
A MeToo Reckoning in China’s Workplace Amid Wave of Accusations - LopRabbit
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/world/asia/china-metoo.html
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rlglwx
Having worked in several Chinese tech co's, this is not in the least
surprising to me. In one company I worked in, the CEO used the girls in the
office like his personal harem. Women are hired based on looks and age, and
whether they are married or not.

The one surprising thing, to me, is that the accusations are gaining traction,
which is good to hear.

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bad_ramen_soup
If the traction is informationally contained to enemies of those in positions
of power, that would be pretty insincere, but if they let it happen and
managed to create a new standard for how people in power should act in
private-- that would be good news.

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stale2002
I mean, if the accusations are true, then who cares who it hurts.

The injustice would be that OTHER people aren't being brought to justice, not
that one group IS.

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Eridrus
You're getting downvoted because you're failing to see the bigger picture
here, in much the same way journalists deciding "even if we got handed this by
the russians, it's true, so we should publish it" is missing the bigger
picture.

Not to say that we shouldn't seek justice against these people, but that
blindly making good local decisions may not end up with good global decisions.

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Nasrudith
Well wouldn't the reverse also be just as bad and exploitable? The classic is
'ignore misconduct because it might help 'the enemy' make us look bad' is in
itself failing to see the big picture and one of the oldest ones in the book
for the wicked to retain power.

The proper solution morally of course is to reject false-dichotomies and
oppose wrong on all sides - especially within 'your own'.

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Eridrus
You're right, "ignore misconduct because it might help 'the enemy' make us
look bad" has its own downsides, but the answer isn't "who cares who it
hurts".

There are many ways to deal with misconduct - letting adversaries weaponize
information against your own at a time they choose with no care for the
implications is probably not the best way.

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dmritard96
I have spent a good amount of time in the mainland as a foreigner. The way
that men talk about women, particularly in professional settings, is decades
behind imho. KTV alone - I have heard some pretty terribls sounding stories
there as well although have been lucky to only have gone to the normal ktv. A
simple example is booth babes at tech shows. In the US, general consensus is
that this is exploitive. In China it seems quite normative.

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Twirrim
> In the US, general consensus is that this is exploitive. In China it seems
> quite normative.

We're not that great about it in the US either. It's still an issue that
people are having to fight, repeatedly. The US is definitely getting better,
but it's far from solved.

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darawk
I think the distinction that he's drawing is that in the US, the cultural
consensus is that this behavior is not ok, even though it still goes on.
There's this in-between space that we get to about things like this where we
all (mostly) decide its not ok, but lots of people still do it and/or protect
those that do. China seems to still be in the first stage though, of not
having culturally come to agreement that this sort of thing isn't just normal
and acceptable.

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ledriveby
Not surprised! Check out this overtly sexist recruiting video by Alibaba:

[https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000005795093/chines...](https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000005795093/chinese-
tech-companies-dirty-secret.html?action=click&gtype=vhs&version=vhs-
heading&module=vhs&region=title-area&cview=true&t=23)

~~~
sumedh
Before clicking the link I was expecting some light sexism, I was not prepared
for women employees opening bottles stuck between men's legs. Wow

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cromwellian
One thought that crossed my mind is the extent to which Xi's government can
ride this wave and use it to eliminate political enemies. The old way was to
accuse political enemies of corruption and have them jailed. I wonder if the
new way is to get them accused of sex crimes, or just ruin their reputation in
China so that they become radioactive to work with.

I think whether or not these posts are censored will tell you what's likely.
If they are taken down quickly, it's probably not government instigated, but
if they're not removed, then it leads to the suspicion that the government
wants these published.

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xasd4
That really cuts directly at the business cultural in China and China is very
passionate about ridged reasoning and rebuking things they don’t like as not
being Chinese. MeToo in China goes for the jugular of these attitudes, good
for them.

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duxup
It is a weird dynamic, from what I understand to China is pretty far behind
(just needed a word here so I chose "behind") socially in that area. Sort of
Me 2 meets mid 20th century attitudes in the US?

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bobthepanda
The US started mass employment of women in the late 1800s. It took until the
2010s for MeToo to be taken seriously. (And by seriously, I mean that there
are consequences for such actions.)

Given that China actively destroyed its culture during '49-'79, and then saw
the fastest growth spurt of industrialization and services ever seen in human
history, it's not surprising that they're playing massive catchup.

The interesting thing would be to compare womens' working conditions in the
PRC vs. the ROC, HK, and Singapore, Sinosphere countries of which none of
which suffered similar political turmoil and had much less compressed
development.

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Retric
MeToo is far from the first time this stuff has had teeth in the US.

It’s more that you get waves of action, back lash, then build up for the next
wave. Really you can trace US legislation back to the 70’s, but social
progress is slow.

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bobthepanda
Legislation happened in the '70s, but I would characterize those earlier
movements as countercultural.

MeToo, as far as I'm aware, is the first time where allegations against sexual
harassment are with the prevailing winds of modern American culture, and when
people other than politicians have suffered actual blowback and consequences
from such behavior.

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Retric
That’s more perception than reality. Many powerful men and some women have
been removed from upper management in industry or government due to sexual
harassment. Add to that many very large monetary payouts resulting in policies
and training for decades, the difference is before social media these things
have been mostly kept quite.

Hollywood has also been something of a holdout as people hold power without
being someone’s supervisor.

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bobthepanda
The removal of CEOs and boards is a relatively new development; it would be
hard, particularly for public companies, to hide such drastic actions, and for
it to happen over sexual harassment and similar policies was certainly not
very common over the years. Government is a bit of a different case,
particularly in the case of elected officials where a lot of times it's more
viewed in terms of what it means about the official's morality, and less about
what the actual victim's allegations were.

A non-exhaustive list of changes in CEOs and boards and upper management in
recent times:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17635067)

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Retric
If you compare ‘Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson’ to these cases the trend is
much less extreme situations having significant repercussions. Which
eventually hits more CEO’s becase their simplicity are fewer CEO’s of major
organizations and thus fewer CEO’s committing extreme over the top acts. Aka
more cases of comments than inappropriate touching, more touching than
grouping, and more grouping than rape.

However the impact of CEO’s vs the 1000’s of lower level managers is less in
that they directly impact fewer people even if they have oversight over large
organizations.

As to removal over time that’s extremely sensitive when dealing with CEO’s so
the bar has been rather high. Still you can find cases 10+ years ago.

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powerapple
no worries, our future will be sexless anyway. It takes time.

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mirimir
Didn't women play a substantial role in the Cultural Revolution? Such as Jiang
Qing and Nie Yuanzi?

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maym86
What's that got to do with modern workplace sexual harassment.

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mirimir
I'm not sure.

But maybe it has something to do with the evolution of gender equality in
China? That is, maybe reaction against the Cultural Revolution and the Red
Guards has reinforced male dominance?

Baggage aside, the current Chinese government seems more Confucian than
Communist.

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bad_ramen_soup
Isn't it better to see it from the perspective of 'people in power can be
sinful', rather than 'because there were some female leaders early on in a
(highly propagandistic) movement then they most be on the side of women? Even
still, there are many women who harbor men with bad behavior for personal
gain.

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bobthepanda
Of course it's better, but how often does human behavior act in better or more
logical ways? Humans are not the rational, well-informed beings of economics.

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bad_ramen_soup
Not sure how this relates to my comment..

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Krasnol
I'm sure the crowd control mechanism (social credit system) can be utilized in
some way here no?

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bobthepanda
The government is actively censoring such posts, so no.

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Krasnol
Forgot the /s Chances are that it will rather be utilized against the women...

