In China, victims of abuse are told to ‘keep it in the Family’

Their stories rippled across the Chinese internet, setting off a wave of anger over how authorities treat domestic violence as a private family matter, even as state media has called for “zero tolerance” of abuses.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said the country needed to “resolutely combat all forms of violence against women” when he spoke at a global summit for women in Beijing last month. But he has also fostered a culture that emphasizes women’s traditional role at home, creating a reluctance among the police and courts to break families apart even when there is violence.

Activists say that the resulting inconsistent enforcement of laws has led to most cases going unpunished. A crackdown on nonprofit groups has made things worse by shutting down volunteers who once helped to provide aid and support to victims of domestic abuse.

One of the cases that prompted the latest outcry was Zhang Liping, a woman who died in September at the age of 43 from fatal injuries after a beating by her ex-husband.

According to reports in Chinese state-owned media, both the police in Yingkou, a county in Liaoning province, where the assault took place, and the local branch of the women’s federation, a group appointed and run by the government to represent women’s interests, were aware of the abuse but failed to intervene to protect her.

Her older daughter, Yu Xinmeng, said on social media before her mother died that she had called the police several times over the years. As she sought public donations to cover her mother’s medical bills, Yu made public her mother’s hospital records, divorce certificate, police paperwork and multiple photos showing her mother’s face, so swollen from beatings that she couldn’t open her eyes fully.

The women’s federation in the county of Yingkou confirmed to the Nanjing-based Modern Express news outlet that it had received a call for help from Zhang’s daughter and told her it could only provide “counseling and legal advice.” The group looked into financial assistance for Zhang but determined she wasn’t eligible because she was from Heilongjiang province and not from Yingkou.

Yu didn’t respond to requests for comment. Multiple phone calls to the Yingkou women’s federation went unanswered, and the local police refused to comment.

China has a wide-ranging anti-domestic violence law that was signed into law in 2016 and covers both physical and emotional abuse, and includes legal tools that authorities can use, like protection orders and mechanisms for reported cases to be expedited.

“The law on paper is quite advanced,” said Xin He, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. But when it comes to enforcement of the law, the authorities are failing many victims, and there are not enough social workers to support victims,” He said.

“The system has a lot of inadequacies, which is why you see a lot of women that feel so helpless.”

The police are not given proper training to handle domestic violence and the courts get tangled up in administrative hurdles.

In cities where there are more resources available, support for victims of domestic violence — typically women in abusive marriages — often clashes with the broader goal of the Communist Party to promote marriage and childbearing to raise the falling birth rate.

Victims are encouraged to talk to their neighborhood committee, made up of low-level government workers who tend to deal more with day-to-day issues like garbage disposal. Then the local women’s federation will get involved, together with the police.

“When the police intervene, then they will emphasize staying in the marriage. The police often see their role as a mediator,” said Minglu Chen, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney who studies gender and politics in China. “There are also cultural forces in China, because the family is seen as a source of stability and any wrongdoing that happens within the family, you have to keep it in the family.”

At two homeless shelters in Shanghai that are also meant to accommodate victims of domestic violence, workers told reporters from The New York Times that a person fleeing abuse had to first contact the local women’s federation to be allowed to stay there.

Neither shelter was able to say how one should reach such an official. One worker at a shelter in the district of Huangpu said they had never housed any victims of domestic violence.

A local Shanghai women’s federation did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A week after Zhang died, the details of another case of abuse, 1,500 miles away in the southwestern city of Chengdu, emerged. A woman named Ms. Xie, who chose not to disclose her first name, told state broadcaster CCTV she was attacked by her husband more than a dozen times over her three-year marriage and that she had repeatedly asked the police to detain him.

In April 2023, she went to a court in Chengdu to seek a restraining order but was turned away. The court argued that the case was outside its jurisdiction because her husband was not originally from Chengdu.

Only 6,351 restraining orders were issued in 2024 across more than 3,000 courts nationwide. This amounted to an average of just two orders per court, according to a calculation by CCTV.

When her husband found out that Ms. Xie had applied for a restraining order, he beat her for hours. She was sent to a hospital the next day, where doctors found that her liver, kidney and small intestine had ruptured. Her injuries, which included a broken nose and ribs, left her in critical condition for a week.

In interviews with state media, and in videos on her social media account, Ms. Xie said that in addition to calling the police six times, she had sought help from the local women’s federation, the civil affairs bureau, her residential committee and the local court. She was given the contact of a divorce lawyer, told how to apply for a restraining order and handed some paperwork to start the divorce process.

Her husband was arrested five days after she was sent to the hospital. The court finally granted a divorce a year later in May 2024. The man, He Zhongyang, now her ex-husband, was sentenced to 11 years in prison several months later for “causing grievous physical harm with intent.”

Her ex-husband had recently appealed his sentence, and a Chengdu court rejected the appeal on Sept. 9. Ms. Xie had urged the court to hand down the death penalty.

But, she told Chinese media, she respected the ruling.

“It’s OK,” she later said in a video posted to her social media account. Looking directly into the camera, she gave a thumbs up. “I have survived another day. That is already very impressive.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.