Xing’s trajectory

Xing, a master’s student at a double first-class university in Shanghai, was sexually harassed twice in late 2021 and early 2022 by Zhang, a vice research assistant professor (Interview 2307[23]01). The harassment involved explicit verbal remarks and unwanted physical contact. For months, Xing remained apathetic about asserting her rights. She did not report the incidents or share them with anyone, describing herself as being under paralysis: “I was still a compliant East Asian woman back then. I’d call myself a feminist, but it was lip service.”

Her initial response was defined by confusion and sympathy. In a private WeChat message to Zhang, she accused him merely of “betraying her trust.” She later described this message as “long, circuitous, veiled, and very East Asian.” Zhang, capitalizing on her softness, responded by playing the victim. He recounted his struggles with academic pressure and conflicts with his mother, claiming that these difficulties had induced his sexual fantasies and framing the harassment as a form of emotional release. Lacking any external validation to define her experience otherwise, Xing felt sympathy for him and took no further action. At this stage, she was unable to name the injury as sexual harassment. Most apathetic cases like this remain at the base of the dispute pyramid, never progressing to the stage of claiming (Miller and Sarat Reference Miller and Sarat1980–81; Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat Reference Felstiner, Abel and Sarat1980–81).

Naming arrived in May 2022 when Xing described the encounter to two close friends from her feminist reading group. They identified it without hesitation. “She said this is sexual harassment, and I thought, right, sexual harassment,” Xing recalled. From being a confused private sufferer, she became a claimant with a responsibility to warn others. She posted her story on the university’s anonymous forum, calling Zhang a “beast” and declaring: “I know the school authorities are watching, and so is Zhang. But I won’t accept mediation.”

The institution struck back within two hours. Mr. Liu of the FAO, the official mentioned earlier, called her. Liu did not address the harassment but focused on the institutional image, urging her to delete the post to avoid damaging the university’s reputation. He also implied that she bore responsibility for the harassment, asking: “Did you ever ask Zhang if he was married?” Feeling humiliated and sensing the implicit threat, Xing deleted the post. That evening, Liu texted her to say that Zhang had denied everything, signaling the end of the investigation. Xing felt insulted but silenced. The oppression, transmitted through the teacher’s voice and his ability to identify an anonymous poster, had temporarily eclipsed her concern for rights.

The turning point came when two other victims of Zhang reached out to her, providing new evidence. Shortly after, the post that she had deleted drew further attention, eventually connecting her with seven additional victims. Xing’s position shifted again—from solitary complainant to spokesperson for a collective. This time, her mobilization was more watchful. “I was speaking as a representative of eight people. … The deletion of my previous post made many people say I was a liar. I couldn’t let the public think this was just a baseless accusation. I couldn’t let my coming out end with stigmatization of sexual harassment victims,” Xing explained.

She filed a formal complaint but navigated the process with extreme caution. When the university summoned her for meetings, she resisted demands that asserted authority over her rather than advanced the investigation: “Before every meeting, they asked to see my national ID. Why should I? They already knew who I was. I said I didn’t have it with me,” she recounted. When staff suggested that she hand over her phone, she refused. When they claimed that she had an obligation not to record the “[Party] internal conversation,” she retorted: “I’m not a Party member.” She recorded everything covertly. She compiled a thirty-page dossier citing the CPC’s disciplinary rules, the Civil Code, and the Ministry of Education’s ethical guidelines, using the state’s own language to shield her claims.

Xing received significant support from students. She started using the slogan #StandwithXing, which became a rallying cry. Students would reply “Stand with Xing!” to her posts as a show of solidarity, and all her subsequent updates were tagged with this slogan, creating a digital trail of support and documentation. This growing visibility transformed her case into a public issue, amplifying its impact beyond the university’s walls through news reports.

Xing soon encountered intensified obstructions. The Feishu link that she had used to share her evidence was suspended, and the screenshots that she posted in follow-up updates became inaccessible. More significantly, the university began to target her support network. Realizing that the case had evolved into a high-profile incident with significant mobilization potential, university officials identified the student members of her reading group who had supported her online, characterizing them as “a group orchestrating the issue.” The FAO staff threatened her that they would notify her department and reveal her identity.

Xing held her ground by partitioning what each relationship could bear. The school had made her promise “not to peddle the case all around,” while her friends had not promised. Through them, she released some of the victims’ chat records on a separate WeChat public account, restoring public pressure without breaking her own pledge. She also handled all direct dealings with the university herself as several of the victims and advocates were still enrolled students, including one in Zhang’s own department. With graduation only weeks away, the university’s leverage over her was rapidly dissolving; Xing represented the collective in her own name to keep them off-stage. She likewise declined to file a police report or a lawsuit, even after consulting lawyers. Either route would have required naming the other victims, who had agreed only to share evidence privately in support of her account. Because she had shielded this network from exposure and institutional capture, it remained intact to back her. Her friends from the reading group and the other victims continued to defend her against online skepticism, ensuring that she was not isolated.

Shortly after these events, Xing graduated. Once she had her degree, the lever that had kept her watchful dissolved. With nothing left to lose, Xing moved beyond watchfulness into uninhibited mobilization. She called the university discipline inspection office weekly, describing her approach as “poking the toad to make it jump.” She even issued a final threat: “If Zhang faces no punishment, I’ll stand at the school gate with a banner when the Ministry of Education comes to inspect. What’s the worst they can do—arrest me? Fine. I’ll livestream from the gate, drink pesticide, and tell the world this university drove me to death.”

Xing’s trajectory illustrates both the fluidity of legal consciousness and the relational forces that shape it. The sections that follow examine how concern for rights and concern for oppression are constructed within this relational web.

The relational construction of strong concern for rights

The “concern for rights” is relationally constructed rather than emerging from a vacuum (Silbey Reference Silbey2005, 357; see also Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1990, 130) or deriving from the solitary study of statutes or theories. In practice, students often confirm the validity of their rights through relationships. It often begins with the subtle groundwork laid by pervasive weak ties in generalized social networks, especially social media, and is supported and solidified by social ties with closer, immediate alliances during specific conflicts.

Before any specific incident of harassment occurs, students are often immersed in a digital environment that serves as a reservoir of rights information. As Xing noted, self-identifying as a feminist is not rare among Chinese university students. This rights-awakening signal is cultivated mainly through participation in generalized discussions on social media. For instance, Xing was active in literature and gaming groups on Douban, where she frequently engaged in heated debates with group members regarding the representation of women in pop culture works (Interview 2307[23]01). Similarly, Ye, before exposing a male student for stealing photos to create non-consensual sexual content, had encountered posts on Weibo exposing the “Sun Xiaochuan Ba,” an online community associated with “incel” subculture where users mocked women by reposting their photos from private WeChat Moments (Interview 2205[01]04). Others were continuously exposed to gender-related discussions through podcasts and listener groups (Interview 2206[05]01). This also includes following, reposting, and responding to #MeToo developments, a practice observed across nearly all interviewees (for example, Interviews 2205[03]01, 2206[06]01, 2206[07]01, 2207[08]01).

These Internet interactions serve to educate through weak social ties. Although the Douban users, Weibo posters, and podcasters are, in reality, strangers to the students, these extensive interactions cultivate a specific rights concern over time. Through this engagement, students acquire essential legal and sociological vocabulary, such as “sexual harassment” and “abuse of power.” This allows them to retrospectively identify sensitive experiences and situate their personal grievances within a structural context. When the formal institutions fail, the Internet transforms from a space of discussion into a site of legal mobilization where these weak ties provide support. In Ye’s case, all three victims initially reported to the police, only to be told: “This is not something we can handle.” They then turned to Weibo for exposure (Interviews 2205[01]01–04). “Although there were doubts and abuse,” Ye recounted, “we received many private messages of encouragement, and even evidence regarding the harasser’s reputation from strangers who knew him” (Interview 2205[01]04).

This digital mobilization creates a chain reaction of awakening. Zheng explicitly mentioned that, before she began her own rights defense, she saw the rights-claiming posts by Ye and others in the same city (Interview 2205[03]01). It was this exposure that made her realize that the “stolen photos and fabricated sexual rumors” she experienced were “essentially the same kind” of pervasive gender violence. Observing their struggle, she concluded that “the school will not address my case unless public opinion is mobilized.” This prompted her to write a WeChat public article to expose her case.

However, as Xing confessed, there is often a gap between the intellectual understanding of feminist theory and the embodied reality. When harassment actually occurs, victims may fall into a state of confusion or paralysis, sometimes even accepting the perpetrator’s excuses, which is a common stress response to gender-based violence (C. MacKinnon Reference MacKinnon1979, 48). This is where closer, stronger relationships become indispensable.

Xing’s feminist reading group and the subsequent alliance she formed with other victims of Zhang offer the most typical example. When a victim is trapped in self-doubt, their peers and co-victims provide a critical reference frame, confirming that “this is not your fault; it’s sexual harassment.” This relational support counters competing frameworks, such as victim blaming and the internalization of guilt, that often suppress rights assertion (Engel Reference Engel2016, 143, 207n38). This network also sustains the structure of mobilization beyond the moment of naming. When university pressure forced Xing to promise silence, her reading group and victim alliance became the channels through which evidence and updates continued to reach the public, sustaining the mobilization’s momentum even as its figurehead was constrained.

Furthermore, the alliances often unearth new evidence that creates a structural confidence in rights claiming. This pattern recurs across many cases, just as Zhang’s other victims provided Xing with critical testimony (Interviews 2307[22]01, 2303[09]PO, 2205[02]PO). After Meng exposed her undergraduate teacher, Tang, in an alumni group, multiple junior and senior female students reached out with similar experiences, with some sharing their own evidence (Interview 2412[37]03). One had even reported Tang to the university as early as 2015, but the institution took no action, allowing him to continue his misconduct. This revelation transformed Meng’s narrative from a personal grievance to a systemic critique of the university’s negligence (Interviews 2410[37]01-02; 2412[37]03). Also, while isolated mobilizers are prone to fear, the alliance reduces the terror of oppression by sharing the risk of retaliation (Interviews 2205[01]01–04; 2309[28]01; 2410[37]01–02; 2412[37]03).

In summary, the transition from suspicion to confirmation, from diffidence to confidence, and from inaction to mobilization is engineered by relationships. It is the interplay of weak ties providing the vocabulary and strong ties providing the validation that constructs a resilient concern for rights.

The relational construction of strong concern for oppression

Just as the concern for rights is nurtured through relationships, so too is the concern for oppression. This pattern echoes Deng and O’Brien’s (Reference Deng and O’Brien2013, 549) account of relational repression, where local officials mobilize protesters’ personal ties—the “familiar faces” in their social networks—to persuade them to abandon action rather than resorting to overt coercion. Although university staff are not all local state bureaucrats, the political embeddedness of the public university and the population-management functions borne by its personnel produce a similar behavioral logic. The university strategically leverages students’ relational attachments, including peer solidarity, academic mentorship, family ties, and institutional belonging, and converts them into levers of control. The goal is to induce enough fear to compel students to abandon rights defense, give up visibility, or accept informalized resolutions.

Liang, a master’s student who served as a part-time responsible tutor for two years, described why and how tutors exert pressures through students’ own relationships rather than issuing direct orders:

In practice, the primary pressure flows vertically from the institution, but the institution also mobilizes horizontal social networks to reinforce it. The most direct transmission of oppression comes from university staff. It ranges from hard administrative commands and technological surveillance to softer tactics, including evoking the student’s institutional membership, mobilizing affective bonds with mentors, and threatening academic futures.

The “hardest” end of this spectrum is exemplified by Xing’s interactions with Mr. Liu from the FAO. In Xing’s case, Liu issued a direct administrative command to delete the post. He invoked her institutional identity, reminding her of her obligation as “a member of the school” to protect the university’s reputation. Most threateningly, the call demonstrated that the forum’s anonymity was transparent to the authority. This piercing of anonymity shattered the student’s sense of safety. As another interviewed responsible tutor confirmed, a tacit agreement often exists between universities and various forum operators, where the latter provide the real-name user data to the school upon request for necessary stability and safety concerns (Interview 2305[R]01).

Ke’s experience illustrates a subtler form of vertical pressure (Interview 2309[27]01). After reporting persistent harassment by a peer, she was advised by teachers to “let it go” because “don’t push him too far, or he might retaliate.” The department tutor warned Ke that a formal disciplinary process would necessitate administrative hearings where her details would be laid bare, asking: “Do you want a bunch of teachers sitting around discussing your private affairs?” He also argued that escalating the case to the university level would “make the department lose face.” Even her academic supervisor urged her to tolerate the situation and avoid confrontation. However, Ke noted that these faculty members were not monolithic oppressors. The Party secretary in her department called repeatedly to check on her health and emotional state. This made Ke feel that the teachers were “human feeling” (有人味) and caring. But she also knew this benevolence served to dissuade her from online mobilization, “especially not making a scene on the Internet.” This affective method proved effective. Ke remarked: “The teachers were kind to me. I didn’t want to make their jobs harder or jeopardize their careers.” She therefore directed her grievance solely at the harasser, refraining from demanding institutional accountability. Her empathy for her teachers became the mechanism that neutralized her potential for broader rights claiming.

Students are not always unaware of this dynamic. Xing, for instance, deliberately bypassed her own responsible tutor, a friendly senior PhD student whom she trusted, and communicated directly with higher-level university administrators instead, precisely to shield the tutor from being forced to choose between the institution and the student (Interview 2307[23]01). It shows that students can identify which relationships are susceptible to institutional co-optation and adjust accordingly, redirecting the transmission of oppression. In addition, such a deliberate choice reveals that protecting valued relationships and asserting personal rights are often of equal importance for these students.

Horizontal relationships, particularly among peers, are also co-opted as channels for oppression. In Xing’s case, her feminist reading group initially provided vocabulary and emotional support. However, as the university recognized the case’s growing influence, these alliances were converted into bargaining chips. Administrators identified members of her reading group and used their potential implication to threaten Xing, holding her social network hostage (Interview 2307[23]01). This weaponization of peer relationships resonates with Qian Liu’s (Reference Liu2023) observation of “collective responsibility,” illustrating how the state’s logic of stability maintenance operates through close social bonds.

Oppression can also be transmitted contagiously through the peer network even without direct threats to the primary actor. In Ye’s case, after three victims posted an anonymous joint accusation on Weibo, a fourth victim, previously unknown to them and unaware of her own victimization until she saw the post, contacted the group. This fourth victim was a master’s candidate at the same university, and her photo appeared among the perpetrator’s posts reproduced in their evidence. The university thus misidentified her as the whistle-blower. Her supervisor was instructed to intervene, warning her that allowing the online storm to continue could force her to change supervisors, which was a devastating blow for a graduate student. Learning of this, the original three mobilizers were struck by a mix of vicarious fear and guilt. They realized that their mobilization could cause collateral damage to others, and such a realization contributed significantly to their decision to cease online escalation (Interviews 2205[01]01–04). This illustrates that oppression is transmissible. The threat received by a peer induces compliance in others through empathy, guilt and shared vulnerability. This experience also constitutes a form of second-order legal consciousness as the understanding of institutional risk was shaped not by mobilizers’ own direct encounters with repression but, rather, by observing what happened to someone who shared their position, from which they derived an understanding of how the university perceived their mobilization and how they themselves would be treated (Duan Reference Duan2025).

Institutions also utilize “moral blackmail” (道德绑架) to weaponize horizontal relationships. Mao, a responsible tutor with two years of experience, described his strategy to dissuade victims:

While the sexual shame may no longer silence the awakened victim, this narrative mobilizes the sexual shame of the collective. It reframes the rights assertion as selfish acts that endanger innocent bystanders. The student’s own moral compass becomes the instrument of their compliance.

More subtly, the dense living and study arrangements in Chinese universities turn peers into unwitting tools of surveillance, creating a Panopticon effect (Foucault Reference Foucault1995). Jin, after reporting an assault by a male student, found her daily life transparent to university staff: “I smoked a cigarette downstairs, and immediately got a message from my responsible tutor telling me to find a healthier way to relieve stress. I cried in the dorm, and a teacher visited me instantly. I don’t know who told them” (Interview 2408[35]PO). Although the university did have the duty to care for students’ mental health, and the peers who reported Jin’s behavior to staff may well have acted out of genuine concern, Jin experienced it as suffocating surveillance. The act of reporting sexual harassment stripped her of her privacy and safety within the student community.

When direct persuasion fails, the university flanks the students by communicating with their family, leveraging intergenerational anxiety and traditional kinship bonds. Tutor Mao explained this tactic: “When communication with the student hits a wall, we can remind parents of the potential stigmas the girl will face. Parents generally don’t want their child’s reputation tarnished or for her to be the subject of gossip” (Interview 2306[R]01). As Qian Liu (Reference Liu2025, 47) points out, intergenerational love and anxiety in China are accompanied by a sense of obligation, requiring children to meet their parents’ expectations, while those who fail to do so suffer from guilt. In anti-sexual harassment mobilizations, parents rarely act as direct oppressors, but they are anxious about their children’s futures. Fearing that sexual harassment rumors will cause the family to lose face and subject them to gossip, parents generally oppose their children’s mobilization. Parents who recognize the sensitivity of anti-sexual harassment have an additional layer of fear regarding safety. They are even more inclined to discourage students from rights claiming, advising them to move on or endure the situation. Institutional actors are well aware of this dynamic. By choosing to remind parents of the situation, they mobilize this anxiety and the obligations attached to familial love to force students into abandoning their pursuit of accountability.

Beyond interpersonal ties, the weak ties of the Internet, much like strong ties, function as a double-edged sword. While the digital sphere offers a platform for mobilization, it also operates as a precarious cyber tribunal where oppression is transmitted through public scrutiny. Students are acutely aware that seeking online justice is a desperate gamble. The burden of proof in the court of public opinion falls disproportionately on sexual harassment complainants, whose sexual history, motives, and personal conduct are scrutinized in ways that other grievants do not face. Without perfect evidence, they risk being countersued for defamation, facing backlash from public opinion or being accused of “inciting cyber-bullying” to manipulate the masses (Interviews 2205[01]01–04; 2205[03]01). This anticipation generates internalized pressure, forcing students to preemptively weigh their concern for rights against these potential repercussions, thereby installing oppression as a baseline state even before the first relational lever is pulled.

Importantly, the anticipated hostility of the cyber tribunal is here conceptualized as an extension of concern for oppression because it penalizes rights assertion through forces traceable to the state’s ambivalent stance on gender rights. Its existence is a byproduct of inadequate legal protection where formal authorities frequently dismiss harassment claims, leaving students with no choice but to leverage these digital weak ties. The pervasive victim blaming and misogynistic scrutiny reflect a patriarchal order that the authoritarian state, in its conservative pursuit of stability, implicitly sustains. While not always manifesting as direct top-down repression, this social backlash functions as a form of state-tolerated tacit consent, reinforcing the structural constraints that students navigate.

The relational forces documented in this section produce a dynamic tension. The concern for rights, fueled by peer validation and feminist discourse, prevents a return to apathy; the concern for oppression, reinforced by institutional threats and the mobilized relational network, makes uninhibited mobilization seemingly suicidal. The intensity of these two forces engenders watchful awakening. The relational transmission of oppression documented here extends Deng and O’Brien’s (Reference Deng and O’Brien2013) account of relational repression in several ways. The oppression is embedded in the university’s organizational fabric, rather than imposed through recruited intermediaries to target specific students. It relies on existing role-based relationships that routinely carry institutional pressure. The transmission is also preemptive. Many students targeted by relational oppression have not yet become protesters or undertaken any public action. Ambient risk signals have already shaped their consciousness, channeling some away from uninhibited mobilization (or even mobilization itself) altogether and leading them to preemptively adjust the tone, framing, and content of future claims. Finally, the process does not necessarily require the tight-knit community ties on which Deng and O’Brien’s observation depends. As Ye’s case shows, even a previously unknown victim sharing the same institutional position can become an effective conduit of fear. Oppression travels through shared vulnerability and empathy rather than through pre-existing strong ties, and the intermediaries mobilized as relational hostages sometimes do not know they have been conscripted.

Relational positionality of the student

Student anti-sexual harassment mobilization is often viewed as collective, but the students involved occupy different positions within the relational network, and these positions shape what they perceive and what they endure.

Power and dependence

The institutional hierarchy

The university’s ranking and status also shape the landscape of mobilization. This influence operates through two levels, including the degree to which the institution is constrained by reputational leverage and the disparity in student resources. First, elite universities (particularly “double first-class” institutions) rely heavily on their prestige for recruitment, funding, and government support. This high status is a double-edged sword. It makes these universities hypersensitive to scandal, motivating them to actively suppress mobilization. It also renders them uniquely vulnerable to being held hostage by public opinion. As one tutor noted, elite schools avoid crude silencing tactics because they fear the “optics” of suppression as much as the scandal itself (Interview 2305[R]03). Therefore, they resort to the relational approaches, such as mobilizing peers and families, rather than direct coercion. Non-elite institutions, by contrast, operate with lower reputational stakes. With less prestige to protect and facing lower public visibility, they may be less bound by the need to maintain a sophisticated public image. This relative invisibility might allow for more direct, yet variable, administrative responses, ranging from swift disciplinary actions on the perpetrator to blunt suppression of the victim.

Second, the hierarchy creates a resource gap in legal mobilization. Students at elite universities typically possess better resources, granting them access to more effective rights-assertion narratives and stronger support networks. They are often more articulate in “naming” their injuries and framing their narratives for public consumption (Felstiner, Abel, and Sarat Reference Felstiner, Abel and Sarat1980–81). Furthermore, the prominence of elite institutions amplifies the newsworthiness of their scandals. A sexual harassment case at a top-tier university creates a dramatic contrast with the school’s prestigious image, generating a high-profile effect that attracts public opinion and forces institutional response. This disparity demonstrates that, although the dynamics of awakening and pressure are universal, their transmission is stratified when filtered through different institutional contexts, complicating the landscape of anti-sexual harassment mobilization in Chinese universities.

In summary, these shifting variables reconfigure the specific relationships that constrain and influence students, adjusting the relative intensity of the concern for rights versus the concern for oppression. Rather than fixing students in a single state, these variables propel them between inhibition, watchful awakening, and uninhibited mobilization, confirming that watchful awakening is an equilibrium maintained or broken by the relational web’s specific configuration.