The Atlantic

#MeToo With Chinese Characteristics

The internet has allowed a generation of Chinese feminists to mobilize online.
Source: STR / Stringer / Getty

In the spring of 2015, five feminist activists in China handed out stickers on the Beijing subway to call attention to sexual harassment. According to one of the activists, the police knocked on her door one night in March and whisked her to the station, where they questioned her for 24 hours straight. She was held in a detention center for 37 days. The others were also arrested, and another activist received a 10-year ban from leaving the country. Cut short by government action, a feminist campaign burned brightly but briefly that year.

Today, it has rekindled under the moniker of #MeToo. In early January, Luo Xixi, a Beihang University alumna, on the Chinese

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