Girl With Striking Face Looks So Different From Birth Family That People Think She Has a Disease
The New New World
Seeking Truth and Justice, Chinese Come across Themselves in a Chained Adult female
The woman became a symbol of injustice and government' incompetence in fighting man trafficking, posing a credibility claiming to an almighty government.
Credit... Xinmei Liu
The Chinese government faces a quandary: how to convince its people that what it said about a chained woman is true.
Since a brusk video of the adult female chained in a doorless shack went viral in late Jan, the Chinese public has taken the thing into its own hands to find out who she is, whether she is a victim of human trafficking and why the apparently mentally ill woman had viii children.
The public thought it couldn't trust a government that was not true well-nigh her identity and that was acquiescent when it came to forced marriages involving human trafficking.
On Chinese social media, users dug up a matrimony certificate with a photo of a woman who was identified by the government equally the chained adult female but looked different from her. They dived into courtroom documents that showed the region where she lived has a night history of human trafficking. Long-retired investigative journalists traveled to a village deep in the mountains, knocking on each door, to verify the government'south claim that she grew up there.
"No social events have ever had the aforementioned effect on netizens similar the one of the chained woman," a user chosen "Xudiqiuziyuanku" wrote on the social media platform WeChat. "It forced the states to go detectives, analysts, A.I. epitome in-painting technicians, data mining engineers and Sherlock Holmes."
The Chinese public staged a rare online revolt because it felt that the government had failed to prioritize the personal condom of women, despite its claims that women "hold up half of the heaven."
It'southward one of the biggest credibility challenges Beijing has faced in recent years. The chained adult female became a symbol of injustice that brought together liberals besides as nationalistic digital warriors and apolitical moderates. Many of them are worried that the chain on her cervix, in a literal and figurative sense, could fall on them or their loved ones.
The video of the chained adult female has led to a kind of #MeToo move on the Chinese cyberspace, in which many people stepped frontward to share stories of mothers, daughters, sisters and classmates who were abducted or simply disappeared.
"We're not bystanders, but survivors," goes a popular social media quip. "Nosotros're not rescuing the chained adult female. Instead, she's rescuing u.s.."
The height iii hashtags about the chained woman on the Twitter-like social media platform Weibo have accumulated more than 10 billion views, rivaling those about the Beijing Winter Olympics, which were heavily promoted by Weibo and official media outlets. And the topic continues to agree people's attention online amongst Russian federation's invasion of Ukraine.
Even some of Beijing's most devoted supporters expressed their sympathy toward the woman. They're also worried that the poorly managed crunch could challenge the government's authority. "Politically this is tragic," Hu Xijin, the retired editor in master of the official Global Times, wrote in Feb. "It's a clear alert that the government'southward credibility has been weakened significantly."
The outpouring resembles the ane in 2020 over the death of a Chinese doctor who was reprimanded by the police for sharing his knowledge about the coronavirus outbreak. In this highly censored order, it's rare for ordinary Chinese to express critical views of the government. Many people are willing to speak up because they feel vulnerable — and guilty for not being aware of the problems already.
"If justice cannot be served in this case," Zhao Jianfeng, an net entrepreneur in Hangzhou, wrote on his WeChat timeline, "this place volition autumn into a very long and very nighttime night."
"I felt that if this instance isn't resolved," wrote a science writer with the Weibo handle @Luka, "happiness volition be superficial and many things will exist meaningless."
Hundreds of graduates from some of Red china's nigh prominent universities signed petitions, urging the primal government to investigate the case.
Several bookstores set sections for books that could help readers empathise the case, including "Masculine Domination" by Pierre Bourdieu, "Men Explain Things to Me" by Rebecca Solnit and "Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice" by Emily Winslow.
Lawyers, academics, old journalists and many bloggers helped give the Chinese public a crash grade on human trafficking, forced marriage and demographic statistics. They resurfaced books, films, documentaries and news reports well-nigh abducted women.
The public learned that People's republic of china'southward legal system was set up to protect the men who paid for abducted women. Buying a woman could subject someone to up to three years of jail fourth dimension, a prominent legal scholar said in a viral video, the aforementioned as the judgement for buying twenty frogs. When victims of human trafficking filed for divorce, the courts ofttimes ruled against them, saying that having stayed with the men sufficed as evidence of a skillful spousal relationship.
They learned how easily women, even well-educated ones, could get victims of homo trafficking.
Some of the unearthed stories, based on official media reports and court documents, striking dwelling house for the Chinese middle course: A graduate educatee from Shanghai was abducted on a field trip and sold to a hunched man. She was rescued after 71 days. A 13-year-old girl in Beijing was kidnapped on her way to school and sold to a homo who constantly beat her up. She had a son at 15 and couldn't escape until she turned 19. A young woman from Hangzhou was abducted on a business trip and spent the next two decades in a remote hamlet. She was rescued afterwards her son went to higher and informed her parents.
But a vast bulk of human trafficking victims came from the poorest corners in China. Few were rescued. It was virtually impossible for the women to escape because whole villages kept an heart on them. They would be beaten and locked up later being caught.
Court documents showed selling and reselling mentally ill women was mutual in some parts of China.
A 2020 verdict showed that a woman with schizophrenia in Hubei Province was sold three times in less than two years. A 2017 verdict showed that a woman with mental illness was sold to a human in Shandong Province and was beaten to expiry by him and his mother.
The more people learned about what victims of human trafficking had gone through, the more furious they felt near the government's conflicting statements about the chained woman. They wanted to know who she was, how the authorities would prosecute the people responsible for her miserable conditions and what it would practice to help many other women like her.
The chained woman, who is 44, has led a tragic life, co-ordinate to a statement the Jiangsu provincial government issued Feb. 23, the fifth since belatedly January.
Named Xiaohuamei (little flower plum), she grew up in a remote hamlet in a southwestern province, Yunnan. She showed signs of mental illness after she was divorced at twenty. In 1998, a couple smuggled her to eastern Jiangsu Province. She was sold twice within a year, the second time to the family of a man named Dong Zhimin.
She and Mr. Dong had a son in 1999, the argument said. And then between 2011 and 2020, she gave nascence to seven other children. Later on she had the tertiary child, her mental disease deteriorated. Since 2017, Mr. Dong had bound her with ropes or chained her cervix when she was ill.
Xiaohuamei was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was hospitalized, the statement said.
Mr. Dong has been charged on suspicion of abusing a family fellow member. The couple who smuggled her were charged with human trafficking, and 17 low-level local officials were disciplined.
Just many people remain skeptical or take reservations about the argument. It was hard to trust it, they said, because there was simply one source of information — the government — and journalists from relatively independent outlets were barred from investigating.
They were disappointed that Mr. Dong was charged only with corruption, instead of rape and faux imprisonment, and that the woman was denied the opportunity to speak for herself. They took event with many facts the regime presented, and many however want to know how and when the woman was married and especially whether she's the woman in the marriage document.
The government said Xiaohuamei didn't resemble the woman in the marriage certificate considering she was now older and had lost most of her teeth. But some social media users were hundred-to-one. The changes seemed likewise drastic.
The public is about disappointed with the regime'south lack of a serious plan to eradicate human trafficking and forced spousal relationship. Instead, it seems to be more interested in taking back control of the narrative.
Two women who tried to visit the chained woman were detained and browbeaten by local police officers in February. Their posts and social media accounts were deleted. Some social media users who shared their posts said they had gotten calls from the police.
The bookstores were told to take down their special sections. Professors were warned not to hash out Xiaohuamei's case with their students.
The authorities didn't seem to care whether it was being true or not, many people said online. Government officials were promoting the version of truth they wanted the public to believe.
Some social media users shared a short video of compiled footage of Hollywood movies with unlike characters maxim, "I don't purchase it."
Liu Yi contributed enquiry.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/business/china-chained-woman-social-media.html
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