QINGDAO, China, Sept 1: The sight of five burly guards blocking the way out of her dorm filled Ren Liping with rage.
It was 3 a.m. on a recent Saturday and the thin, bespectacled 26-year-old Chinese graduate student was exhausted. Her mind raced back to earlier in the day when she had tried once again to publicly protest her alleged rape. Again, the police had stopped her and held her at a station for hours. Again, she was escorted back to campus.
Now this.
She pounded on the glass door with her fist, but the men ignored her. “This is illegal!” she shouted, to no response. She felt nauseous. Her face was numb. She picked up a bicycle pump in the corner and smashed it against the glass.
Oh mother, tell me a story
The door shattered.
“Whoever tries to suppress my case will end up like this door,” Ren said to the men.
More than a year after she accused an ex-boyfriend of raping her on the China University of Petroleum campus in the coastal city of Qingdao, this had become Ren’s life: a series of attempts to protest the university and authorities’ mishandling of the case.
At every turn, Ren has been stymied by the school’s guards or the police, who say there’s no evidence of a crime. She was even detained in a hotel for six days at one point.
Her efforts highlight at once the challenges of reporting sexual assault in China and the determination of a new generation of Chinese women pushing the country into its own #MeToo moment despite attempts to silence them.
The movement has gathered considerable steam in China, with dozens of men, including prominent media personalities, non-profit advocates and even a top monk, publicly accused of sexual assault or sexual misconduct in recent months.
But like any social campaign, #MeToo poses a challenge to President Xi Jinping’s administration, which has waged an unprecedented crackdown on civil society groups and activism that the ruling Communist Party deems as threats to its rule.
Ren accuses Liang Shengyu, her ex-boyfriend, of raping her on campus last summer. Liang denies the allegation. They are suing each other for defamation.
In an action that legal experts say is unprecedented, Ren is also suing the police — for what she’s described as a mishandling of the investigation and the use of force against her.
“She is a representative for the #MeToo movement,” said Lyu Xiaoquan, a Beijing lawyer who helped Ren prepare her initial complaints.
