What’s China’s biggest human rights abuse?

“Violent Intimacy” - a new book by Tiantian Zhen - highlights how the Chinese state perpetuates extreme cruelty.

Criminality in China is sternly punished. Convicts’ children are even barred from government jobs. Credit cards may also be denied. The Government is keen to preserve social cohesion and harmony. Domestic violence, however, is not even criminalised. After marriage, a woman may be tortured with impunity.

“It was useless to call the police, I felt hopeless” - explained Xiao Mei (battered and bleeding).

A millennium of patriarchal authoritarianism

As Professor Zheng explains, patriarchal impunity has long been sanctified by Confucian authoritarianism. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the criminal code punished a woman who escaped her husband with a hundred lashes.

When divorce rights were introduced in the Republican era (1915), women rushed to escape abuse. Legal cases attest to wives being beaten with clubs, shackled in chains and starved. Yet even in this era of reform, over 50% of female-initiated requests for divorce were refused. Some judges actively encouraged men to coercively enforce submission.

“If she is not obedient, you can beat her to death. I will protect you” - assured a Shandong judge.

Even if women successfully escaped, pervasive poverty impeded survival. Some divorcees were sent to almshouses, only to be resold as prostitutes.

In 1950, the Communist Party introduced divorce rights. This triggered violent backlash. Men accustomed to total control stamped out female insubordination. Over 80,000 women died, every year from 1950 to 1953. Bingsheng Zhao from Shanxi Province reacted to his wife’s request for divorce by inserting a red hot iron into her a vagina, causing death. Other men slit their wives’ throats.

How did the Chinese state respond?