In the timeline of their marriage, Mr Hu emphasized: “on Oct 29th, 2014, Zeng had a new boyfriend in Hong Kong and she announced that they were divorced via social media. “
This paragraph was misleading, Zeng said, because they were separated in 2011 after the abortion, but Mr. Hu forbid her to make it public. It made her look bad in the eyes of the public. Privately both have been free to have relationships.
And they both did: during 2013-2014, Mr. Hu had a girlfriend. The girlfriend later went public alleging Mr. Hu misled her to believe that he has divorced. He conveniently omitted it in his letter. The online and offline abuse that Ms. Zeng and her daughter suffered was also related to this girlfriend.
Hu said that when Zeng wanted to have an abortion out of her free will, he accompanied her to the hospital on Oct 10th, 2011. After the operation, Zeng felt very low so he stayed home to keep her company. Hu said once she asked for some snacks and he was busy working and did not act immediately. Their relationship never recovered after that.
Ms. Zeng said, her free will yes. But that was after she fell from the stairs and Mr. Hu did not help to take the child in her arms or give any medical treatment. Ms. Zeng fainted in the hospital alone while being treated for the injury. She then decided to have the abortion. Yes, free will.
And it was on the day when she returned home after the abortion when she asked him to make her some food. She could barely move to take care of herself, Hu ignored her for hours.
Mr. Hu said that when Ms. Zeng arrived in Hong Kong she asked for financial help and his parents sold their old apartment for 2,700,000 yuan and gave Ms. Zeng 1 million.
According to Ms. Zeng, it took years for her to get the money, with help from Hu Jia’s father.
As for the family business, Hu denied that Zeng had any important role. He said she was an ordinary employee. The company was transferred to his sister in 2011.
Zeng said the company was transferred to his sister in 2009, she was the one that repaid small shareholders for the transfer. She had no more income after 2009. Between 2005 and 2009 she worked as deputy general manager, only reporting to Hu’s parents. Hu Jia’s father was already 68 in 2005, she was the one taking care of the business.
You can also see that in this part, Mr. Hu is very vague about dates, while in other parts, he is very precise. Ms. Zeng said that this is to mislead the readers. Ms. Zeng kept asking Hu to give the precise date.
Mr. Hu particularly mentioned that Ms. Zeng had a boyfriend at the time of divorce, but Zeng said they broke up already and Hu knew it.
Back in 2011-2012, in Chinese marriage law, Zeng was entitled for half of the property Hu Jia owns, even though the property is under Hu Jia’s name. The police around her tried to blackmail her to sue Mr. Hu. They even threatened to video tape her during sex and make it public. She refused to sue.
In 2013, the law changed and the property belongs to Mr. Hu only. That is why Ms. Zeng has no legal course to get her and her daughter the share of family wealth. Her only option and plan were to have a close-door hearing with Hu Jia. She said that for years Hu Jia refused to hear her, insisted on his version of the story. Ms. Zeng wants Hu to listen to her and see the truth of their relationship, and give her the part of family wealth as she deserved it.
A close common friend (who is a well know writer/editor) tried to broker a close-door meeting, but it failed right after Hu Jia published his response on Dec 31st, 2021.
Once Zeng’s open letter was out, attacks started. Because so many people were involved and so many things happened, I will give a quick overview without much details. So take this as my current understanding of the situation among the Chinese community. At the end, I will translate a twitter thread that I think describes the significance and challenge Ms. Zeng faces.
Since 22 Dec, the Chinese twittosphere has been discussing and attacking each other: the pro-democracy group is firmly with Mr. Hu; a loose group of “ordinary” twitter users are firmly with Ms Zeng.
The pro-democracy group is a group built over the past 30 years. They are ranked by a person’s fame, especially name recognition in the international arena. Hu Jia is at the top. The more famous ones can help the less famous ones by contacting the media, getting them refugee status in western countries, or rally public support and fundraising. When the government prosecuted them, they also rely on each other for help. So they are a tight circle of people who have learned to always defend each other.
Their wives have always been a second class in that group. They are often referred to as so-and-so’s wife. The sacrifice they made are all praised and thanked. But that is how women are supposed to be. For example, early this month, Zhang Qing, wife of a famous activist died in the USA alone while her husband was disappeared in Beijing airport by the Chinese government, while trying to get to the USA to see her. The pro-democracy group wrote the obituary, calling her the wife of so-and-so, causing widespread criticism. Her worth is only based on being such a wonderful supporting wife and good mother of their two children.
Zeng used to play that role well. Everyone praised her. Until she decided to talk about the abuse she suffered from Hu and demanded her fair share of the family wealth. They all turned on her, as if the fact she was such a loving caring friend does not matter to them at all.
The pro-democracy people started calling her mentally ill. Zeng said that Hu called her mentally ill all the time and his friends echoed that.
They claimed that her PhD degree was fake and she was just a country girl who become famous thanks to Hu Jia and she was ungrateful. They claimed that she was a liar, and so greedy for money that she wanted to socially kill Hu (meaning to ruin his reputation).
Two of Ms Zeng’s own friends betrayed her and tried to frame her for a fundraising scam. Luckily, an “ordinary” tech-savvy twitter user helped Zeng to recover some deleted tweets and cleared her name.
A Chinese writer who lives in Sweden, with 25k twitter followers, turned on Zeng. Back in 2012 when Zeng went to collect the Sakharov prize on behalf of Hu, this writer described that Zeng had the strongest moral backbones, with admiration. Today she not only called Zeng mentally ill, but also disclosed Zeng’s residence address trying to prove that Zeng is living with a criminal. After the director of the institute Zeng works for intervened, she deleted her tweet. (Zeng currently lives in Sweden too).
Many “ordinary” twitter users watched in total shock how the people who used to work with Zeng and benefited from her kindness turned on her. People are wondering why? These people speak “human rights” all day long, but they refused to respect the rights and dignity of a woman because she damaged the reputation of her ex-husband.
One political dissident who is a refugee in Canada posted this:
The law should not be retroactive. If the modern feminist standard of “domestic violence and sexual assault” is used to determine the behavior before the popularization of feminism, then all men in China are guilty of domestic violence and sexual assaults. Your respected so-and-so - he’s in jail now and I can’t name him, you know who - is the first to be guilty with sexual assault and domestic violence. Such brutal accusations, are you okay with it?
“Your respected so-and-so” is probably some famous people from the pro-democracy group who is currently in jail.
This might be part of the reason they all defended Hu. What Hu did was normal to them. They all abused their wives the same way Hu Jia did because they were such great heroes for great causes and they refused to consider that this is wrong.
Some of Hu’s friends demanded evidence of abuse from Zeng. For them, if she was not beaten severely, there was no abuse. In China, savagely beating one’s wife receives very little punishment from the law enforcement. Just a few days ago, a video of a Xi’an man beating his wife while she tried to protect their crying daughter went viral on Chinese social media. Yesterday, the police announced the verdict: 5 days of administrative detention for the husband, education of both sides to be good partners to each other. You can find more information about this incidence in English here.
With this dark reality of the most brutal abuse in China, the pro-democracy group do not consider Zeng being abused. They kept demanding evidence and trivializing the evidence she put out there. They mocked her for not using the Chinese law to defend herself. Yes, this group of people you would think know a thing or two about Chinese legal system. Again, “ordinary” twitter users noted this dissonance and were shocked.
Yesterday, a very famous writer took to twitter to defend Hu Jia again. To him, there is just not enough evidence to implicate Hu Jia. He righteously wrote:
My final point is that there are some very moving slogans and ideas that can get a lot of people behind them without thinking, but no matter what the cause, facts are important, as is honesty and decency. Even if a person has made great contributions, the abuse of his wife and children should be punished and condemned. Likewise, destroying a person’s reputation by framing him is not a noble act and is equally reprehensible.
An “ordinary” twitter user responded:
Has it ever occurred to you that it is exactly because people “don’t understand”, Zeng Jinyan came out to tell the story? The deprivation of human beings is not just about what is visible to the physical eyes, people also can “see” it through the generations of the deprived who perceive it and corroborate each other, forming a torrent, questioning the original values, and then the cover of the situation of the deprived was gradually torn away .
Many awakened feminists believe in her, not because the “slogans are moving” (how arrogant for you to say so) but because they match their own experiences, even before some of them have been identified and named and made known as “knowledge”.
I am sure that Zeng Jinyan did not suffer from the kind of physical violence that you recognize, and I seem to sense that you are expecting Zeng Jinyan to convince you with the kind of facts. You tell yourself to believe in women but you have doubts. I venture to overstep my bounds and tell you clearly that, well no, the full blast is not there, maybe some tearing, but that is not the point either.
What Zeng Jinyan challenges is the indifference of the male centeredness, the self-centeredness of Hu Jia and many others similar to Hu Jia (which often manifests itself in relationships as male specific because it is inherently structural), the blindness to the will of others, as long as you don’t leave, you will always be interpreted and manipulated by his needs : to come out from the bathroom is to reconcile; to be silent is to forgive. If you give up fighting, then you have reconciled… and if you do the opposite - jumping out of windows, repeating your points, showing anger, you are called “madness” - it is a stifling mental manipulation.
At the beginning of the relationship, one is not aware of it and has to compromise to form a habit of giving more and more emotional support. Meanwhile, the other person is forever demanding like a giant baby, with little or no to reciprocate to the other person. One eventually was drained of energy to give further (this can be felt in the words of both sides)
This is exactly the kind of exploitation that exhausts women in such relationships. At the same time, there is constant intrusion by external forces and the possibility of effective and equal two-person dialogue is lost. Once they fight seriously, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that the other side is exerting pressure by borrowing from outside forces, even it is hard to tell which part is the borrowed part. The pressure exerted by the government has instead become a bargaining chip for Hu Jia (and his like) to double his demands.
There is the great significance of Zeng Jinyan’s coming forward. There are other spouses of the human rights actvists who are deprived of their private space and cannot speak out. They are seen only as spouses and not as women themselves. These women are not necessarily as strong as Zeng Jinyan, who chose to take the first and fiercest fight herself (she is both a theoretical feminist and a practical social worker, and has had contact with many human rights actvists).
(She knew what she has to face). It is relatively easy to clarify and understand the part about her being forced to take her daughter out of the house in the first place, and Hu Jia’s lack of parenting in the later stages. There is not much room for people to participate in the “discussion”, which should be taken over by a “closed-door meeting” or by some organization that can give a fair hearing.
These “ordinary” twitter users rose up to defend Zeng, they insulted the “pig-team” of Hu for being ignorant as pigs, and joked to loosen up the tension. Some of them also shared their own experience of domestic violence and how they broke away from it. Here is one that makes me laugh so I am translating it.
I grew up in an environment where domestic violence was more like an exchange of blows…
My mom was a great woman, my dad couldn’t beat her when she got mad…she could take a scalpel to cut his face
My dad also liked to beat me until I broke his chest bones in high school…
When my dad realized that he couldn’t beat anyone in the family, he started to reason with us instead…
Yesterday Ms. Zeng mentioned that some Human Rights organization is translating her evidence to act upon it (details are vague). Let’s hope an investigation in the hands of people who understand women’s issues will take place. It is clear to me that the Chinese pro-democracy group, especially those in power because of their fame, had no understanding nor will to understand.
We will go back to report other stories from now on, but will keep you updated, as always, on this story too.