government won't be active in 
enforcing its own regulations, there's no reason that U.S. 
companies can't insist that the people that they buy goods and 
services from are living up to the letter of Chinese law.
    Chair Merkley. Well, Mr. Halegua, there's no reason not to 
expect U.S. companies to abide by the same standards they might 
operate under in the U.S. But the question is, are they? Are 
there examples of U.S. companies that have instituted very 
strong programs, that fire individuals who harass others within 
their companies, that really make a point of putting talented 
women into positions of responsibility?
    Or are we finding that the U.S. companies feel that this is 
disruptive to the cultural dominance of men or disturbing to 
their Chinese partners? Where are they coming out in this 
balance? Are U.S. companies leading the way, or are they 
holding back?
    Mr. Halegua. I think my knowledge of it is somewhat 
anecdotal and mostly from - you know, we've definitely seen 
cases of--I know McDonald's had a pretty well-publicized case 
of taking action against someone who engaged in sexual 
harassment.
    You know, lawyers whom I talk to that work with U.S. 
companies operating in China seem to say that they are doing 
better than most of their Chinese counterparts because of the 
experience that they have in the United States, and I think 
that they actually find it difficult. You know, if you are 
going to have global policies for a company, it would be hard 
to sort of carve out China and make a different set of rules. 
And so I think that while it's hard to generalize, you do see a 
lot of companies that are performing better in these areas.
    Chair Merkley. Dr. Fincher.
    Ms. Fincher. Well, this isn't really something that I pay 
close attention to. But just based on my experience in China, I 
would say that a lot of American companies just want to play by 
Chinese rules. And so you have the Foreign Corrupt Practices 
Act. Even that may not be followed, in many cases.
    But this is a real problem because there is, for example, 
this widespread culture of business drinking where it is quite 
routine to bring young women and to ply them with alcohol, and 
there have been many cases where these young women are then 
raped and the rapists just get away with it, and I believe that 
the cases that we know about are Chinese companies or maybe 
lower level Chinese government officials, or in the case of 
Peng Shuai, she actually accused one of the most powerful men 
in China of sexually assaulting her.
    But I would believe, based on all of the other research 
that I've done, that this kind of thing happens a lot more than 
we hear about, and I know that there are some American 
companies that do not do as much as they should to protect the 
rights of women even within their own companies because they're 
protecting their own reputation, their own brand.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. I think it's just important for 
us to keep raising this issue of what U.S. companies can do in 
a proactive way.
    And, finally, I want to turn, Dr. Fincher, to your 
testimony and just put a spotlight on it, that the Chinese 
government is encouraging births among the Han Chinese at the 
same time that it is engaging in policies that are seeking to 
stop Uyghur and other minorities from having children--through 
sterilization, through reeducation camps, through forced labor 
camps, and so forth.
    Is there any other way to describe this than as racist 
eugenics?
    Ms. Fincher. Well, thank you for your question, Chairman 
Merkley.
    This is, certainly, the practice of eugenics and genocide 
if you define genocide, in part, as a deliberate attempt to 
reduce births of a certain ethnic minority and to separate the 
children of that ethnic minority, because that is also 
happening. The children of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims are 
being separated from their parents.
    Something that hasn't come up in this hearing is also this 
strong coercive element of inter-ethnic marriages where Uyghur 
women are pushed to marry Han Chinese men. There are a lot of 
benefits offered to inter-ethnic couples and that, in my view, 
is also a deliberate attempt to kind of also dilute the Uyghur 
population.
    And on the flip side, it's all part of the Chinese 
government's attempt to engineer a particular ``high-quality 
population.'' So it's not just about falling birth rates 
overall because the Chinese government wants birth rates to 
fall and it is making them fall among the Uyghur, Kazakh, and 
other Turkic Muslim populations.
    There's so much evidence proving the mass campaigns of 
forced sterilization among these populations, and it is just a 
stark turnaround in population-planning policy that the Chinese 
government went from this draconian one-child policy to now a 
three-child policy.
    So far, we don't see extremely coercive elements of this 
three-child policy. But I am concerned, as Ms. Fong mentioned, 
that it is much more difficult for men to obtain vasectomies. I 
am concerned about, perhaps, a nationwide effort to restrict 
abortion access for women--Han Chinese women--to try to force 
them or coerce them into having more children when they don't 
want those children, and it is all related to the government's 
view that women are reproductive tools of the Chinese state; 
they are agents of the Chinese government's development goals.
    And so in the past, the goal was to limit births and so 
there were forced sterilizations, forced abortions, among 
millions and millions of Han Chinese women, and now those very 
coercive practices are limited primarily to Uyghur and Turkic 
populations and it's the opposite--very pro-natalist for the 
Han Chinese population.
    And by the way, the Chinese feminist activists are almost 
all from this cohort of Han Chinese very educated women. And if 
I may add, this is another reason that the Chinese government 
perceives the feminist movement to be such a threat--how do 
they get rid of this movement. It would be very difficult for 
them to just jail all of the feminist activists because at the 
same time, the government is trying to cajole Han Chinese 
college-educated women into getting married and having more 
children. And so this is one of the key reasons that the 
feminist movement is so very complicated for the Chinese 
government to deal with.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you. And you did raise a point that I 
had not heard before about incentives for Uyghur women to marry 
Han men. What kind of incentives are you talking about?
    Ms. Fincher. Well, there are bonuses--for example, housing 
benefits, even cash bonuses offered to couples that are 
marrying where one member of the marriage is Han Chinese and 
the other is ethnic Uyghur, and it's a longstanding effort. 
It's been going on for several years. And then the children in 
that marriage would be raised according to Han Chinese customs.
    Chair Merkley. Thank you very much, and thank you to each 
and every one of you for your testimony today shining a light 
on these incredibly important issues regarding the treatment of 
women in China and, more broadly, practices that need to be 
illuminated and understood by the world. Hopefully, in drawing 
attention to them we create a process where more is done to 
counter these policies and end these practices. So your voices 
are very important in moving members of Congress and the world 
to address these issues.
    We will keep the record open until the close of business on 
Friday, March 4th, for any items that members would like to 
submit for the record or if they have additional questions that 
they would like to ask our witnesses.
    And with that, our hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m., the hearing was concluded.]


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                            A P P E N D I X

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                          Prepared Statements

                                ------                                


                Prepared Statement of Leta Hong Fincher

    Chairman Merkley, Chairman McGovern and distinguished members of 
the Commission, thank you for holding this important hearing and 
inviting me to testify. My testimony draws from the research I 
conducted for my two books on women's rights in China.
    While the entire world watches Russia's horrifying invasion of 
Ukraine, the Chinese government so far refuses to call Russia's actions 
an invasion.\1\ President Xi Jinping appears to be aligning himself 
with the strongman Vladimir Putin, further undermining the rules-based 
international order.\2\
    There are many reasons that China's Communist regime has survived 
for over seventy years, in spite of the collapse of communism in the 
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But it is impossible to understand the 
longevity of China's Communist Party without recognizing the 
patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism. In short, Xi Jinping 
views patriarchal authoritarianism and the subjugation of women as 
critical for the survival of the Communist Party.\3\
    China's economy has entered a protracted slowdown just as the 
country is beginning to face the demographic crisis of an aging 
population, falling birth rates and a shrinking workforce.\4\ In 
response, the government has revived sexist elements of Confucianism, 
upholding the male-dominated family as the basic foundation of a strong 
nation.\5\ State propaganda praises Mr. Xi's traditional ``family 
values'' (jia feng) and presents him as the father of the Chinese 
nation in a ``family-state under heaven'' (jia guo tian xia), in which 
obedient wives and mothers in the home are key to solving China's most 
pressing social problems.\6\
    China's propaganda apparatus began a crash campaign in 2007 to 
stigmatize single, educated, Han Chinese women in their late twenties, 
mocking them as ``leftover'' women (sheng nu) to push them into 
marrying and having babies for the good of the nation.\7\ This pro-
marriage, pro-natalist propaganda has only become more intense with the 
adoption of a two-child policy in 2016, and the three-child policy last 
summer. China's population-planning policies also have a strong 
undertone of eugenics.\8\
    Even as officials urge Han Chinese women to marry and get pregnant 
in order to ``upgrade population quality'' (tigao renkou suzhi--a goal 
highlighted again in the three-child policy announcement),\9\ they are 
slashing birth rates among ethnic minority women, in particular Uyghur 
and other Turkic women in Xinjiang, with forced sterilizations and 
abortions.\10\
    The government is carrying out a sweeping crackdown on feminist 
activists, who pose a unique challenge to China's all-male rulers. As a 
result, the #MeToo movement against sexual violence has been the target 
of aggressive censorship. Take the heavy-handed reaction to Chinese 
tennis star Peng Shuai's Weibo post last November 2, accusing China's 
former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Peng Shuai's post 
was deleted within half an hour and she herself disappeared for weeks, 
only to reemerge in a series of undoubtedly coerced appearances 
coinciding with Beijing's Winter Olympics.\11\
    We are about to mark the seventh anniversary of the Chinese 
government's jailing of five women's rights activists in March 2015, 
for planning to commemorate International Women's Day by handing out 
stickers against sexual harassment on subways and buses. Since then, 
feminist activists have tapped into the broad discontent felt by 
Chinese women and developed a level of influence that is highly unusual 
for any social movement in China since 1989.\12\
    Even though the government persecutes activists, shuts down women's 
rights and LGBTQ rights centers,\13\ and censors feminist social media 
content, China's feminist networks have actually grown in recent years 
instead of being wiped out.\14\
    The shrinking space for civil society in China makes it even more 
extraordinary that a feminist movement is able to survive at all. While 
prominent male human-rights activists have emerged over the years, very 
few Chinese citizens knew about them or could relate to their abstract 
goals. By contrast, feminist activists today take up causes that have 
broad resonance with young women and LGBTQ people across China: issues 
such as sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and gender 
discrimination.
    China is an autocracy with no press freedom, no internet freedom or 
freedom of assembly, and effectively no rule of law. Yet when feminist 
activists organize around issues that affect the personal lives of 
millions of ordinary women, even the all-powerful, male-dominated 
Chinese Communist Party struggles to quash the movement.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                  Prepared Statement of Aaron Halegua

    Chairman Merkley, Co-Chair McGovern, and members of the Commission:
    Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to testify before 
you on this important topic. My name is Aaron Halegua. I am a lawyer 
based in New York City as well as a research fellow at NYU Law School's 
U.S.-Asia Law Institute and Center for Labor and Employment Law.
    I have studied Chinese labor issues, including discrimination and 
sexual harassment, for nearly 20 years. This work has included 
interactions with Chinese judges, academics, lawyers, advocates, and 
workers about these subjects. In the summer of 2021, I published the 
report Workplace Gender-Based Harassment and Violence in China: 
Harmonizing Domestic Law and Practice with International Standards. The 
study describes the current state of Chinese law and practice in this 
area based on a number of sources, including my research team's review 
of over 100 Chinese court decisions that mentioned the term ``sexual 
harassment.'' The report also makes recommendations for the Chinese 
government, Chinese employers, and global brands on how to better 
comply with the International Labor Organization's Convention 
Concerning the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of 
Work (No. 190), adopted in 2019, which seeks to create a ``zero 
tolerance'' environment towards gender-based harassment and violence 
for all working people. I encourage you to review the Executive Summary 
of the report and Recommendations to Expedite Convention 190 in China, 
which appear under Submissions for the Record. Today, I will share a 
few observations from my research and developments since that time.

    China has ratified international instruments concerning the 
protection of women's rights and the elimination of gender 
discrimination. China has already ratified several United Nations and 
ILO instruments obligating it to ensure women's rights and eliminate 
discrimination, including: the United Nations Convention on the 
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 
1980; the ILO Convention on Equal Remuneration (No. 100) in 1990; the 
ILO Convention on Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) (No. 111) 
in 2006; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and 
Cultural Rights (CESCR) in 2001. In 1995, China hosted the United 
Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women--a significant moment for 
China to reaffirm its commitment to achieving gender equality and the 
empowerment of women. The meeting adopted declarations recognizing the 
prevalence of gender-based violence and sexual harassment in the 
workplace and called upon governments, employers, unions, and other 
stakeholders to address these problems. China also largely supported 
the adoption of ILO Convention 190, agreeing that a convention was 
preferable to a non-binding resolution and backing the instrument's 
mission of promoting a ``zero tolerance'' environment for not just 
``workers'' but all ``persons'' in the world of work. However, since 
the ILO adopted Convention 190 in 2019, it has not yet been ratified by 
China.

    China continues to improve its legislation aimed at combating 
sexual harassment in the workplace, but there remains room for 
improvement. The first instance of China prohibiting sexual harassment 
against women in its national legislation was the 2005 amendments to 
the Law on the Protection of Women's Rights and Interests, giving 
victims the right to sue harassers and complain to their employers and 
government organs. (This statute will be amended again soon.) In 2012, 
the State Council's Special Regulation on the Labor Protection of 
Female Employees required employers to ``prevent and prohibit'' sexual 
harassment in the workplace. These measures were a notable first step 
in building a legal framework, but still left much room for 
improvement, as explained in my report. Amongst other issues, no clear 
legal liability was established for employers who failed to prevent and 
prohibit harassment at work.
    While there was some legislative activity at the local level after 
2012, the next major national developments only came after the #MeToo 
movement. In 2018, China's judiciary established sexual harassment as 
an explicit ``cause of action''--that is, a ground upon which a party 
could bring a lawsuit. In 2020, China adopted a new Civil Code, which 
has a provision (Article 1010) on sexual harassment that further 
defines the term to include not only physical contact but also 
unwelcome verbal comments, written messages, or images; establishes 
liability for perpetrators of sexual harassment; and requires employers 
to adopt measures to investigate, prevent, and stop workplace sexual 
harassment. However, one notable shortcoming is that the Civil Code 
still does not clearly establish liability for employers who fail to do 
so. Nonetheless, at a minimum, adoption of the new provision does 
signal the central government's recognition of the problem of sexual 
harassment and some level of commitment to addressing the issue. 
Moreover, in the short time since the promulgation of the Civil Code, 
some localities, like the municipality of Shenzhen, have issued far 
more detailed and quite impressive guidance (albeit nonbinding) on how 
to effectuate the spirt of the new legislative provision.
    Of course, the next question is: to what extent and in what ways 
are these legislative provisions actually implemented? And, do they 
provide any meaningful protection for Chinese workers?

    Chinese employers have demonstrated a willingness to discipline 
perpetrators of sexual harassment. Although legislation directing 
Chinese employers to prevent sexual harassment has existed for a 
decade, several studies reported that few companies had actually 
adopted policies prohibiting sexual harassment, let alone procedures to 
lodge, investigate, and resolve complaints. Therefore, one of the more 
interesting findings from my review of Chinese judicial decisions was 
that the largest group of cases did not involve victims suing 
harassers, but rather individuals suing their former employers after 
being fired for allegedly engaging in sexual harassment. In China, 
employees may only be terminated after clearly violating an established 
work rule, which it is the employer's burden to demonstrate; otherwise, 
the improperly terminated employee must be paid compensation. In fact, 
my analysis revealed that the disciplined employee actually wins in the 
majority of these unjust dismissal claims because the employer is 
unable to meet its burden of proving that the harassment occurred. But 
there is a silver lining to this finding: it means that Chinese 
employers are willing to fire these individuals accused of sexual 
harassment and stand by their decision, even if it means that they will 
need to pay compensation to these individuals.

    Victims of sexual harassment still face significant obstacles in 
obtaining legal remedies. Both my own research and that of other 
scholars confirms that very few victims of sexual harassment are filing 
lawsuits against the perpetrators. One study by a team at Yale Law 
School identified 83 sexual harassment cases decided from 2018 to 2020 
and found that only six of them involved victims suing their harassers. 
Moreover, of that small group, only a handful have prevailed in court, 
and those who do win often receive very little, if any, compensation 
for their suffering. There are several explanations for this 
phenomenon. For instance, one difficulty for victims and courts is the 
lack of a clear definition of sexual harassment or the threshold at 
which it becomes ``illegal.'' Another particularly significant obstacle 
for victims is that Chinese courts will not find that sexual harassment 
occurred based on the oral testimony of the victim alone; instead, some 
corroborating physical evidence is required. However, given the nature 
of sexual harassment claims, and the fact that most perpetrators seek 
to ensure that there are no witnesses to or evidence of their 
wrongdoing, victims often lack corroborating physical evidence. As for 
the remedy, those few victims who prevail in court generally receive 
little or no monetary compensation. Indeed, when a Shanghai court 
awarded a woman RMB 98,000 (US $15,000) after enduring daily disturbing 
text messages from her colleague for a six-month period, commentators 
described the compensation as ``unprecedented'' in a sexual harassment 
case. These significant obstacles and limited remedies disincentivize 
victims from coming forward to file a lawsuit against their harasser or 
employer.

    Sexual harassment victims who complain often face retaliation or 
defamation lawsuits. As in many other countries, workers who complain 
about sexual harassment are often retaliated against by their employer, 
who may terminate them, force them to resign, or harass them in other 
ways. Another common fact pattern is that victims who complain then get 
sued for defamation by the alleged harasser, who claims that their 
reputation has been ruined: the aforementioned study that identified 83 
sexual harassment cases found that 23 were defamation cases against the 
victim. One female worker who published an online account of being 
invited to her supervisor's hotel room, where he forcibly kissed, 
groped and undressed her, was later ordered by a court to pay RMB 
11,712 (roughly US $1,800) for the supervisor's hurt feelings and his 
litigation expenses. The defamation lawsuit filed against Xianzi by the 
television host she accused of harassing her during an internship at 
CCTV is another paradigmatic example. Survey data already suggests that 
only a small fraction of sexually harassed victims ever come forward 
and complain. If there continues to be little to gain from filing a 
complaint, but a great deal to lose, it is unlikely that more victims 
will be willing to come forward.

    China's government, employers, and worker organizations should take 
further steps towards creating a ``zero tolerance'' environment for 
sexual harassment. My report recommends steps that stakeholders within 
China can take to combat sexual harassment and get closer to achieving 
the standards of ILO Convention 190. For instance, the Chinese 
government should explicitly make employers liable for failing to 
prevent or address sexual harassment, revise evidentiary rules for 
sexual harassment cases, and protect victims from defamation claims and 
other retaliation. Chinese employers should establish procedures to 
investigate and resolve complaints, and global brands should ensure 
Chinese partners have such mechanisms in place. The U.S. government 
should commend China for the steps that it has taken thus far, but 
encourage it to do more to harmonize its domestic law and practice with 
the most recent international standards.
    Thank you all for your time. I look forward to answering any 
questions that you have.
                                 ______
                                 

                     Prepared Statement of Mei Fong

    Chairman McGovern, Chairman Merkley, thanks to the Congressional-
Executive Commission on China for this timely hearing ahead of 
International Women's Day. I appreciate this opportunity to testify on 
the impact of China's population planning policies, and the effect it 
has had on the women of China and beyond.
    The one-child policy began in 1980 and shaped China's population 
for over three decades, before it was replaced in rapid succession with 
the two-child policy in 2016, and the three-child policy in 2021.
    This sudden about-face from ``Have Just One Child'' to ``Have One 
More Child'' is an attempt to redress the consequences of a ruinous and 
inhumane policy that was also economically shortsighted. China's birth 
rate has now plunged to its lowest in 70 years, curbing future growth 
prospects and leading to a variety of social ills.
    The one-child policy has also created a hugely imbalanced 
population. There are now about 30 million single men in China and more 
Chinese retirees than the population of Western Europe. With a 
shrinking workforce, China is already facing pension shortfalls--
currently $540 billion, according to China's Academy of Social Science.
    While working as a Wall Street Journal correspondent, and 
researching my book, I heard many stories about the one-child policy's 
chilling effect. I spoke with women forced to have abortions as late as 
seven months into their pregnancy; officials describing how they 
cornered and chased pregnant women like prey, and mothers who recounted 
heartbreaking acts of abandonment and infanticide.
    Now the Chinese state's switch to purportedly pro-natal policies 
has inflicted new wounds on women.
    Since the introduction of the two-child policy, Human Rights Watch 
has documented a rise in pregnancy-related discrimination against women 
in the workplace. Employers now fear that women can potentially take 
two and now three maternity leaves, not just one as in the one-child 
era. Some companies have sought to avoid this through job ads, 
interviews and workplace treatment that discriminate against women with 
no children, or just one child--or simply discriminate against all 
women. Women have been fired for getting pregnant, or have been asked 
to sign agreements pledging not to have children. While such practices 
are illegal under Chinese law, enforcement is lax and the avenues for 
redress and compensation so few that such practices remain largely 
unchecked.
    Elsewhere, Beijing's early approach to a demographic decline 
appears to be more stick than carrot, with growing curbs on divorce and 
abortion--both human rights abuses.
    Last month, the government-backed China Family-Planning Association 
said it would reduce unplanned pregnancies and abortions among 
adolescents and single women. This follows tightened overall 
restrictions on abortions in 2018--with increased bureaucratic measures 
for those seeking these services. Several media reports have also 
reported on a clampdown on vasectomies.
    Authorities have said these moves are motivated by welfare concerns 
but such explanations have been met with suspicion and in some cases 
derision on Chinese internet, given the state's long history of 
coercive practices on birth matters. It is important to note that these 
still continue for many Uyghurs in China, with forced sterilizations on 
women held in ``political reeducation'' camps. In 2017, a phrase began 
to crop up in government documents related to family planning in 
Xinjiang: ``severely attack behaviors that violate family planning.''
    Last but certainly not least--it is not only the women of China who 
have borne the brunt of Beijing's coercive population planning 
practices. The one-child policy caused a shortage of women and hence, a 
surge in bride trafficking in China, as well as from so-called source 
countries across the region including Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, 
and Pakistan. Human Rights Watch has documented how hundreds of women 
and girls in Myanmar are sold to Chinese families as brides for 
US$3,000-$13,000 and held in sexual slavery for years, with some women 
trafficked more than once. Once purchased, they are held in sexual 
slavery and pressured to produce babies as quickly as possible.
    Given this situation, Human Rights Watch offers the following 
recommendations:

      Chinese authorities should fully enforce legal 
prohibitions against gender and pregnancy-based discrimination in 
employment.

      The Chinese government should fully respect reproductive 
rights--and stop regulating the number of children families are allowed 
to have, stop pressuring women to have children, provide free access to 
safe and legal abortion and contraception, and ensure equitable 
caregiver leave policies.

      The Chinese government should make it a priority to halt 
both internal and transnational trafficking of women and girls for sale 
as brides in China, through prevention and enforcement efforts and 
providing services to survivors and those at risk, in collaboration 
with source countries in the region.

      The U.S. Government should call on the Chinese government 
to lift all restrictions on reproductive rights, urge allies and 
partners to do the same, and to do more to end human trafficking of 
women and girls.

      U.S. companies doing business in China should ensure they 
are not engaged in or partnering with companies that engage in 
discriminatory employment practices.

      The U.S. should assist countries that have become source 
countries for ``bride trafficking'' to China with technical assistance 
and resources to work to end this abuse.
                                 ______
                                 

                Prepared Statement of Tursunay Ziyawudun

    Thank you, Chair Merkley, and thank you Co-chair McGovern, for 
holding this hearing. I am very grateful for the opportunity to testify 
before the U.S. Congress and to tell the world about my experience and 
the experience of Uyghur women.
    My name is Tursunay Ziyawudun. I am from Kunes county, East 
Turkistan.
    Although it is exceedingly painful and difficult for me to speak 
about my experiences, I see it as my duty to be the voice for those 
people who are in the camps built by the Chinese government, those who 
died in front of my own eyes, and those who are being held unjustly in 
prison.
    I was locked up in camps two different times. The mental and 
physical torture I experienced in these camps have left indelible scars 
on my heart.
    I was taken into a camp for the second time in March 2018 and 
stayed there for close to one year. There were many new buildings in 
the camp compared with the first time I was taken. They called it 
``education,'' but in reality it was a high-security prison, with high 
walls, security cameras and armed guards everywhere.
    What they called ``education'' was spending many hours watching 
propaganda films, memorizing Chinese law, and memorizing Chinese 
``red'' songs praising the Chinese Communist Party. We were made to 
swear oaths of loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, over and over 
again.
    In the camp, we always lived in fear. We feared that we would be 
punished if we could not memorize the lessons correctly. Every day we 
heard screaming and crying voices from other cells, wondering whether 
what was happening to others would happen to us, too.
    Then it happened to me. Several times, the guards took me out of 
the cell and into an interrogation room, and they beat me. They used 
whatever oppressive methods they wanted.
    Once, they took me out in the middle of the night, along with a 
young woman in her 20s. Next to the camp police officers wearing 
uniforms, there was a man in a suit, wearing a mask over his mouth. I 
don't know where he came from. These men raped the young woman. Three 
police officers raped me as well.
    They were always taking girls out of the cells like this. They did 
whatever they wanted. Sometimes they brought some of the women back 
near the point of death. Some of the women disappeared. I saw some of 
them bleed to death with my own eyes. Some of them lost their minds in 
the camp.
    Every time I think about these things, my heart feels as though 
it's been sliced with a dagger. My nightmares make me feel as though 
I'm living in that fear once again. My physical body is free, and so is 
my voice, but I am suffering deeply. I am only beginning to overcome 
this suffering by telling my story.
    I have to speak out, because the things I experienced in the camps 
are happening to Uyghur, Kazakh, and other Turkic women across our 
entire homeland. Millions of Uyghurs are suffering under this genocide 
for the past five years, since 2017. We appeal for help from you and 
from all of humanity.
    I know that all of the CECC Commissioners are speaking out for 
Uyghur women. We are grateful to Congresswoman Wexton for advocating 
for Ms. Gulmira Imin, a young Uyhgur woman serving a long prison 
sentence. We are very grateful for the Resolution condemning the 
genocide that was passed in December 2021. We are very grateful for the 
Uyghur forced labor bill that became law also in December.
    I ask you to do more. I came to the United States with the help of 
the U.S. Government and the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and since 
arriving here I have finally had the chance to tell my whole story. It 
is only after coming to the United States, which has allowed me to feel 
real freedom, that I have been brave enough to tell my whole story, 
especially about the sexual assault suffered by me and many other 
women.
    Please do more to accept Uyghur refugees to the United States. 
There are many more people like me who managed to escape China, but 
they are not able to tell their stories. They are living in neighboring 
countries, but they are still living in fear. They are afraid that the 
Chinese government can pressure the authorities there to deport them to 
China at any time. They receive threats, they are suffering great 
trauma as torture survivors and survivors of sexual assault.
    Many families are still separated from their husband or wife, their 
children, their parents. I was rescued, but so many more people like me 
also need to be admitted to the U.S. where they are safe.
    I also hope that the Congress can do more to make sure that Uyghur 
torture survivors can get medical care and counseling. I am still not 
free of my nightmares, the mental anguish of my experience, and my mind 
is constantly imagining the suffering of so many others who are still 
experiencing the same fate. Camp survivors like me need help for our 
extreme trauma, and other Uyghur Americans are also suffering terrible 
mental trauma because of the suffering of their daughters, sons, 
sisters, brothers, parents and grandparents. I hope the Congress will 
do more to help genocide victims, especially women, to get professional 
support to recover our health, and survive our past and present trauma.
    Finally, I want to ask that the Congress support Radio Free Asia to 
do more programs on women, and for women. I listen to the Uyghur 
service every day, and I believe we need even more news reporting to 
expose the atrocities that women are suffering in the Uyghur Region. We 
also need more informational and educational programs on how Uyghur 
women can survive the mental torment that we suffer every day. More 
stories about the accomplishments and achievements of strong Uyghur and 
Kazakh women can help to give us inspiration and give us hope for the 
future.
    Thank you again for the opportunity to testify.
                                 ______
                                 

                 Prepared Statement of Senator Merkley

    Good morning. Today's hearing of the Congressional-Executive 
Commission on China on ``The Future of Women in China: #MeToo, 
Censorship and Gender Inequality'' will come to order.
    One week from today, the world will mark International Women's Day. 
This is an occasion not only to celebrate the critical role women and 
girls play in families, communities, and societies across the globe but 
to also reflect on how those societies can better protect the 
fundamental human rights of women and girls. Governments that fail to 
treat women equally prevent their countries from reaching their full 
potential. Those that empower women in political, social, and economic 
life are more prosperous and peaceful. Over 70 years ago, Mao Zedong 
acknowledged the importance of women in Chinese society with his famous 
statement that ``women hold up half the sky.''
    Yet, as this Commission fulfills its mandate to monitor human 
rights in China, we continue to find a mixed picture when it comes to 
the status of women. While the Chinese government implements laws and 
regulations intended to address persistent issues related to gender-
based violence, discrimination, and harassment, women face significant 
challenges in all of these areas.
    In recent months, several high-profile cases shined a bright 
spotlight on the vulnerability of women to violence. In November, 
tennis star Peng Shuai accused a senior Chinese Communist Party 
official of sexual assault. In January, a video appeared showing a 
rural woman--reportedly the mother of eight--chained by her neck in an 
outdoor shed, sparking serious concerns about human trafficking, the 
impact of policies of population control, and the treatment of persons 
with mental disorders. These stories come on the heels of other cases 
of domestic violence and workplace harassment that reinvigorated the 
#MeToo movement, as well as horrifying reports of rape committed 
against Uyghur women in intrusive homestay programs and mass internment 
camps. A brave survivor of these camps will tell her story to us today.
    While many of these reports generated intense interest within 
China, the Chinese Communist Party worked to suppress them and stifle 
expression related to women's rights, just as it
    constricts freedom of expression and civil society more broadly. 
It's been seven years since China jailed five female activists for 
publicizing sexual harassment on public transportation, and feminists--
that is, advocates for improving the condition of women in China--
continue to be denied the space to speak up or to organize, as 
demonstrated by the coordination of online attacks and the shutdown of 
feminist social media accounts last spring.
    In political life, women are excluded from positions of power, with 
not a single woman serving on the Politburo Standing Committee and only 
one woman serving on the 25-member Politburo and few women serving at 
senior levels of county, municipal, or provincial governments.
    Many of the most egregious abuses deny the fundamental freedom for 
families to decide if, when, and how to have children. Forced 
sterilizations and forced abortions, such as those prompted for years 
by the one child policy and those reported in recent years by the 
Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, are atrocities. The move to a three 
child policy raises the specter of new coercive tools and tactics 
denying freedom.
    This all adds up to a complex landscape for women's rights in 
China, deserving of close scrutiny through today's hearing. This is the 
first time the Congressional-Executive Commission on China has held a 
hearing dedicated to this set of issues and it shouldn't be the last. I 
look forward to our witnesses helping us understand ways we can better 
stand up for women in China.
                                 ______
                                 

             Prepared Statement of Representative McGovern

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing entitled the 
Future of Women in China, #MeToo, Censorship and Gender Inequality.
    I am proud that this is the Commission's first-ever hearing 
specifically on the status of women. It is timely, given the spotlight 
on the Peng Shuai case of sexual assault and coverup, and changes in 
the Party's policy on gender.
    Since 2005, the Commission has included a stand-alone section named 
Status of Women in its annual report. That initial section found that 
while the Chinese Constitution and laws provide for equal rights of 
women, in reality they have fewer employment opportunities than men, 
and their educational levels fall below those of men.
    Today we find this dynamic much the same. The Chinese government 
continues to implement laws and regulations aimed at equality. For 
example, in January 2021, a specific definition of sexual harassment 
was codified in the Civil Code, creating liability for employers and 
detailing the kinds of conduct that would fall under the definition of 
sexual harassment.
    But in their everyday experience, women continue to face 
discrimination in employment, education, wages, and legal redress. Last 
September, authorities detained Sophie Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, 
advocates of China's #MeToo movement, under the charge of ``incitement 
of subversion of state power.'' Why in the world would advocating for 
women's rights be considered a crime against the state?
    Repression of women has also been documented in the Commission's 
Population Control section, on the Chinese government's heavy-handed 
policies to limit births, including the human rights abuses of forced 
abortion and forced sterilization. We have monitored these horrific 
practices as part of the government's campaign against Uyghurs and 
other Turkic Muslim women. We will hear testimony from a survivor 
today.
    For others in the People's Republic of China, however, these 
population policies are evolving, as authorities respond to the social 
and economic consequences of demographic changes. We would like to know 
where these policies are headed and whether Chinese authorities' heavy-
handed approach will manifest itself in a different way.
    I welcome our witnesses and thank Chairman Merkley for organizing 
this hearing, which is long overdue. I look forward to your testimony.

                       Submissions for the Record

                                ------                                


          (Excerpt from the New York Times, December 2, 2021]

               Why Peng Shuai Has China's Leaders Spooked

                         (By Leta Hong Fincher)

    Things have only worsened under President Xi Jinping, architect of 
a state-run masculinity campaign.
    Women are severely underrepresented in national politics: There is 
one woman on the 25-member Politburo. Female representation on the 204-
member Central Committee, the largest of the party's political bodies, 
has declined over the past decade, to 10 currently from 13 in 2012.
    Broader gender inequality also has worsened. Women's labor-force 
participation has fallen to 60.5 percent in 2019 from 73 percent in 
1990, according to the World Bank. China is in the bottom third of all 
countries evaluated for their gender disparities, according to the 
World Economic Forum.
    The grim prospects for Chinese women are particularly jarring given 
the prominent role of feminism in China's revolutionary history. 
Women's emancipation was a central goal not just for activists in the 
May Fourth movement of 1919 but throughout the Communist revolution, 
culminating in the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.
    China's ruler Mao Zedong famously proclaimed that ``women hold up 
half the sky.'' Propaganda images in the 1950s and '60s showed smiling, 
muscular female welders and factory workers laboring to boost 
industrial production.
    But today's Communist Party appears to want women to be obedient 
wives and mothers. In his International Women's Day address this year, 
Mr. Xi barely mentioned working women's contributions to economic 
development.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/opinion/peng-shuai-china-
leaders.html

                                 ______
                                 

           [Reprinted from Open Democracy.net, June 21, 2021]

              Are Countries Fulfilling the Promise of the 
                  Violence and Harassment Convention?

          (By Aaron Halegua and Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee)

    On this day in 2019, labour, feminist, and human rights allies 
celebrated the International Labour Organization's (ILO) adoption of 
the Violence and Harassment Convention (No. 190). This landmark 
international standard called upon member states to adopt measures to 
prevent and eliminate workplace violence and harassment, particularly 
workplace gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH). While this legal 
standard was being negotiated, women across the globe spoke out against 
sexual violence and harassment at work in unprecedented numbers, 
linking their individual victimisation to the collective experience of 
persistent GBVH in their workplaces and society simultaneously brought 
to the forefront by the #MeToo movement.
    Zhou Xiaoxuan (or Xianzi) is one of the millions who spoke out. In 
2014, Xianzi was sexually harassed by a famous television host during a 
college internship at China Central Television. When she reported the 
incident to the police, they persuaded her not to pursue the claim, 
implying it would harm both her parents' careers and Xianzi's 
reputation. Four years later, inspired by other women sharing their 
stories, Xianzi posted her account of the incident online.
    Instead of receiving an apology, Xianzi was sued in 2018 for 
defamation. When she counter-sued for sexual harassment, the court 
rejected her claim. Further hearings were scheduled in May, but were 
abruptly adjourned without explanation. This high-profile legal battle 
has generated considerable public interest, especially from a growing 
feminist movement and young Chinese women--some of whom demonstrated 
outside the courthouse on the day of Xianzi's hearing. Experts believe 
that this public attention has made the Chinese government very 
cautious in handling the case, explaining the long delays.
    Two years after the adoption of Convention 190, what progress have 
member states made in complying with its mandates? Six countries, 
including Namibia, Argentina, and Somalia, have ratified the convention 
and given it legal effect in their domestic system. Robust ratification 
campaigns are ongoing in places like South Africa and Zambia, supported 
by diverse groups like the International Trade Union Confederation and 
International Domestic Workers Federation, and more than ten countries 
have signalled their intention to ratify. In other countries, 
Convention 190 has inspired national conversations about the gaps in 
existing laws and power-based barriers to access to justice. What's 
more, through powerful campaigns like the Global Fight for 15 at 
McDonalds, IUF's Global Campaign against sexual harassment at Marriott, 
and Justice for Jeyasre, women workers and their unions are not waiting 
for ratification, but directly engaging with brands and employers to 
eliminate GBVH from their workplaces.

               the struggle to end gbvh at work in china

    A new report by Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights 
Forum (GLJ-ILRF) and NYU's U.S.-Asia Law Institute examines the case of 
China, evaluating how its domestic laws and practices stack up against 
the international standard. On the one hand, during the negotiations 
China endorsed the adoption of a binding legal instrument (rather than 
a non-binding resolution) and the convention's mission of promoting a 
`zero tolerance' environment towards GBVH. While it has not yet 
ratified the convention, China did introduce a new legal provision in 
2020 that explicitly created liability for perpetrators of sexual 
harassment and obligated em- ployers to adopt measures to investigate, 
prevent, and stop sexual harassment in the workplace.
    But as Xianzi's case demonstrates, sexual harassment persists in 
Chinese work- places and victims face real challenges in asserting 
their rights. Chinese media coverage of sexual harassment complaints 
remains limited, and government authorities clamped down further on 
such reporting after the #MeToo movement began gaining some traction.
    In order to better understand the types of GBVH occurring in the 
Chinese workplace and how those incidents are handled, the report 
reviews over 100 civil case judgments from a database of Chinese court 
decisions. The cases revealed a wide range of GBVH in Chinese 
workplaces, including lewd comments and jokes, harassing messages, 
unwelcome touching, invitations to subordinates to have sex, and 
forcing viewing of pornography.
    However, very few GBVH victims sought redress through the Chinese 
courts. Most cases involved alleged harassers suing their employer to 
challenge their termination--a positive indication that some employers 
take GBVH complaints seriously. Those few victims who did sue rarely 
prevailed because of the high burden of proof on plaintiffs and the 
requirement that the victim's oral testimony must be corroborated by 
physical evidence. Even those who `won' were awarded either no damages 
or only a paltry sum. Instead, victims who complained often faced 
retaliation by the employer or, like Xianzi, a defamation lawsuit by 
the harasser.
    Recognising some of these challenges, China--like Uruguay, Denmark, 
and others--keeps moving towards harmonising its domestic law and 
practice with Convention 190's mandates. Three months ago, the 
municipality of Shenzhen issued a detailed guideline that further 
defines sexual harassment, specifies the policies and procedures that 
employers should implement, prescribes penalties for harassers, and 
bans retaliation.
    The report encourages China to continue down this path. Based on 
the empirical research performed, the report offers concrete 
recommendations to the Chinese government, employers, workers' 
organisations, and global brands to, for instance, make the legal 
definition of prohibited conduct coextensive with Convention 190; 
establish clear liability and penalties for employers; strengthen 
government monitoring and enforcement; and prohibit retaliation. Our 
intention is that this report serves as a resource to these actors in 
promoting compliance with the text and spirit of Convention 190.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/are-
countries-
fulfilling-promise-violence-and-harassment-convention/

        Workplace Gender-based Violence and Harassment in China

                                 2021 Aaron Halegua

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
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legalcode.

                                About Us

    Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF) is 
a newly merged organization bringing strategic capacity to cross-
sectoral work on global value chains and labor migration corridors. 
GLJ-ILRF holds global corporations accountable for labor rights 
violations in their supply chains; advances policies and laws that 
protect decent work and just migration; and strengthens freedom of 
association, new forms of bargaining, and worker organizations.

    The U.S.-Asia Law Institute (USALI) of the NYU School of Law seeks 
to promote the rule of law and human rights in Asia. The Institute, 
which is funded by institutional and individual grants, serves as a 
resource and partner to various Asian countries as they develop their 
legal systems. USALI is especially known as one of America's preeminent 
research centers for the study of law in Mainland China and Taiwan and 
works to improve popular, professional and scholarly understanding at 
home and abroad through its publications and exchanges concerning 
comparative and international law. More information is available at: 
http://usali.org.

    Aaron Halegua is a practicing lawyer and consultant. He is also a 
research fellow at the NYU School of Law's U.S.-Asia Law Institute and 
its Center for Labor and Employment Law. His expertise includes labor 
and employment law, human trafficking and forced labor, litigation and 
dispute resolution, corporate social responsibility and supply chains, 
and legal aid in the United States, China, and elsewhere. In over 
fifteen years of working on Chinese labor issues, he has consulted for 
Apple, American Bar Association, Asia Foundation, Brown University, 
Ford Foundation, International Labor Rights Forum, International Labour 
Organization, PILNet, Solidarity Center, and SEIU. Mr. Halegua has 
spoken on Chinese labor issues throughout the United States, Europe, 
and Asia. He has published numerous book chapters, articles, op-eds, 
and reports on labor issues, including for the Washington Post, South 
China Morning Post, Berkeley Journal of International Law, Hong Kong 
Law Journal, Anti-Discrimination Law Review, (Chinese translation 
appears in original) Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, and Harvard 
Law & Policy Review (Online), and he has been quoted in the New York 
Times, Economist, and Wall Street Journal. Aaron has an A.B. from Brown 
University and J.D. from Harvard Law School. More information about his 
work is available on his website: http://www.aaronhalegua.com.

                            Acknowledgements

    The initial inspiration for this project on Chinese sexual 
harassment law was born from the U.S.-Asia Law Institute's program that 
brought a group of Chinese scholars and lawyers to New York City for a 
study tour about sexual harassment just as the #MeToo movement was 
gaining steam. The author learned a tremendous amount from the American 
and Chinese experts involved in that project and remains deeply 
indebted to them. While the complete list of institutions and 
individuals who provided support in the preparation of this report is 
too long to recite here, the author nonetheless wishes to thank at 
least the following people: Ira Belkin, Shikha Silliman Bhattacharjee, 
Cynthia Estlund, Kevin Lin, Darius Longarino, Chao Liu, Xiaonan Liu, 
and Katherine Wilhelm. The following individuals provided invaluable 
research assistance for this project: Yurui Chen, Nanami Hirata, Jacob 
Kessler, Qianfeng Lin, and Yifei Zhang.
                           TABLE OF CONTENTS

                                                                   Page
Executive Summary................................................    44

   I. China's Adoption of International and Domestic Legal 
  Standards on GBVH..............................................    47

  II. GBVH in the Chinese Workplace..............................    48

  III. The Impact and Limits of China's Legal Protections Against 
  GBVH...........................................................    49

    A. Enforcement by Chinese Employers..........................    51

    B. Enforcement by the Chinese Government.....................    51

    C. Enforcement Through the Chinese Courts....................    51

      1. Small Number of Cases...................................    51

      2. Defining ``Sexual Harassment''..........................    51

      3. Proving Sexual Harassment...............................    52

      4. Remedies for Victims....................................    52

      5. Retaliation and Defamation Suits........................    53

  IV. Recommendations............................................    54

    A. Recommendations for the Chinese Government................    55

      1. Improve the Legislative Framework.......................    55

      2. Strengthen Government Monitoring and Enforcement........    59

      3. Expand Legal and Other Victim Services..................    60

    B. Recommendations for Chinese Employers.....................    61

      1. Establish Employer Policies and Mechanisms to Address 
  GBVH...........................................................    61

      2. Conduct Training and Prevention Initiatives Within the 
  Workplace......................................................    62

    C. Recommendations for Chinese Workers' Organizations........    63

      1. Engage in Tripartite Dialogue at the National and Local 
  Levels to Inform Inclusive Approaches to Address GBVH..........    63

      2. Participate in Risk Assessments, and the Design and 
  Monitoring of GBVH Policies, at the Sector and Workplace Levels    64

      3. Provide Context-specific Education and Training to 
  Workers About Their Rights and How to Enforce Them.............    65

    D. Recommendations for Global Brands.........................    65

Endnotes.........................................................    66
                           Executive Summary

      A Chinese assembly-line worker at Foxconn, a supplier of 
electronics to global brands like Apple, BlackBerry, Nokia, Nintendo 
and PlayStation, described conditions at her factory in 2018:

        Loud dirty jokes, ridiculing female colleagues about their 
        looks and figures, using the excuse of ``giving direction'' to 
        make unnecessary body contact--this ``sexual harassment 
        culture'' is prevalent in our factory workshops, and 
        particularly serious for unmarried female workers. Many of us 
        have grown accustomed to it. If a woman who is sexually 
        harassed protests, she is likely to be accused of being ``too 
        sensitive'' and ``unable to take a joke.'' A lack of 
        administrative safeguards is also a major reason for rampant 
        sexual harassment in factory workshops.\1\

      In 2014, while still a college intern at China Central 
Television (``CCTV''), Zhou Xiaoxuan (who goes by Xianzi) alleged that 
she was sexually harassed by the renowned television show host, Zhu 
Jun. When she reported the incident to the police, Xianzi was 
encouraged not to pursue the complaint.\2\ The police told her to 
consider her reputation and the impact this accusation would have on 
Chinese society. The police contacted her parents, both government 
employees, and told Xianzi that she must consider how pursuing this 
case would harm them. It was not until four years later, after reading 
the #MeToo stories published online by other women, that Xianzi decided 
to do the same. Her story attracted national attention, resulting in 
Zhu Jun suing Xianzi for damaging his reputation. Xianzi then counter-
sued Zhu for ``infringement of her right to personality.'' In December 
2020, the Beijing court rejected Xianzi's claim, stating that sexual 
harassment claims are only actionable in the educational context.\3\ 
The second hearing, originally scheduled for May 21, 2021, was delayed 
without explanation.\4\

      When Huang Xueqin, a female journalist, was working at a 
Chinese news agency, a senior male reporter and mentor tried to grope 
and kiss her in a hotel room. She was only able to escape his advances 
by kicking him in the groin and running away. Huang felt she needed to 
quit this job, but told her colleagues that the reason was that she 
wanted to ``try something new.'' After hearing about the experiences of 
other Chinese women, she decided to tell her #MeToo story, which then 
inspired more people to come forward. In 2017, Huang conducted a survey 
of female journalists on WeChat and found that 80 percent of the 
respondents had experienced sexual harassment.\5\

    The incidents discussed above provide a glimpse into the widespread 
gender-based violence and harassment (``GBVH'') that exists in the 
Chinese workplace, as well as the significant forces that keep victims 
from complaining about their mistreatment. While China continues to 
make progress by issuing laws and regulations denouncing sexual 
harassment, much work remains to translate those documents into 
meaningful protections for workers.
    In June 2019, the International Labour Organization (``ILO'') 
adopted the Convention Concerning the Elimination of Violence and 
Harassment in the World of Work (``ILO Convention 190''). China largely 
supported this global effort, agreeing that a convention was preferable 
to a non-binding resolution, and backing both the instrument's mission 
of promoting a ``zero tolerance'' environment towards GBVH and its 
expansive scope in protecting not just ``workers'' but all ``persons'' 
affected by GBVH in the world of work.\6\ Domestically, on May 28, 
2020, in the wake of the global #MeToo movement, China enacted a Civil 
Code in which it adopted the first national-level legal provision 
(Article 1010) explicitly creating liability for perpetrators of sexual 
harassment and obligating employers to adopt measures to investigate, 
prevent, and stop sexual harassment in the workplace.\7\
    The new Chinese legal provision took effect on January 1, 2021 and 
ILO Convention 190 celebrates its second anniversary on June 21, 2021. 
With these complementary and mutually reinforcing international and 
national standards in place, this report considers how China can 
harmonize its law and practice with ILO Convention 190 standards. A key 
step in this direction would be for China to ratify ILO Convention 190. 
While that process is ongoing, however, this report considers other 
concrete steps that the Chinese government can take to align its 
domestic law and practice with the substance of ILO Convention 190, as 
well as what Chinese employers, Chinese workers' organizations, and 
global brands can do to address GBVH in the Chinese workplace.
    Part I of this report details how China, at least on paper, has 
committed to fighting GBVH in the workplace. China has adopted certain 
international instruments and participated in various fora concerning 
women's rights, gender equality, and discrimination. Numerous domestic 
laws and regulations also address these areas, including several 
explicit provisions on sexual harassment. Nonetheless, as covered in 
Part II, GBVH in China, as in all countries, undoubtedly persists. 
However, there is little comprehensive data about how GBVH protections 
are enforced in China, and GBVH cases are not widely reported in the 
Chinese media.
    Addressing this evidentiary gap, Part III of this report draws from 
a review of over 100 civil cases from the database of judicial 
decisions maintained by China's Supreme People's Court (``SPC'') that 
mention the term ``sexual harassment,'' including cases since Article 
1010 took effect, to provide insight into incidents of GBVH in China 
and how they are handled by the legal system. Analysis of these cases 
reveals that few GBVH victims seek redress through litigation, and 
those who do encounter significant obstacles in realizing the rights 
guaranteed under Chinese law. These obstacles include an unclear 
definition of sexual harassment, a high burden of proof and an emphasis 
on physical evidence, and a reluctance to award meaningful damages. 
There is some positive news: the decisions demonstrate that many 
employers have disciplined or terminated employees accused of engaging 
in GBVH at work. Moreover, employers are willing to take these actions 
despite the fact that alleged harassers often file successful legal 
claims for unjust dismissal that require the employers to pay them 
compensation. As for the victims of workplace GBVH, however, they 
rarely receive any significant compensation or meaningful remedy. 
Instead, sexual harassment complainants often become the subject of an 
adverse employment action by the employer, defamation lawsuit by the 
harasser, or other form of retaliation.
    Building upon these empirical insights, Part IV of the report 
offers a set of recommendations aimed at encouraging China to harmonize 
its domestic law and practice with the protections in ILO Convention 
190 and international best practices. There are separate 
recommendations directed at the Chinese government, Chinese employers, 
workers' organizations, and global brands. It is the author's intention 
that this report may serve as a resource to these actors in promoting 
compliance with the text and spirit of ILO Convention 190.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           I. China's Adoption of International and Domestic
                        Legal Standards on GBVH

    For at least two decades, China's push for gender rights has been 
intertwined with a broader international movement. Since the 1980s, 
China has adopted numerous international instruments designed to 
protect women and female workers. For instance, China ratified the 
United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 
Discrimination Against Women in 1980 as well as the ILO Conventions on 
equal pay (Convention 100) and eliminating discrimination in employment 
(Convention 111).\8\ In 1995, China hosted the United Nations' Fourth 
World Conference on Women--a significant moment for China to reaffirm 
its commitment to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of 
women. The meeting adopted declarations recognizing the prevalence of 
gender-based violence and sexual harassment in the workplace and called 
upon governments, employers, unions, and other stakeholders to address 
these problems.\9\
    China has also supported the most recent international initiative 
to develop binding legal standards to end GBVH in the workplace, which 
culminated in the adoption of ILO Convention 190 and an accompanying 
non-binding Recommendation (No. 206) on how countries should best 
implement its provisions. This Convention primarily requires Member 
States to adopt measures designed to ensure a ``zero tolerance'' 
environment for workplace violence and harassment. These measures 
include establishing: a national law prohibiting violence and 
harassment; a comprehensive strategy on GBVH; strong enforcement and 
monitoring mechanisms; access to remedies and support for victims; 
sanctions for violators; education and training to raise awareness; and 
effective inspection and investigation of cases.\10\
    ILO Convention 190 seeks to address GBVH against all working 
people, and thus has a broad scope of coverage. The Convention protects 
not just ``employees'' or even ``workers,'' but all ``persons in the 
world of work . . . irrespective of their contractual status,'' 
including trainees, apprentices, interns, and jobseekers.\11\ The 
definition of ``violence and harassment'' is similarly expansive, 
encompassing ``a range of unacceptable behaviors and practices'' that 
may or do result in ``physical, psychological, sexual or economic 
harm.'' \12\ Further, ILO Convention 190 not only prohibits GBVH inside 
the workplace, but also during work-related travel, trainings, commutes 
to and from work, or as part of work-related communications.\13\
    Recognizing that employers have a crucial role to play in 
combatting violence and harassment, ILO Convention 190 also calls on 
governments to adopt laws and policies requiring employers to take 
certain steps, such as: adopting and implementing a workplace policy on 
violence and harassment; identifying and addressing particular hazards 
and risks; and providing accessible training to relevant persons.\14\ 
Consistent with the ILO's tripartite approach, ILO Convention 190 calls 
for all such laws, policies, and other measures to be developed in 
consultation with both employers' organizations and workers' 
organizations.\15\
    Over the last twenty years, China has sought to translate 
international commitments to combat GBVH and gender-based employment 
discrimination into domestic laws. The Chinese Constitution, 
promulgated in 1982, protects equal rights and equal pay for women and 
men.\16\ The 1994 Labor Law similarly demands the equal treatment of 
women in employment and prohibits discrimination against them, as does 
the 2007 Employment Promotion Law.\17\ The Women's Protection Law, as 
amended in 2005, demands equality, forbids discrimination, and 
prohibits sexual harassment, even providing victims the right to file a 
complaint against the harasser with their employer, the relevant 
administrative agency, or in court.\18\ In 2012, an employment-specific 
provision was issued as part of the Special Regulation on the Labor 
Protection of Female Employees, which provided that ``employers shall 
prevent and prohibit the sexual harassment of female employees in their 
workplaces.'' \19\ Most recently, following the adoption of ILO 
Convention 190, and perhaps in response to the #MeToo movement, China 
enacted a Civil Code in 2020 that includes a provision (Article 1010) 
establishing liability for perpetrators of sexual harassment and 
obligating employers to adopt measures to investigate, prevent, and 
stop workplace sexual harassment.\20\
    These various domestic laws and regulations also have significant 
limitations though. For instance, the operative text addressing sexual 
harassment is vague and fails to define key terms or specify what acts 
are prohibited. Furthermore, the legal liability for employers who fail 
to adopt adequate measures to prevent or address GBVH remains 
unspecified, and there are no clear penalties. Moreover, despite 
China's legislative progress, ending GBVH requires surmounting 
persistent problems of gender-based discrimination, violence, and 
harassment in the Chinese workplace and society.

                   II. GBVH in the Chinese Workplace

    GBVH in China's workplaces should be understood in the broader 
context of women's participation in the Chinese workforce. In the 
Maoist period, women were celebrated as ``holding up half the sky'' and 
encouraged to enter the workforce. However, the era of economic 
liberalization re-introduced traditional Chinese views on gender roles 
and the manifestation of the problems commonly found in capitalist 
societies. The recalibration of social values ushered in by Xi Jinping 
exacerbated these trends. Far from advocating workforce participation, 
President Xi has called on women to embrace their ``unique role'' in 
the family and ``shoulder the responsibilities of taking care of the 
old and young, as well as educating children.'' \21\
    As a result of these trends, women's labor force participation 
rates dropped from 73 percent in 1990 to 61 percent in 2019.\22\ The 
wage gap between working women and their male peers has also grown. 
Thirty years ago, Chinese women earned around 80 percent of what men 
made. By 2010, however, according to official data, women in Chinese 
cities earned only 67 percent of their male counterparts' earnings, and 
women in the countryside only made 56 percent of the amount made by men 
in rural areas.\23\ One study, conducted by a leading recruitment 
service in China, concluded that women are paid 22 percent less than 
their male counterparts.\24\ In 2018, over 30 percent of Chinese women 
reported feeling that they had fewer career opportunities than men.\25\ 
In fact, gender has a larger impact on income inequality than whether 
one is from the countryside or a big city.\26\
    Gender-based discrimination towards female workers begins with the 
hiring process. National legislation bars women from working in certain 
``physically demanding'' professions, such as logging and mining.\27\ 
In other industries, employers simply choose to exclude women. Job 
advertisements in China routinely specify ``men only,'' ``men 
preferred,'' or ``suitable for men''--this was even the case for 19 
percent of national civil service job postings in 2018.\28\ One 
motivating factor for this discrimination is that companies must offer 
at least 14 weeks of paid leave to women having children, but fathers 
typically get only two weeks. Some employers seek to circumvent this 
protection by forcing female employees to sign an agreement promising 
not to get pregnant, despite the illegality of this practice.\29\ Many 
other employers will simply decline to hire women, especially those 
perceived as likely to have children in the near future.
    The preamble to ILO Convention 190 recognizes that gender 
stereotypes, discrimination, and unequal power relations are both 
``underlying causes'' and ``risk factors'' for GBVH in the workplace--
and this is consistent with women's experiences in China. Scholars have 
attempted to gauge the prevalence of sexual harassment in the Chinese 
workplace: for instance, a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of working 
Chinese women have experienced sexual harassment.\30\ These findings 
were reinforced by a 2017 poll conducted by Huang Xueqin--introduced in 
the Executive Summary of this report--who found that over 80 percent of 
the 255 female journalists she surveyed reported being subjected to 
varying degrees of sexual harassment at work.\31\ Other studies have 
produced lower but still significant numbers. For instance, one survey 
of 2,000 urban Chinese women found that just under 20 percent reported 
experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace.\32\ These numbers are 
even more remarkable when one considers the global trend in 
underreporting instances of GBVH due to fear of stigma and other 
reasons.\33\
    Workplace GBVH occurs in various forms in China. In what is often 
considered China's first sexual harassment lawsuit, a woman complained 
that her boss repeatedly touched her body while promising her a better 
job, invited her to his hotel room, and withheld her bonus when she 
complained.\34\ A review of other Chinese court cases reveals instances 
of harassment not only by those in positions of authority within the 
workplace, but also by customers and co-workers. GBVH is most commonly 
perpetrated through verbal comments, touching, and chat messages. 
Indeed, a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1990s, 
in which 84 percent of female workers reported experiencing harassment, 
found that the two most common forms were unwelcome touching (70.48%) 
and sexual jokes or comments (60.36%).\35\ Chinese court decisions show 
numerous other forms of GBVH. For instance, one manager required his 
employee to watch pornographic material with him.\36\ Several managers 
invited their female employees to have sex or affairs with them.\37\
    Like in other parts of the world, GBVH in China also affects blue-
collar workers.\38\ One study found that 70 percent of female factory 
employee respondents in Guangzhou experienced some form of GBVH at 
work, and 15 percent were compelled to quit their jobs due to the 
harassment.\39\ As highlighted in the Executive Summary, a former 
Foxconn worker described the factory's ``prevalent . . . sexual 
harassment culture'' in which a woman who complains is likely to be 
accused of being `` `too sensitive' and `unable to take a joke.' '' 
\40\ Female workers in Chinese Walmart stores reported similar 
experiences: after complaining of being inappropriately touched by 
store patrons in 2017, their managers dismissed their grievance and 
retorted ``the customer is always right.'' \41\
    While this report focuses on the workplace, it should be noted that 
GBVH in China extends beyond that arena. The first manifestation of the 
#MeToo Movement in China concerned college campuses: in January 2018, 
Luo Xixi alleged that she was sexually assaulted by her former thesis 
advisor. Indeed, a 2016 survey of more than 6,000 students and recent 
graduates found that over 70 percent reported being sexually harassed; 
however, only 4 percent said they reported it to the university or 
police.\42\ A study by the China Family Planning Association found that 
over 30 percent of university students experienced sexual harassment or 
violence.\43\ A Nanjing University survey revealed that 16 percent of 
female respondents had experienced sexual harassment, and 23 percent of 
them claimed that the perpetrators were university professors or 
staff.\44\ Outside the educational context, women also report 
encountering GBVH in other parts of their daily lives. For instance, in 
Beijing, more than half of female respondents to a 2017 China Youth 
Daily survey said they, or someone they knew, had experienced sexual 
harassment while riding the metro.\45\

  III. The Impact and Limits of China's Legal Protections against GBVH

    China has had a national law prohibiting sexual harassment and 
authorizing victims to file complaints since 2005, and a national 
regulation requiring employers to prevent and respond to sexual 
harassment in the workplace since 2012. However, the effectiveness of 
this legal regime to prevent and stop sexual harassment has been 
seriously hampered because key terms were not defined, the obligations 
of various actors were not specified, and punishments were not 
prescribed. It is routine in Chinese legislative practice, where 
administrative enforcement is largely carried out by local government 
agencies, for local governments to adopt measures that provide more 
detail to the often-vague national dictates. Indeed, this is what 
happened in the field of sexual harassment, with some localities 
providing more specific definitions of sexual harassment or more 
defined duties for employers.\46\ However, after 2012, there was little 
legislative activity at the national level concerning sexual harassment 
for nearly one decade.
    In 2020, China took a significant step forward when the National 
People's Congress enacted the Civil Code. This included a new provision 
on sexual harassment, Article 1010, which took effect on January 1, 
2021:

        A person who has been sexually harassed against their will by 
        another person through oral words, written language, images, 
        physical acts, or the like, has the right to request the actor 
        to bear civil liability in accordance with law.

        The State organs, enterprises, schools, and other organizations 
        shall take reasonable precautions, accept and hear complaints, 
        investigate and handle cases, and take other like measures to 
        prevent and stop sexual harassment conducted by a person 
        through taking advantage of his position and power or a 
        superior-subordinate relationship, and the like.\47\

    The legislation clearly establishes that perpetrators of ``sexual 
harassment'' may bear civil liability and provides the beginnings of a 
definition of that term. Article 1010 also creates an obligation for 
state organs, employers, and other institutions to take measures to 
prevent sexual harassment as well as accept and investigate complaints. 
Nonetheless, key questions--including whether and when an employer may 
face legal liability--remain unanswered.
    At least one local government has already acted to fill in some of 
the gaps left open by Article 1010. In March 2021, the Shenzhen 
government issued the Shenzhen Municipal Guideline on the Prevention of 
Sexual Harassment (the ``Shenzhen Guideline'' or ``Guideline''), which, 
according to the preamble, draws upon ``advanced domestic and 
international practices.'' \48\ As detailed below, although the 13-page 
Shenzhen Guideline is not legally binding, it breaks new ground by 
providing a more developed definition of sexual harassment, specifying 
the steps that employers should take to prevent sexual harassment and 
how complaints are to be handled, prescribing specific punishments for 
perpetrators based on the severity of the misconduct (including that 
the employer order an apology, demotion, warning, dismissal, or 
blacklisting), instructing government departments to take certain 
actions, and stressing that sexual harassment complaints and 
investigations be kept confidential.
    But, to what extent do these Chinese laws and regulations provide 
meaningful protections or remedies for workers? Information and data on 
this topic are limited. Therefore, the author conducted a broad review 
of cases from the SPC's database of Chinese judicial decisions to 
investigate what types of GBVH incidents are occurring in Chinese 
workplaces, how GBVH disputes are handled, and how Chinese courts treat 
these claims.\49\
    The author began by searching for all cases in the database issued 
prior to 2021 that mention the term ``sexual harassment'' (Chinese 
translation appears in the original), which yielded 881 total hits. 
After eliminating the criminal and administrative cases, there were 577 
civil judgments, which included 187 tort disputes alleging an 
infringement of the right to personality and 233 labor disputes.\50\ 
For these two types of cases, the author's research team read through 
all of the trial-level decisions that were not duplicates and that 
actually concerned sexual harassment.\51\ The author then searched for 
all decisions containing the words ``sexual harassment'' issued after 
January 1, 2021, when Article 1010 took effect, which yielded 33 hits, 
of which 22 were civil cases--including 5 personality rights disputes 
and 7 labor disputes.\52\ The author's research team also read and 
analyzed all of these decisions.
    Drawing upon the author's analysis of these civil cases as well as 
other sources, the paragraphs that follow examine the landscape of 
Chinese actors and institutions involved in enforcing the legal 
prohibition on sexual harassment in the workplace. Specifically, this 
section evaluates the role played by Chinese employers, administrative 
agencies, and courts in preventing and addressing instances of GBVH.
                  a. enforcement by chinese employers
    The 2012 Special Regulation on the Labor Protection of Female 
Employees required employers to prevent and prohibit sexual harassment 
of female employees in their workplaces. Article 1010 of the Civil Code 
builds upon this obligation by directing employers to adopt measures to 
receive and investigate complaints, and prevent and stop sexual 
harassment. However, no penalties are prescribed for when employers 
fail to do so, which begs the question: to what extent are employers 
adhering to these requirements?
    An employer that seeks to prevent and address workplace sexual 
harassment and other forms of GBVH might issue an anti-harassment 
policy, establish a complaint mechanism, or provide training to workers 
and managers. There is not a great deal of data, however, regarding 
employer compliance in this area; and the data that exists is not very 
encouraging. For instance, in a 2018 survey of 100 respondent 
companies, 81 percent reported that the company had no anti-sexual 
harassment policy, while 12 percent reported that a written policy 
existed but was not implemented.\53\ According to Huang Xueqin's survey 
of journalists, only three percent reported having received any 
information or training on sexual harassment.\54\ Discussions with 
Chinese employment lawyers suggest that outside of foreign-owned 
companies, it is quite rare to see an explicit anti-sexual harassment 
policy or complaint mechanism, let alone for an employer to pay for 
training.\55\ Even after Article 1010 took effect, consultants report 
that Chinese employers are reluctant to adopt policies or pay for 
trainings.\56\
    The court cases examined for this study bring a bit of positive 
news. A large portion of the lawsuits were brought by employees who had 
been disciplined for engaging in sexual harassment--meaning that 
employers in these cases responded to complaints of misbehavior and 
stood by their decision to discipline employees even in the face of a 
lawsuit. In fact, a 2020 study of 199 labor disputes relating to sexual 
harassment found that alleged harassers who are disciplined or 
terminated by their employers actually prevail on their unjust 
dismissal claim 70 percent of the time--a finding consistent with the 
author's review of relevant cases.\57\ In other words, employers 
terminated alleged harassers even though it often cost them money in 
court. The 2020 study also suggests that employers may be paying more 
attention to sexual harassment than in the past: a majority of 
companies involved in these lawsuits at least had a provision in their 
employee handbook prohibiting sexual harassment.\58\ That being said, 
none of the cases reviewed by the author discussed an instance where 
the employer compensated a sexual harassment victim.
    The above analysis demonstrates that, regardless of whether the 
employer's Article 1010 obligations to adopt measures to prevent, 
investigate, and stop sexual harassment carry penalties, it is still in 
employers' self-interest to adopt such measures. Chinese labor law only 
permits the termination of an employee without compensation where a 
clear work rule has been violated. If an employee challenges their 
termination in court, the employer has the burden to establish that a 
violation of an established rule occurred.\59\ Accordingly, employers 
would be wise to adopt clear policies prohibiting GBVH and routinely 
gather evidence when complaints of sexual harassment arise. Failing to 
do so will make it difficult for an employer to justify its dismissal 
of the alleged harasser. By contrast, in one case where the employer 
did prohibit sexual harassment in the employment contract, and the 
employer established that the alleged harasser had been making sexual 
remarks and touching his female coworker, the court upheld the 
termination without compensation.\60\
                b. enforcement by the chinese government
    Prior to 2021, there is little evidence of China's various 
government agencies actively assisting in fighting GBVH in the 
workplace, particularly where it does not rise to the level of a 
criminal act. The Chinese lawyers and other stakeholders interviewed 
for this study were unaware of any case in which the Chinese government 
reprimanded an employer for lacking a policy prohibiting or preventing 
sexual harassment. Furthermore, rather than helping victims seek 
redress, there are numerous reports of government agencies trying to 
dissuade victims from pursuing their case. When Xianzi, the harassed 
CCTV intern introduced in the Executive Summary, complained to the 
police, she was encouraged not to pursue the accusation against Zhu Jun 
and told to consider her reputation and family, as well as the negative 
social impact of bringing a complaint. This dissuasion also occurs 
outside of the employment context: one university student, Xin Yue, who 
sought information from administrators about a prior rape case 
involving another student was faced with intimidation by the school's 
authorities, who hinted that the student might not graduate and 
threatening to contact her parents.\61\
               c. enforcement through the chinese courts
    This section considers what happens when sexual harassment victims 
seek redress through the Chinese courts. While various national and 
local measures have made progress in defining ``sexual harassment'' and 
explicitly authorizing victims to sue in court, few workers have 
brought lawsuits against their harasser, and those who do face an 
uphill battle, particularly in regard to obtaining meaningful remedies 
and avoiding retaliation. The paragraphs that follow discuss these 
issues.

1. Small Number of Cases

    Even prior to the issuance of Article 1010, Chinese law provided 
sexual harassment victims the option to file a claim in court. 
Nonetheless, despite the prevalence of GBVH in the Chinese workplace, 
there are not many sexual harassment court cases. A 2018 study 
performed by the Beijing Yuanzhong Gender Development Center found only 
34 judicial decisions from 2010 to 2017 where sexual harassment in the 
workplace was the primary issue--and only two of these were brought by 
victims.\62\ The author was able to find a few more than two cases in 
which an employee alleged being a victim of sexual harassment; but, as 
described above, cases brought by targets of sexual harassment are 
still far fewer than those brought by employees terminated due to an 
allegation of sexual harassment. At present, there is no evidence that 
the situation has changed dramatically since Article 1010 took effect 
in January 2021. In fact, this study identified only four decisions 
that have been issued in tort cases mentioning ``sexual harassment'' 
since January 2021.\63\ However, in fairness, it may be too early to 
tell--particularly as Article 1010 only applies in cases where the 
conduct occurred after January 1, 2021. The remainder of this section 
focuses on the experiences of workers that have filed GBVH claims in 
the Chinese courts and considers issues they face in obtaining justice.

2. Defining ``Sexual Harassment''

    The lack of a clear definition of sexual harassment, or a threshold 
at which point objectionable behavior becomes legally actionable, has 
created obstacles for Chinese claimants. Article 1010 marks a step 
forward by noting the types of acts that may constitute harassment--
``oral words, written language, images, physical acts, or the like''--
but does not speak to the threshold at which such acts create liability 
for the perpetrator or employer. By way of comparison, even under the 
standard for establishing that a hostile work environment exists under 
federal law in the United States--that the harassment be either 
sufficiently ``severe'' or ``pervasive''--judges may disagree as to 
whether a set of facts meets this threshold.\64\ In China, the courts 
lack even an amorphous standard of this sort to guide them.
    The Shenzhen Guideline makes significant progress in this regard by 
fleshing out a definition of sexual harassment: ``sexual harassment is 
nonconsensual, sexual in nature, unwelcome tortious conduct, through 
oral words, written language, images, physical acts, or the like, that 
offends, intimidates, or humiliates the person, resulting in negative 
emotions, or a hostile, unfriendly work (study) environment.'' \65\ The 
Guideline then elaborates on three important aspects of the definition. 
First, the Guideline states that conduct constituting ``sexual 
harassment'' must have three components: (i) it is sexual in nature; 
(ii) it is unwelcome by the target (using a subjective standard); and 
(iii) it results in a violation of the person's right to personality 
and causes negative emotions, or a ``hostile or unfriendly work . . . 
environment.'' \66\ (Chinese translation appears in the original.) 
Second, the Guideline provides explanations and examples of the four 
types of harassing acts (oral words, written language, images, physical 
acts) identified in Article 1010. As an example, the Guideline notes 
that ``oral words'' may include commenting on a person's sensitive body 
parts, unwelcome teasing, sexual and dirty jokes, or other unwelcome 
comments. Third, the Guideline recognizes two primary forms of sexual 
harassment: (i) using one's power, status, or advantages to make the 
person conduct sexual acts, or (ii) creating a hostile work 
environment.\67\ This definition provides far more guidance to Chinese 
judges than existed previously.
    The Shenzhen Guideline, nonetheless, does not fully answer the 
question of when unwelcome behavior becomes legally actionable. The 
Guideline improves upon Article 1010 by clarifying that a subjective 
standard should be used to determine whether the allegedly harassing 
conduct is unwelcome. The Guideline also provides useful examples of 
conduct that does not constitute sexual harassment, such as inadvertent 
or accidental physical contact, an accidental or solitary sexual 
comment, or certain socially acceptable language or behaviors. However, 
it does not affirmatively articulate at what point harassing comments, 
touching, or behavior does, for instance, constitute a ``hostile or 
unfriendly work environment.'' The result may be that Chinese judges 
seeking to use the Guideline as a reference in deciding sexual 
harassment cases must still develop their own standards.
    While marking a major step forward, the definition of sexual 
harassment in the Shenzhen Guideline is also still not as expansive as 
ILO Convention 190's coverage of the ``range of unacceptable behaviors 
and practices'' that may or do result in ``physical, psychological, 
sexual or economic harm.'' \68\ However, the model employer policy that 
is issued along with the Shenzhen Guideline is largely consistent with 
ILO Convention 190's expansive definition of the workplace, as it not 
only prohibits sexual harassment at the regular place of work, but also 
misconduct at any work-related meetings, training events, business 
trips, or other activities that take place outside the employer's 
premises.\69\

3. Proving Sexual Harassment

    The issue of what evidence, or how much evidence, is necessary to 
support a finding of sexual harassment has been a formidable obstacle 
for plaintiffs. Chinese courts often require plaintiffs to prove facts 
to a ``high degree of likelihood'' to prevail on their claims, which 
some legal scholars have described as requiring certainty of 85 percent 
or more.\70\ Moreover, the Chinese legal system places a strong 
emphasis on physical evidence and attributes very little evidentiary 
weight to oral testimony. Indeed, court guidelines for civil cases 
provide that a party's testimony cannot be the sole basis for 
establishing a fact in a case--some corroboration is necessary.\71\ For 
instance, in seeking compensation from her employer for being subjected 
to unlawful working conditions, Ms. Zhao testified about being harassed 
by her manager while on a business trip and being frequently forced to 
share a hotel room with male colleagues. However, the court denied her 
claim because she had no physical evidence to corroborate her 
testimony.\72\ Since sexual harassment cases often involve verbal 
comments or unwelcome touching, physical evidence rarely exists. Even 
in instances where the victim introduced evidence of harassing messages 
coming from the defendant's social media account, the court found that 
the plaintiff was unable to adequately demonstrate that the defendant 
is the one who had sent them.\73\ In fact, Walmart had the same problem 
when it terminated an employee for sending harassing messages: the 
court found that Walmart could not demonstrate that the social media 
posts were actually sent by the employee and thus the dismissal without 
compensation was not legal.\74\
    Article 1010 does not address any issues concerning the evidentiary 
standard for plaintiffs or the weight that oral testimony should be 
given, nor does the Shenzhen Guideline. Interestingly, however, the 
Guideline does direct companies to train workers and managers on how to 
preserve physical evidence of harassing behavior, further underscoring 
the primacy of physical evidence in Chinese legal proceedings.\75\

4. Remedies for Victims

    Even where a GBVH victim prevails in litigation, the remedies 
ordered by the courts have been paltry and disappointing. In one early 
case, back in 2002, a local court in Hainan Province ordered a 68-year-
old man to apologize for harassing three young men, but only ordered 
that he pay them 1 RMB each for emotional suffering.\76\ In what some 
call the first ``successful'' sexual harassment case in Guangzhou, 
where a supervisor hugged an employee from behind and then strangled 
her neck when she tried to break free, the victim was only awarded RMB 
3,000 (US $470) by the court--and was also fired after bringing the 
litigation.\77\
    Victims have not fared much better in more recent cases, as the 
courts remain reluctant to award damages. In the first successful case 
filed since the SPC declared ``sexual harassment'' an explicit cause of 
action, which was even selected as one of China's ``top 10'' public 
interest lawsuits for 2019, the court found that sexual harassment 
occurred, but denied the claim for monetary compensation--only ordering 
that the defendant apologize.\78\ Even where the defendant in a case 
already agreed to pay the plaintiff RMB 12,000 (US $1,883), the court 
unilaterally declared the number to be too high and reduced the 
compensation to RMB 5,000.\79\
    It is not yet clear to what extent Article 1010 may improve the 
situation. On the one hand, in March 2021, a Shanghai court awarded RMB 
98,000 ($15,000) to a plaintiff who alleged that her colleague sent 
disturbing text messages to her daily for six months--an 
``unprecedented'' award in a sexual harassment lawsuit.\80\ However, a 
few months later, in a May 2021 decision that cites Article 1010, the 
female plaintiff alleging that her coworker touched her breasts and 
buttocks requested RMB 30,000 (US $4,709) in damages, but the court 
found insufficient evidence that the sexual harassment caused the 
plaintiff's depression and awarded only RMB 5,000 (US $784).\81\ These 
limited monetary awards, particularly after overcoming the numerous 
other litigation obstacles outlined above, will likely further 
discourage victims from ever acting upon their sexual harassment 
claims.

5. Retaliation and Defamation Suits

    Victims who complain about GBVH not only have a low likelihood of 
obtaining meaningful redress, but also face considerable retaliation. 
Employers and others may dissuade victims from pursuing complaints in 
the first place. For instance, one manager lobbied a female employee to 
withdraw her police complaint about a coworker who repeatedly 
ejaculated into her teacup.\82\ Victims have faced terminations, forced 
resignations, and retaliatory harassment.\83\ Restaurant managers in 
Guangdong forcibly evicted a worker from the company dormitory after 
she complained about sexual harassment.\84\ In one litigation, the 
defendant requested that the court order a psychological evaluation of 
the complainant.\85\ GBVH may even be used as a form of retaliation: 
after Walmart employee Xiaoli complained about the flexible working 
hour system, her manager assigned her to clean the store toilets and 
took photos of her while she used the bathroom.\86\
    GBVH victims who complain or make their allegations public often 
get sued for defamation, as in the case of Xianzi, who complained that 
a television news anchor harassed her during an internship. In fact, 
the SPC database contains a total of 113 civil case judgments 
containing the word ``sexual harassment'' in which defamation is a 
cause of action. Since the start of the #MeToo Movement, numerous 
defamation cases have been filed against women who shared accounts of 
being victimized by GBVH. Ms. Wang, a former World Wildlife Fund 
employee, was sued for defamation after posting an account of sexual 
harassment by her boss on social media. The court found Ms. Wang's 
testimony inadequate to establish that the harassment occurred, and 
thus ordered Ms. Wang to delete the post and apologize.\87\ In another 
matter, after He Qian published an online account of being invited to 
her supervisor's hotel room, where he forcibly kissed, groped and 
undressed her, she was greeted by a defamation lawsuit and ordered to 
pay RMB 11,712 (roughly US $1,800) for the supervisor's hurt feelings 
and litigation expenses.\88\ Despite the lack of any legal authority 
providing that the burden of proof is reversed in defamation suits, the 
judge in He Qian's case found that it was her burden to show that the 
alleged acts occurred, but that she failed to do so.\89\ Her lawyer 
equated this ruling to telling a humiliated victim ``that if you don't 
have audio recordings or videos of the event, then you better hurry up 
and shut your mouth.'' The attorney predicted that such cases will have 
a definite chilling effect on victims coming forward.\90\
    These acts of retaliation and the filing of defamation lawsuits 
arise in a context where Chinese victims are already hesitant to 
complain. A 2015 survey by Sina.com found that only four percent of 
women and three percent of men who were sexually harassed had filed 
complaints with the police.\91\ A poll of Chinese journalists found 
that only 3.2 percent reported the encounter to their company, and only 
0.6 percent made a police report.\92\ Some experts have remarked on 
China's ``culture of silence,'' in which victims feel embarrassment 
over having been involved in such instances and choose not to discuss 
or share the experience. In a system where few plaintiffs prevail, and 
those who do receive little reward, filing a lawsuit hardly seems 
worthwhile, especially in light of the potential retaliation and 
reputational damage. In the words of a Beijing lawyer who has handled 
nearly 20 sexual harassment cases since 2005, the outcome for most 
victims who sue is that they lose their case and lose their husband or 
boyfriend in the process.\93\

                          IV. Recommendations

    China has made notable progress in combating GBVH, including 
adopting specific measures since the enactment of ILO Convention 190. 
However, as in most Member States, there remains much work to do before 
every Chinese worker can enjoy a workplace free from violence and 
harassment. Government, employer, worker, and other civil society 
stakeholders each need to make concerted efforts to end all forms of 
workplace violence and harassment.
    As a preliminary matter, it must be noted that successfully 
preventing and ending GBVH requires workers and their organizations to 
play a central role in the design and implementation of GBVH policies 
at the political, sectoral, and workplace levels, as recognized by ILO 
Convention 190. In other jurisdictions, trade unions traditionally play 
the role of representing workers' interests in these activities, but 
the situation in China is more complex in this regard. The All-China 
Federation of Trade Unions (``ACFTU'') does, technically, have the 
largest membership of any union in the world. However, the ACFTU is far 
from a democratic institution that zealously represents the interests 
of workers; instead, the trade union functions essentially as part of 
the Chinese government and its mission is to harmonize relations 
between employers and employees. The institution is comprised of union 
officials who are essentially civil servants placed at the various 
levels of government as well as workplace-level union branches that are 
generally dominated by the employer.\94\ In this context, the ACFTU has 
occasionally demonstrated an ability to promote workers' interests at 
the policy level (such as by promoting certain legislation) or through 
work that is not specific to any one workplace (like developing 
training materials, conducting public education, or arranging legal aid 
services for workers), but it has been largely ineffectual in 
protecting employees and their interests at the workplace level.\95\ In 
light of this reality, the report discusses the ACFTU both in its 
recommendations to the Chinese government and to Chinese workers' 
organizations.
    Given the limitations of the ACFTU, there is a need in China for 
other civil society actors to play a role in advocating for and 
protecting workers with regard to GBVH and related issues. However, 
Chinese authorities have clamped down on many of the civil society 
actors focused on GBVH and thus greatly limited opportunities for them 
to do meaningful work in this area. For instance, back in 2015, the 
``Feminist Five''--a group of five young female activists who advocated 
against gender inequality, domestic violence, and sexual harassment--
were arrested because they planned to hand out stickers on the Beijing 
subway to raise awareness about sexual harassment.\96\ In 2016, Chinese 
authorities shut down the country's first women's rights legal aid 
center, which represented low-income Chinese women free of charge and 
also brought impact litigation cases.\97\ As the #MeToo movement gained 
steam, the government cracked down on non-governmental organizations 
working on feminist advocacy and women rights issues, closed online 
discussion forums, and limited coverage in the official media.\98\ 
Chinese censors had initially banned information about Xianzi's sexual 
harassment allegations against the CCTV host, and only began reporting 
on them once Zhu Jun had filed his defamation claim against Xianzi.\99\
    The above actions took place in the context of a broader tightening 
of the space for labor rights activists in China. In December 2015, the 
Chinese government targeted a group of labor rights NGOs in Guangzhou, 
arresting dozens of NGO staff and prosecuting three of the 
leaders.\100\ From the summer of 2018 to the spring of 2019, the 
government clamped down on student and labor activists that unionized 
workers at the Jasic factory in Shenzhen, and then subsequently widened 
the repression to broader networks of labor rights advocates.\101\ This 
wider crackdown included labor NGOs in Shenzhen, journalists who 
operated social media platforms focused on labor rights, and leaders of 
community organizations.\102\ The level of government intimidation and 
harassment has not softened since then.
    Accordingly, the author recognizes the significant limitations that 
the ACFTU and civil society actors may face in conducting certain types 
of advocacy for workers relating to GBVH. Nonetheless, the report 
offers recommendations for workers' organizations to engage in 
tripartite dialogue at national and local levels, participate at the 
sector and workplace levels in risk assessments and GBVH policy design 
and monitoring, and provide context-specific education and training of 
workers regarding their rights and how to enforce them.
    Additionally, for every recommendation that follows, in line with 
Article 4(2) of ILO Convention 190, the report recommends that the 
Chinese government adopt ``an inclusive, integrated, and gender-
responsive approach for the prevention and elimination of violence and 
harassment in the world of work.'' This means including the perspective 
of workers from all sectors and demographics in crafting legislation or 
regulations (that define GBVH, strengthen employer liability, establish 
standards regarding evidence or remedies, prohibit retaliation, and 
expand government enforcement) and in setting goals and priorities that 
contribute to resource allocation (towards enforcement of these laws, 
training of government officials, and funding for victim services).
             a. recommendations for the chinese government

1. Improve the Legislative Framework \103\

ILO Convention 190 recognizes that effectively combating sexual 
harassment requires Member States to create an appropriate legal 
framework.

      Article 4(2) of ILO Convention 190 calls on each Member 
State to ``adopt, in accordance with national law and circumstances and 
in consultation with representative employers' and workers' 
organizations, an inclusive, integrated and gender-responsive approach 
for the prevention and elimination of violence and harassment in the 
world of work.''

    The paragraphs that follow will highlight specific recommendations 
in regard to revising China's legislative framework. In keeping with 
provisions from ILO Convention 190, the recommendations include: 
expanding the definition of prohibited GBVH conduct, establishing clear 
legal liability for employers, adopting appropriate evidentiary rules 
and meaningful remedies in litigation, and creating safeguards against 
retaliation and confidentiality protections.

a. Expand the Definition of Prohibited GBVH Conduct

ILO Convention 190 requires each Member State to adopt legislation 
prohibiting GBVH.

      Article 7 of ILO Convention 190 obligates Member States 
to ``. . . adopt laws and regulations to define and prohibit violence 
and harassment in the world of work, including gender-based violence 
and harassment.''

    As laid out in this report, China has taken a few positive steps at 
the national level since the rise of the #MeToo movement. These include 
creating an explicit cause of action for ``harm caused by sexual 
harassment'' in December 2018 as well as adopting Article 1010 as part 
of the Civil Code in 2020. At a minimum, these legislative efforts 
demonstrate a recognition of the problem and signal the government's 
commitment to addressing it.
    Nonetheless, these measures are only an initial step towards 
building a sufficient legal framework to counter GBVH. The Article 1010 
clause creating civil liability for perpetrators of sexual harassment 
still leaves many questions unanswered. The provision reads in relevant 
part: ``[a] person who has been sexually harassed against their will by 
another person through oral words, written language, images, physical 
acts, or the like, has the right to request the actor to bear civil 
liability in accordance with law.'' \104\ One academic involved in 
drafting Article 1010 argues that the provision only creates liability 
for harassment targeted at specific individuals, but not acts that 
create a harassing environment more generally.\105\ Indeed, one women's 
rights lawyer pointed out that the academic's interpretation reflects 
that sexual harassment in China is still being viewed as an ordinary 
tort, akin to one party punching another, rather than as a more 
systemic GBVH issue.\106\
    As discussed above, the Shenzhen Guideline issued earlier this year 
fills in some of the gaps in Article 1010's vague definition, such as 
by identifying three components to a ``sexual harassment'' claim, 
providing examples of prohibited conduct, and articulating the two 
conceptions of sexual harassment (one based on coerced sexual acts and 
one based on a hostile work environment). China should encourage all 
localities to not only adopt similar measures, but to promulgate them 
with the force of law rather than as non-binding guidelines. In 
addition, any legislation should make explicit the threshold for when 
unwelcome or inappropriate behavior becomes legally actionable, such as 
by defining terms like ``hostile and unfriendly work environment.'' 
\107\

b. Establish Clear Legal Liability for Employers

Employers play a crucial role in preventing and addressing GBVH. ILO 
Convention 190 calls upon Member States to require employers to control 
and prevent GBVH through adopting policies, identifying and addressing 
risks, providing information and training to workers and other persons, 
and establishing investigation and complaint procedures as well as 
workplace-level dispute resolution mechanisms. The section below on 
recommendations for employers specifies the components to be included 
in such policies and mechanisms. This section addresses how the Chinese 
government can ensure that employers fulfill these responsibilities.

      Article 9 of ILO Convention 190 calls upon Member States 
to ``adopt laws and regulations requiring employers to take appropriate 
steps commensurate with their degree of control to prevent violence and 
harassment in the world of work, including gender-based violence and 
harassment, and in particular, so far as is reasonably practicable, to:

    a. adopt and implement, in consultation with workers and their 
representatives, a workplace policy on violence and harassment;
    b. take into account violence and harassment and associated 
psychosocial risks in the management of occupational safety and health;
    c. identify hazards and assess the risks of violence and 
harassment, with the participation of workers and their 
representatives, and take measures to prevent and control them; and
    d. provide to workers and other persons concerned information and 
training, in accessible formats as appropriate, on the identified 
hazards and risks of violence and harassment and the associated 
prevention and protection measures, including on the rights and 
responsibilities of workers and other persons concerned in relation to 
the policy referred to in subparagraph (a) of this Article.''

      Article 10 of ILO Convention 190 calls upon Member States 
to take measures to ``(b) ensure easy access to appropriate and 
effective remedies and safe, fair and effective reporting and dispute 
resolution mechanisms and procedures in cases of violence and 
harassment in the world of work, such as: (i) complaint and 
investigation procedures, as well as, where appropriate, dispute 
resolution mechanisms at the workplace level . . . ''.

      Article 10 also calls upon Member States to take measures 
to ``(d) provide for sanctions, where appropriate, in cases of violence 
and harassment in the world of work.'' Paragraph 14 of Recommendation 
206 further elaborates on this provision, adding that sanctions could 
include the right to resign with compensation, reinstatement, or 
``orders requiring measures with immediate executory force to be taken 
to ensure that certain conduct is stopped or that policies or practices 
are changed.'' This elaboration makes clear that Article 10 envisions a 
legal regime that places liability not just on GBVH offenders, but also 
on employers, who are the ones equipped to offer remedies such as 
reinstatement or a change in workplace policy.

Turning to China's domestic law, while Article 1010 and local 
regulations create obligations for employers to prevent or stop sexual 
harassment, what are the repercussions when an employer fails to do so? 
Prior to the issuance of the Civil Code, it was fairly clear that no 
national law or regulation created liability for an employer; only the 
harasser could be held liable. Article 1010 is similarly silent as to 
whether an employer may face any punishment, either in the form of 
civil liability or an administrative sanction, for failing to adopt 
measures to prevent or address sexual harassment.
    An essential component of ensuring that employers have the proper 
incentives to prevent, investigate, and stop sexual harassment is the 
threat of legal liability. Indeed, several Chinese commentators argue 
that Article 1010's lack of any explicit punishment means it is 
unlikely to actually change employer behavior: as Professor Shen Yifei 
questioned, ``If a regulation has neither mechanisms for punishment nor 
incentives, how can it be implemented?'' \108\ One Chinese scholar 
believes that Chinese employers may be held liable under Article 1010, 
but only if the plaintiff proves that the company's failures to adopt a 
sexual harassment policy caused the harm--a difficult standard to 
meet.\109\ Looking to the United States, avoiding the payment of large 
monetary awards to victims is an important motivation for many 
companies to establish policies to prevent and address GBVH.
    Local regulations in China have been more explicit about the issue 
of employer liability. A regulation issued by Jiangsu Province in 2018 
explicitly provides that the employer is obligated to prevent and 
address workplace sexual harassment and, where an employer fails to 
meet its obligations, female workers may file administrative complaints 
or court actions against the employer.\110\ A Sichuan Province 
regulation provides that an employer is liable for a victim's injury 
due to sexual harassment if the employer committed wrongdoing.\111\ 
(However, no cases were found in the SPC database that referenced the 
employer's obligation to prevent sexual harassment under either the 
Jiangsu or Sichuan regulation). The Shenzhen Guideline also hints at 
the idea of employer liability: it states that the employer can avoid 
liability by adopting reasonable prevention measures or a reasonable 
dispute-processing mechanism.\112\ However, the Guideline does not 
state the conditions to establish liability of an employer or the 
applicable penalties.
    Accordingly, if China is to incentivize employers to adopt 
mechanisms to prevent and stop GBVH, it must create clear liability for 
employers with explicit penalties, whether enforced through civil 
litigation or by a government agency.

c. Adopt Appropriate Evidentiary Rules and Meaningful Remedies in 
        Litigation

ILO Convention 190 calls for Member States to take a variety of 
measures in relation to remediating acts of GBVH.

      Article 4(2)(e) calls for Member States to adopt an 
approach to GBVH that includes ``ensuring access to remedies and 
support for victims.''

      Article 10(b) provides further specificity, requiring 
Member States to adopt measures to ``ensure easy access to appropriate 
and effective remedies and safe, fair and effective reporting and 
dispute resolution mechanisms and procedures in cases of violence and 
harassment in the world of work, such as:

    i. complaint and investigation procedures, as well as, where 
appropriate, dispute resolution mechanisms at the workplace level;
    ii. dispute resolution mechanisms external to the workplace;
    iii. courts or tribunals;
    iv. protection against victimization of or retaliation against 
complainants, victims, witnesses and whistle-blowers; and
    v. legal, social, medical and administrative support measures for 
complainants and victims.''

      Article 10(e) requires Member States to take steps to 
``provide that victims of gender-based violence and harassment in the 
world of work have effective access to gender-responsive, safe and 
effective complaint and dispute resolution mechanisms, support, 
services and remedies.''

    Recommendation 206 accompanying ILO Convention 190 contains 
particular guidelines for courts and other complaint and dispute 
resolution mechanisms.

      Paragraph 14 lays out the remedies to be made available 
pursuant to ILO Convention 190, Article 10(b), ``includ[ing]:

    a. the right to resign with compensation;
    b. reinstatement;
    c. appropriate compensation for damages;
    d. orders requiring measures with immediate executory force to be 
taken to ensure that certain conduct is stopped or that policies or 
practices are changed; and
    e. legal fees and costs according to national law and practice.''

      Paragraph 16 specifies that ``[t]he complaint and dispute 
resolution mechanisms for gender-based violence and harassment referred 
to in Article 10(e) of the Convention should include measures such as:

    a. courts with expertise in cases of gender-based violence and 
harassment;
    b. timely and efficient processing;
    c. legal advice and assistance for complainants and victims;
    d. guides and other information resources available and accessible 
in the languages that are widely spoken in the country; and
    e. shifting of the burden of proof, as appropriate, in proceedings 
other than criminal proceedings.''

    The remedies laid out in ILO Convention 190 have been largely 
unavailable to Chinese victims of sexual harassment and other forms of 
GBVH. The Chinese courts' high evidentiary threshold for plaintiffs, 
insistence upon physical evidence, and almost wholesale discounting of 
victim testimony make it extremely difficult for victims to prevail. 
There exist certain types of cases in which Chinese judges are 
instructed to apply different evidentiary rules based on the nature of 
the dispute. For instance, when a terminated employee sues for wrongful 
termination, the employer has the burden to show the dismissal was 
justified because it is generally the employer who has access to 
evidence on which the termination was based.\113\ China should consider 
the practices of other jurisdictions that have applied a similar 
burden-shifting scheme in cases involving victim allegations of GBVH in 
the workplace.\114\
    China might also provide guidance to judges on how to evaluate 
evidence in GBVH cases, including instructions allowing them to place 
greater weight on oral testimony where it is known that physical 
evidence is often unavailable or hard to obtain. In the United States, 
for instance, guidelines issued by the Equal Employment Opportunity 
Commission (``EEOC''), which investigates discrimination and harassment 
claims under federal law, explicitly provide that ``in appropriate 
cases, the Commission may make a finding of harassment based solely on 
the credibility of the victim's allegation.'' \115\
    Another area that must be addressed, either through legislation or 
a court rule, is the range of remedies available to GBVH litigants. 
Paragraph 14(c) of Recommendation 206 states that ``appropriate 
compensation for damages'' must be available to victims. Even in the 
rare instances where Chinese victims prevailed in court, the monetary 
damages were paltry. In order for victims to be willing to litigate 
these claims--and for violators to be sufficiently deterred--more 
significant monetary damages are necessary. One obstacle is that court 
awards for emotional distress in China, regardless of the type of case, 
are generally low. Guidance from the SPC instructing judges on what an 
appropriate range of such damages would be for various types of cases 
might be helpful in this regard. The creation of some form of ``special 
damages'' can also be considered. In the United States, this role is 
played by ``punitive damages,'' which are available to punish 
particularly outrageous conduct and may result in substantial monetary 
awards to victims.
    Paragraph 14(e) of Recommendation 206 also states that remedies for 
GBVH victims should include an award of legal fees and costs to GBVH 
victims. This measure is much needed in China, where contingency fee 
arrangements are generally prohibited and victims who want to hire a 
lawyer must pay upfront. The result is that a significant proportion of 
Chinese workers are forced to navigate the judicial system without 
representation.\116\ The same paragraph of Recommendation 206 also 
mentions the need for certain non-monetary remedies, such as ordering 
reinstatement, the right to resign with compensation, or injunctive 
relief commanding that the abusive behavior stop. The SPC might 
explicitly authorize courts to order such relief in GBVH cases.

d. Create Safeguards against Retaliation and Confidentiality 
        Protections

ILO Convention 190 calls for Member States to protect complainants, 
victims, witnesses, and whistle-blowers against retaliation, and to 
protect the privacy of those individuals involved.

      Article 10(b)(iv) calls for Member States to take 
measures to protect against ``victimization of or retaliation against 
complainants, victims, witnesses and whistle-blowers.''

      Article 10(c) calls for Member States to take measures to 
``protect the privacy of those individuals involved and 
confidentiality, to the extent possible and as appropriate, and ensure 
that requirements for privacy and confidentiality are not misused.''

    The preceding sections detailed the retaliation faced by 
individuals who report GBVH. These retaliatory measures, including 
defamation lawsuits, undoubtedly deter many victims from ever coming 
forward. Complaint mechanisms and investigations will be largely 
useless if victims are unwilling to report abuse and witnesses are 
unwilling to provide information. While China has legislated to protect 
complainants in other areas, such as whistleblowers of financial 
crimes, no comparable provisions to protect victims of harassment exist 
in China's national legislation.\117\ The non-binding Shenzhen 
Guideline does state that complaint mechanisms should take steps to 
prevent retaliation and the investigation process should be treated as 
confidential, but the details are sparse.
    China's national legislation should explicitly prohibit retaliation 
against those who complain of harassment, assist in an investigation, 
or serve as a witness. The law should include a definition and examples 
of prohibited behavior, and specific penalties sufficient to deter 
retaliation. Filing a lawsuit against someone because that person 
complained of sexual harassment should be explicitly listed as such an 
act.\118\ In other jurisdictions, GBVH victims who complain are 
provided specific legal protections: for instance, in 2018, California 
passed a law that protects employees who make sexual harassment 
complaints to their employer.\119\ In addition, as discussed below, 
explicit anti-retaliation provisions should be included in employers' 
policies and procedures.
    To protect victims and witnesses and to encourage them to come 
forward, measures to protect their privacy are also recommended. While 
sometimes difficult to achieve in harassment cases, reasonable efforts 
should be made to keep the identity of victims confidential, if this is 
requested by the complainant. At a minimum, confidential information 
should be shared only with those who have a need for that information. 
Employers and administrative mechanisms may be better suited to 
maintain a level of confidentiality than courts.

2. Strengthen Government Monitoring and Enforcement

a. Expand Government Monitoring, Enforcement, and Dispute Resolution 
        Mechanisms

ILO Convention 190 recognizes the role of government enforcement in 
several articles.

      Article 4(2)(d) calls upon Member States to establish and 
strengthen enforcement and monitoring mechanisms.

      Article 4(2)(h) calls upon Member States to ensure 
``effective means of inspection and investigation of cases of violence 
and harassment, including through labour inspectorates or other 
competent bodies.''

      Article 10(b) addresses ``easy access to appropriate and 
effective remedies and safe, fair and effective reporting and dispute 
resolution mechanisms and procedures in cases of violence and 
harassment in the world of work.'' It calls upon Member States to 
ensure access to various mechanisms and procedures, ``such as:

    i. complaint and investigation procedures, as well as, where 
appropriate, dispute resolution mechanisms at the workplace level;
    ii. dispute resolution mechanisms external to the workplace;
    iii. courts or tribunals;
    iv. protection against victimization of or retaliation against 
complainants, victims, witnesses and whistle-blowers; and
    v. legal, social, medical and administrative support measures for 
complainants and victims.''

    While employers should create internal complaint mechanisms and 
victims should have access to the courts where those mechanisms fail, 
China should also consider establishing administrative dispute 
resolution mechanisms. Employer mechanisms may sometimes be inadequate 
or unable to act fairly where high-level executives are the 
perpetrators of the GBVH. Some victims may be unable to pursue a 
lawsuit on their own, or fear retaliation if they do so. An 
administrative agency could provide a free, more accessible alternative 
to the courts.
    In this regard, China can look to the numerous jurisdictions that 
have developed administrative mechanisms to address discrimination and 
harassment claims. For instance, in the United States, the EEOC 
receives complaints, monitors compliance, conducts investigations, 
orders compensation to victims and the payment of penalties to the 
government, and mandates certain preventive or remedial action by 
employers when necessary. Other countries have created special mandates 
for labor inspectors, providing them with special task forces, 
training, guidelines or special powers in relation to workplace 
violence and harassment. For example, in El Salvador, the Ministry of 
Labor and Social Security developed a national training module for 
labor inspectors on discrimination and sexual and other forms of 
harassment at work. Salvadoran labor inspectors are also tasked with 
conducting preventive inspection visits where they can identify all 
types of violence against women, including violence and harassment. 
Spanish labor inspectors carry out campaigns in sectors most vulnerable 
to violence and harassment, such as schools, hospitals, and shops.\120\ 
A significant advantage of labor inspectorates is that they are often 
more accessible to GBVH victims than the more formalistic court system. 
In the Republic of Korea, the Ministry of Employment and Labor even 
developed a smartphone application through which workers can report 
sexual harassment and request counselling services.\121\
    China should additionally consider creating a specialized body that 
not only investigates and processes complaints, but also is dedicated 
to all aspects of eliminating GBVH. Numerous government functions are 
necessary to comply with ILO Convention 190, and having a single agency 
to oversee and coordinate such efforts may be beneficial. In addition 
to handling enforcement and dispute resolution functions, the body 
could educate employees on their rights while also providing guidance 
to employers, such as model policies or training curriculum. 
Furthermore, the agency could develop proposals for legislation, 
regulations, judicial interpretations, or other actions by various 
government bodies that would assist in the goal of combating GBVH. In 
the United States, the EEOC plays all of these aforementioned roles at 
the federal level. In Argentina, the Ministry of Labour, Employment and 
Social Security has created the Advisory Office on Violence in the 
Workplace to sensitize, train and disseminate information on the issue 
of violence and harassment in the workplace as well as to streamline 
complaint procedures.\122\
    There is already some experience with this in China: Shenzhen's 
Municipal Office for the Promotion of Gender Equality is charged by the 
Shenzhen Guideline with, among other tasks, researching sexual 
harassment, providing education and training, collecting statistics and 
representative cases, and developing a ``blacklist'' system. This 
example should be considered by the national government and other 
localities.

b. Create and Conduct Trainings for Government Officials

ILO Recommendation 206 recognizes the importance of training for 
government officials.

      Paragraph 20: ``Labour inspectors and officials of other 
competent authorities, as appropriate, should undergo gender-responsive 
training with a view to identifying and addressing violence and 
harassment in the world of work, including psychosocial hazards and 
risks, gender-based violence and harassment, and discrimination against 
particular groups of workers.''

      Paragraph 23: ``Members should fund, develop, implement 
and disseminate, as appropriate: . . . (b) gender-responsive guidelines 
and training programs to assist judges, labour inspectors, police 
officers, prosecutors and other public officials in fulfilling their 
mandate regarding violence and harassment in the world of work, as well 
as to assist public and private employers and workers and their 
organizations in preventing and addressing violence and harassment in 
the world of work.''

    In line with these recommendations, China should work towards 
providing gender-responsive training to its public officials. The 
Republic of Korea, for example, established through statute the 
Institute for Gender Equality Promotion and Education, which provides 
sexual harassment prevention and counseling education to government 
officials.\123\
    The Shenzhen Guideline takes steps toward meeting this 
international legal standard by stating that not only employers, but 
all state organs must work to educate the public and train their own 
personnel. The trade union, women's federation, educational 
institutions, courts, and the police are all directed to engage in 
education and training. An additional component of this program should 
be specific GBVH trainings for professionals in these institutions, 
such as judges and police officers, that are targeted towards their 
work. For example, judges should not only understand sexual harassment 
as it impacts their own workplace, but also receive trainings on the 
subject that will assist them as mediators and adjudicators of sexual 
harassment disputes.

3. Expand Legal and Other Victim Services

ILO Convention 190 calls for Member States to take measures to ensure 
access to various victim services.

      Article 10(e) calls for Member States to take measures to 
``provide that victims of gender-based violence and harassment in the 
world of work have effective access to gender-responsive, safe and 
effective complaint and dispute resolution mechanisms, support, 
services and remedies.''

    Recommendation 206 provides specific guidance on legal and victim 
services.

      Paragraph 16 details specific measures that should be 
contained in the complaint and dispute resolution mechanisms for 
gender-based violence and harassment referred to in Article 10(e), 
``such as:

    a. courts with expertise in cases of gender-based violence and 
harassment;
    b. timely and efficient processing;
    c. legal advice and assistance for complainants and victims;
    d. guides and other information resources available and accessible 
in the languages that are widely spoken in the country; and
    e. shifting of the burden of proof, as appropriate, in proceedings 
other than criminal proceedings.''

      Paragraph 17 lays out specific measures that should be 
included in the support, services and remedies for victims of gender-
based violence and harassment referred to in Article 10(e) of the 
Convention, ``such as:

    a. support to help victims re-enter the labour market;
    b. counselling and information services, in an accessible manner as 
appropriate;
    c. 24-hour hotlines;
    d. emergency services;
    e. medical care and treatment and psychological support;
    f. crisis centers, including shelters; and
    g. specialized police units or specially trained officers to 
support victims.''

    Laws alone will not be sufficient to tackle the problem of GBVH. 
Legal services are necessary to inform victims of their rights and help 
enforce them. China's legal aid system should make available a corps of 
competent, trained lawyers to represent victims unable to afford 
private counsel.\124\ As mentioned above, China should also adopt 
measures to make litigating these cases affordable for victims and 
attractive to lawyers, such as increasing victim compensation, awarding 
attorneys' fees to prevailing victims, and removing the restriction on 
contingency fee arrangements.
    Services to address the physiological and emotional harm caused by 
sexual harassment are also necessary, including labor market re-entry 
support, accessible counseling services, and medical and psychological 
support. Some grassroots groups already provide mental health 
counseling or psychological support to victims, but on a small 
scale.\125\ There may be an opportunity for local branches of the All-
China Women's Federation or ACFTU to play a role here in providing 
these services, or at least serving as an access point to connect 
victims with the right assistance.
                b. recommendations for chinese employers

1. Establish Employer Policies and Mechanisms to Address GBVH

Article 9 of ILO Convention 190 calls upon Member States to require 
employers to control and prevent sexual harassment by adopting 
appropriate workplace policies. Further guidance as to the policies and 
mechanisms that employers should establish is provided in Article 10 
and Recommendation 206. The best practice is for employers to adopt a 
comprehensive policy that includes all the elements listed in Table 1 
below, which is drawn from these international standards.

      As described above, ILO Convention 190 Article 10(b) 
creates an obligation on Member States to ``ensure that workers have 
access to safe, fair and effective reporting and dispute resolution 
mechanisms,'' including at the workplace level.

      Paragraph 7 of Recommendation 206 provides further 
specification as to the components of an employer's workplace policy, 
including that ``workers and their representatives should take part in 
the design, implementation and monitoring of the workplace policy 
referred to in Article 9(a) of the Convention, and such policy should:

    a. state that violence and harassment will not be tolerated;
    b. establish violence and harassment prevention programmes with, if 
appropriate, measurable objectives;
    c. specify the rights and responsibilities of the workers and the 
employer;
    d. contain information on complaint and investigation procedures;
    e. provide that all internal and external communications related to 
incidents of violence and harassment will be duly considered, and acted 
upon as appropriate;
    f. specify the right to privacy of individuals and confidentiality, 
as referred to in Article 10(c) of the Convention, while balancing the 
right of workers to be made aware of all hazards; and
    g. include measures to protect complainants, victims, witnesses and 
whistleblowers against victimization or retaliation.''

    Article 1010's directive to employers that they adopt measures to 
prevent and stop sexual harassment is not sufficiently specific to meet 
the international standard. However, some Chinese localities have 
provided greater detail on employers' obligations in this area. For 
example, the 2018 Jiangsu Regulation requires employers to formulate 
rules and regulations prohibiting sexual harassment, conduct training 
activities, and develop mechanisms to make filing complaints 
accessible, handle them promptly, and protect the privacy of the 
parties.\126\ The Shenzhen Guideline provides the most comprehensive 
and detailed instructions for employers regarding sexual harassment, 
which includes establishing channels for registering employee 
complaints, procedures for investigating complaints, and rules for 
disciplining wrongdoers. Employers can also draw upon the practices of 
other countries. The labor inspectorate in Australia, for example, has 
issued detailed guidance for employers on the steps necessary to 
effectively manage and address the risks of workplace harassment, 
including performing a risk assessment, implementing and regularly 
evaluating a system for addressing incidents of harassment, conducting 
training, and encouraging workers to report harassment.\127\
    The best practice for Chinese employers is to adopt policies that 
include the elements set forth in Table 1, which is drawn from 
international standards and practices. Specifically, employer policies 
should issue a zero tolerance statement; define what conduct is 
prohibited; establish programs with measurable objectives; specify the 
rights and obligations of employers and employees; establish processes 
for employees to share and obtain information about GBVH; create 
complaint channels; promise to investigate complaints promptly, 
impartially, and thoroughly; encourage employees to report GBVH conduct 
and participate in investigations; establish and provide information on 
workplace dispute resolution mechanisms; commit to confidentiality; 
promise to take corrective action whenever GBVH occurs; and prohibit 
retaliation against anyone who reports or participates in 
investigations of GBVH.
    When the employer's investigation detects concerning behavior, or a 
dispute has arisen, there should be a workplace-level dispute 
resolution mechanism, which should include informal mechanisms like 
mediation for appropriate cases. This is consistent with China's 
general system of labor dispute resolution, which calls upon 
enterprises to form a mediation mechanism to resolve cases before the 
parties resort to arbitration or litigation.\128\ Indeed, having a 
zero-tolerance statement prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace 
and specific policies to thoroughly investigate complaints will not 
only bring the employer in compliance with international standards and 
local regulations; it may also be a crucial risk mitigation measure. In 
the event that the employer dismisses the alleged harasser, evidence 
demonstrating that the harasser engaged in prohibited conduct will be 
critical for the employer's defense if the alleged harasser sues for 
unjust dismissal.
    The 2021 Shenzhen Guideline is a positive example for the rest of 
China in this area. The document specifies what should be addressed in 
an employer's policy and includes many of the elements outlined in 
Table 1.\129\ Prudently, the Guideline also provides a model policy in 
its appendix that employers can choose to adopt. Building upon these 
good practices in the Guideline, China should provide specific guidance 
at the national level on what should be addressed in a model policy 
that complies with ILO Convention 190, provide a model policy for 
adoption, and mandate that all employers adopt and continually update 
such a policy.

    Table I.--Key Components of an Employer Anti-GBVH Policy

      Issue a statement that there is zero tolerance for 
violence and harassment;

      Define prohibited conduct consistent with the scope of 
ILO Convention 190, including examples;

      Establish violence and harassment prevention programs 
with, if appropriate, measurable objectives;

      Specify the rights and responsibilities of the workers 
and the employer;

      Establish processes for employees to both formally and 
informally share or obtain information about GBVH;

      Create and provide information on a GBVH complaint system 
that includes multiple, easily accessible reporting avenues;

      Issue a statement that the employer will conduct a 
prompt, impartial, and thorough investigation;

      Encourage employees to report conduct that they believe 
may be prohibited GBVH and to participate in investigations;

      Establish and provide information on workplace-level 
dispute resolution mechanisms to address complaints, including 
mediation in appropriate situations;

      Commit to keeping confidential the identity of 
individuals who report or are victims of GBVH and other information 
obtained during an investigation;

      Promise to take immediate and proportionate corrective 
action where GBVH has occurred; and

      Unequivocally prohibit retaliation against those who 
report GBVH conduct or participate in investigations.

2. Conduct Training and Prevention Initiatives Within the Workplace

ILO Convention 190 calls upon employers to not only remediate workplace 
violence, but also to take measures to prevent workplace violence. In 
keeping with these legal standards, employers should identify where 
risks of GBVH exist and take active measures to mitigate those risks. 
Employers must also educate personnel about company policies and 
procedures, and the individual's rights and responsibilities.
    These measures are covered in Articles 4(2)(g), 9(c) and 9(d), and 
11(b) of ILO Convention 190, with guidance on operationalizing these 
provisions set forth in Recommendation 206, paragraph 8.

      Article 4(2)(g) of ILO Convention 190 calls upon each 
Member State to ``develop[] tools, guidance, education and training, 
and raising awareness, in accessible formats as appropriate.''

      Article 9(c) of ILO Convention 190 calls upon employers 
to ``identify hazards and assess the risks of violence and harassment, 
with the participation of workers and their representatives, and take 
measures to prevent and control them.''

      Paragraph 8 of Recommendation 206 provides specific 
guidelines on workplace risk assessments: ``The workplace risk 
assessment referred to in Article 9(c) of the Convention should take 
into account factors that increase the likelihood of violence and 
harassment, including psychosocial hazards and risks. Particular 
attention should be paid to the hazards and risks that:

    a. arise from working conditions and arrangements, work 
organization and human resource management, as appropriate;
    b. involve third parties such as clients, customers, service 
providers, users, patients and members of the public; and
    c. arise from discrimination, abuse of power relations, and gender, 
cultural and social norms that support violence and harassment.''

      Article 9(d) of ILO Convention 190 calls upon employers 
to ``provide to workers and other persons concerned information and 
training, in accessible formats as appropriate, on the identified 
hazards and risks of violence and harassment and the associated 
prevention and protection measures, including on the rights and 
responsibilities of workers and other persons concerned in relation to 
the policy referred to in subparagraph (a) of this Article.''

      Article 11 calls upon Member States to ensure that ``. . 
. (b) employers and workers and their organizations, and relevant 
authorities, are provided with guidance, resources, training or other 
tools, in accessible formats as appropriate, on violence and harassment 
in the world of work, including on gender-based violence and 
harassment.''

    Within the workplace, employers should be required to provide 
training to all relevant personnel. Sexual harassment training has 
shown to have a significant positive impact on trainees' acquisition of 
knowledge related to sexual harassment, their ability to identify 
behavior involving sexual harassment, and their willingness to report 
such behavior.\130\ Although some studies have criticized traditional 
sexual harassment training as reinforcing gender stereotypes and being 
insufficient on its own to prevent sexual harassment, well-designed 
trainings have been found to contribute to the prevention and reduction 
of sexual harassment in the workplace.\131\ In New York State and New 
York City, for instance, annual sexual harassment training for every 
employee is now a legal requirement.\132\ These governments also 
provide a model online training course that can be shown to employees 
to fulfill this requirement. However, even these online trainings could 
be improved by conducting live, interactive trainings in which the 
trainees can ask questions.
    China should also consider requiring GBVH training for all 
employees. The Shenzhen Guideline contains such an instruction, even 
specifying certain topics to be covered with employees (such as how to 
collect and preserve evidence) and topics for supervisors and managers 
(like how to identify sexual harassment).\133\ China should consider 
making this a national requirement and developing training materials 
that can be easily adopted by employers. The ACFTU has already 
developed some useful materials for this purpose--namely, a handbook on 
gender equality that includes specific examples of how sexual 
harassment might manifest in the workplace and who the potential 
victims might be.\134\
         c. recommendations for chinese workers' organizations

1. Engage in Tripartite Dialogue at the National and Local Levels to 
Inform Inclusive Approaches to Address GBVH

ILO Convention 190 addresses the role of workers' organizations in 
designing national approaches to address GBVH and all other forms of 
violence in the world of work.

      Article 4(2) provides that each Member State should adopt 
``an inclusive, integrated and gender-responsive approach for the 
prevention and elimination of violence and harassment in the world of 
work'' should be done ``in consultation with representative employers' 
and workers' organizations.''

    Consistent with these standards, workers through their 
organizations and trade unions should engage in tripartite dialogue at 
the national and local levels to inform inclusive, integrated, and 
gender-responsive approaches to address GBVH and all other forms of 
violence in the world of work. Worker participation in framing 
standards and practices should strive to include perspectives and 
experiences from across sectors and workplace demographics, including 
the specific concerns of workers across all ages, social identity 
categories, and migration status.

2. Participate in Risk Assessments, and the Design and Monitoring of 
GBVH Policies, at the Sector and Workplace Levels

ILO Convention 190 and Recommendation 206 call upon Member States to 
require employers to engage workers and their representatives in 
assessing the risks of violence and harassment in the workplace, and to 
involve workers and their representatives in the design, implementation 
and monitoring of the workplace policy. These instruments also call 
upon Member States to support the use of collective bargaining in 
reaching workplace agreements.

      Article 9 of ILO Convention 190 requires that ``[e]ach 
Member shall adopt laws and regulations requiring employers to take 
appropriate steps commensurate with their degree of control to prevent 
violence and harassment in the world of work, including gender-based 
violence and harassment, and in particular, so far as is reasonably 
practicable, to: . . . (c) identify hazards and assess the risks of 
violence and harassment, with the participation of workers and their 
representatives, and take measures to prevent and control them.''

      Recommendation 206, paragraph 4 calls upon Member States 
to promote the effective recognition of the right to collective 
bargaining, and to ``support such collective bargaining through the 
collection and dissemination of information on related trends and good 
practices regarding the negotiation process and the content of 
collective agreements.''

      Recommendation 206, paragraph 7 call upon Member States 
to specify that ``workers and their representatives should take part in 
the design, implementation and monitoring of the workplace policy.''

    International standards as well as China's domestic laws and 
policies recognize that it is necessary to involve workers in 
formulating workplace policies and governing the workplace. Workers 
have the first-hand knowledge of the hazards related to GBVH and 
therefore must be part of any effort to identify and assess these 
risks; they are also most likely to be able to develop and evaluate 
practical solutions to these problems. Accordingly, workers must be 
engaged in identifying all forms of physical, mental, sexual or other 
harm and suffering, as well as coercion, threats, retaliation, and 
deprivations of liberty that may be occurring within the workplace, 
including any gendered aspects of these issues.
    In terms of formulating workplace policies, China's Labor Contract 
Law already requires that when establishing or modifying any material 
workplace policy, the employer must first engage in discussions with 
either the staff and worker representative congress (``SWRC'') at the 
enterprise level or all of the workers, and then ``consult . . . on 
equal footing'' with the SWRC or trade union about the policy.\135\ 
Indeed, at least one provincial-level ACFTU branch has stated that the 
topic of preventing sexual harassment in the workplace should be 
introduced in all such employer consultations and a related provision 
should be included in all collective contracts.\136\ In the past, 
collective contracts in China will do little more than restate the 
relevant legal provision. However, the trade union, SWRC, or other 
workers' organization should instead strive to meaningfully engage in 
identifying GBVH risks at the workplace and crafting policies that 
address those specific concerns.
    Trade unions and workers' organizations in other countries have 
been successful in this exercise of identifying GBVH risks in a 
particular sector and then effectuating change at the workplace. For 
instance, janitorial workers in California--often immigrant women who 
worked alone at night and were supervised by untrained, unaccountable 
subcontractors--were able to negotiate for the inclusion of provisions 
addressing sexual harassment in their union's collective bargaining 
agreements, including a statement of zero-tolerance, complaint and 
investigation procedures, a prohibition on retaliation, and a 
prohibition on romantic relationships between supervisors and 
subordinates.\137\ The trade union's efforts also led to the adoption 
of a state law requiring janitorial employers to provide sexual 
harassment and violence trainings.\138\ Examples like this may be 
instructive for workers' organizations in China.
3. Provide Context-specific Education and Training to Workers About 
Their Rights and How to Enforce Them

As referenced above, Article 9(d) of ILO Convention 190 calls upon 
employers to provide training to workers on the hazards and risks of 
violence and harassment, prevention and protective measures, and 
workers' rights and responsibilities, while Article 11 requires Member 
States to ensure that worker organizations are provided with 
``guidance, resources, training or other tools, in accessible formats 
as appropriate, on violence and harassment in the world of work.'' 
Recommendation 206, paragraph 23(b) further provides that Member States 
should develop ``gender-responsive guidelines and training programmes . 
. . to assist public and private employers and workers and their 
organizations in preventing and addressing violence and harassment in 
the world of work.''
    Workers' organizations should not only ensure that employers are 
fulfilling this obligation to conduct training and disseminate 
information, but also provide their own trainings to workers. The 
information provided to workers, wherever possible, should be tailored 
to the specific sector of employment or the particular workplace. It is 
particularly important that workers' organizations address issues that 
an employer may be more hesitant or reluctant to emphasize, such as the 
legal rights of workers and the availability of legal services or other 
resources outside the workplace. The ACFTU has already demonstrated a 
willingness to provide useful information about sexual harassment in 
the workplace by issuing the aforementioned handbook.\139\ The ACFTU, 
together with other workers' organizations, should build upon these 
efforts. In addition, civil society actors with expertise on labor 
rights, domestic violence, women's issues, or other relevant topics 
should also be involved in training and educating workers.
                  d. recommendations for global brands
    Global brands operating in China, like in other countries, can play 
a role in countering the prevalence of GBVH in the world of work.
    The most obvious place to start is at the company level. Brands 
that are themselves employers should implement best practices at those 
workplaces--such as implementing GBVH workplace policies that satisfy 
the elements set out in Table 1 above--thus setting a model for 
employers in that industry. If they have relationships with Chinese 
suppliers, brands should ensure that their contracts require those 
suppliers to also adopt these best practices.\140\
    Brands should also be engaging in a due diligence analysis to 
detect either the presence of GBVH or risk factors associated with GBVH 
at their suppliers. Upon detecting any such issues, brands should take 
action to mitigate any adverse impacts of those issues or address those 
risks.
    Brands must not only create policies and requirements on paper, but 
incentivize and monitor compliance with those demands. Experts have 
indicated that China's recent legislative measures directing employers 
to prevent sexual harassment and address complaints have not translated 
into action by domestic companies. Particularly as the law lacks any 
``teeth,'' there remains little incentive for employers to act. 
Therefore, external pressure from brands and multinationals may be 
necessary to bring about action by suppliers. To ensure GBVH training 
is done properly, committed brands can help design the curriculum and 
pay for the training, including the workers' wages for that time. 
Brands should also promote transparency by publicly reporting on 
implementation of their policies, GBVH incidents identified and 
remediated, the impact of purchasing practices, and strategies to do 
better.
    There have been some positive steps in this direction. The Asia 
Society worked with the China National Textile and Apparel Council, in 
a program funded by the Levi Strauss Foundation, to train 100 garment 
factory line-workers and managers on workplace sexual harassment.\141\ 
Multinationals or industry associations should consider similar 
initiatives with their suppliers. There are also NGOs and consultants 
within China who are now seeking to conduct such workplace trainings, 
but have trouble convincing employers of their value.\142\ Brands 
should find ways to partner with these providers and persuade employers 
to engage their services.
    Finally, brands should use their influence to advocate for China to 
ratify ILO Convention 190 and adopt policies that effectuate its 
intent.

[Endnotes begin on the following page.]

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                          Witness Biographies

    Leta Hong Fincher, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia 
University, and author, ``Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening 
in China''

    Leta Hong Fincher is a journalist and author of ``Betraying Big 
Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China'' (Verso 2018) and ``Leftover 
Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China'' (Zed 2014). She 
won the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award for 
her China reporting. Dr. Hong Fincher is the first American to receive 
a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University's Department of Sociology in Beijing 
and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia 
University's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. She has a 
master's degree from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree with 
high honors from Harvard University.

    Aaron Halegua, research fellow, Center for Labor and Employment 
Law, U.S.-Asia Law Institute, NYU School of Law

    Aaron Halegua is a practicing lawyer and research fellow at the 
U.S.-Asia Law Institute's Center for Labor and Employment Law, NYU 
School of Law. He has worked on various labor rights issues in the 
U.S., China, and internationally for nearly 20 years. In 2021, Mr. 
Halegua authored the report ``Workplace Gender-Based Harassment and 
Violence in China: Harmonizing Domestic Law and Practice with 
International Standards.'' Mr. Halegua has consulted for Apple, Asia 
Society, the International Labor Organization (ILO), Ford Foundation, 
and other organizations on labor issues in China, Thailand, Myanmar, 
Malaysia, and Mexico. Mr. Halegua has an A.B. from Brown University and 
a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

    Mei Fong, Chief Communications Officer, Human Rights Watch and 
author, ``One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment''

    Mei Fong is Chief Communications Officer at Human Rights Watch and 
a former Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal China 
correspondent. She is the author of ``One Child: The Story of China's 
Most Radical Experiment,'' winner of a non-fiction award from the 
American Society of Journalists and Authors, and is on Foreign Policy 
magazine's Top 50 list of U.S.-China influencers. She has written for 
and appeared in such media as the New York Times, the Washington Post, 
CBS, CNN, PBS, and the John Oliver show.

    Tursunay Ziyawudun, detention camp survivor and advocate for Uyghur 
human rights

    Tursunay Ziyawudun is a survivor of the Chinese government's extra-
legal arbitrary detention camps in the Uyghur region, and an outspoken 
advocate for Uyghur human rights. Ms. Tursunay returned to her hometown 
in November 2016 to renew her passport and was immediately swept up in 
the Chinese government's ``strike first'' policies of harsh control and 
collective punishment of Uyghurs. She survived more than a year in two 
different concentration camps, suffering food deprivation, forcible 
injections of unknown medicines, harsh interrogation and beatings, 
forced political indoctrination, forced loyalty oaths, forced 
renunciation of faith, and rape. As one of very few survivors of the 
concentration camps who has reached safety in another country, she has 
provided testimony to human rights groups, researchers, and journalists 
investigating the Chinese government's atrocity crimes against Uyghurs 
and other Turkic Muslim peoples.



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