28 China The EconomistJanuary 20th 2018
2 alone with this programme. America
passed a law in 2011 that forbidsNASA from
sharing knowledge or resources with its
Chinese equivalent. This ensured that Chi-
na remained locked out of the Internation-
al Space Station; America was never keen
on letting it in because of the military uses
of China’s space programme. China has in-
stead experimented with two temporary
orbiters of its own, the newest of which it
crewed for a month in 2016 (the older one
has reached the end of its mission and
looks likely to tumble to the Earth some-
time in the next few months).
Eventually, China would like to send its
taikonauts to the moon. There is no target
date for achieving this, but in 2016 an offi-
cial speculated that a Chinese citizen might
step on the lunar surface within 15 to 20
years. The country has Mars in its sights,
too. It plans to land a rover there in 2020 or
shortly thereafter. It wants to retrieve rocks
from Mars sometime in the 2030s.
China still lags far behind America in its
space accomplishments, but itdoes not ap-
pear bent on a cold-war-style race. It
spends far less on its civil space pro-
gramme than the $19.7bn thatNASA was al-
located last year. China is doggedly pursu-
ing its goals, however. Joan Johnson-Freese
of the US Naval War College compares Chi-
na to Aesop’s tortoise.
One of the Communist Party’s aims is
to boost national pride at home. In 2016 Mr
Xi declared that April 24th would be cele-
brated annually as “space day”: it is the an-
niversary of China’s first satellite launch in- Even if outshining America remains a
distant goal, China is mindful of the pro-
gress being made by India, another big de-
veloping country that dreams of the stars.
India is planning its first soft-landing on
the moon in March, more than four years
after China’s.
Europe is keen to collaborate. Chinese
and European scientists launched their
first joint satellite in 2003. They are now co-
operating in a study of solar wind. Astro-
nauts from the European Space Agency
(ESA) recently trained with Chinese coun-
terparts in survival skills. Karl Bergquist, an
ESA official, says a few European astro-
nauts are learning Chinese to prepare for
possible joint missions.
But America’s worries are growing
about the military aspects of China’s space
programme. Marco Aliberti of the Euro-
pean Space Policy Institute in Vienna says
this has been particularly evident since
2013, when China showed it could launch
projectilesinto the loftyorbits traced by
America’s most sensitive satellites, sug-
gesting it was developing an ability to
knock them out. Many American scientists
favour a more relaxed approach. But in an
era of “America First”, the chances are slim
ofNASA being allowed to befriend China.
All this rankles among Chinese offi-
cials. They note that tense relations be-
tween America and Russia have not pre-
vented those two countries’ space
agencies from working together (since re-
tiring the space shuttle, America has been
dependent on Russian rockets to get astro-
nauts into space). As many people in China
see it, America’s behaviour is further con-
firmation of a long-held belief that Ameri-
ca wants to create impediments to China’s
rise. Jiao Weixin, a space expert at Peking
University, says America is locked in “cold-
war thinking”. If American authorities do
not wish to work with China, he says, there
are others who will. 7W
HEN Luo Xixi was studying for a PhD
at Beihang University in Beijing, her
supervisor, Chen Xiaowu, asked her to go
with him to his sister’shouse to look after
her plants. Women, she recalled him say-
ing at the time, are innately better at do-
mestic chores. Once in the house, she says,
he demanded sex, letting her go only when
she pleaded she was a virgin. As she left, he
warned her not to tell anyone, claiming he
had merely been testing her to see whether
she was “a well-mannered student”.
Thirteen yearslater, in October 2017, Ms
Luo was working in Silicon Valley as news
spread of a social-media campaign by vic-
tims of sexual harassmentusing the hash-
tag #MeToo. With a handful of fellow Bei-
hang graduates, she formed a group on
WeChat, a messaging app, to discuss the
abuse they had suffered. Ms Luo decided to
take her case to the university. For three
months, the college remained silent while
Mr Chen began his own campaign, warn-
ing possible accusers not to let themselvesbecome “agents of evil foreign forces”.
On January 1st Ms Luo went public on
Weibo, a microbloggingsite. When Mr
Chen denied the claims, Ms Luo published
transcripts of him saying things like “Can’t
I touch you?” and “Then can you touch me
a little?” On January 11th the university
ruled that her accusations were true and
suspended Mr Chen. Three days later the
Ministry of Education stripped him of a
prestigious scholarship and demanded he
repay the stipend. Thus #MeToo finally ar-
rived in China, claiming its first scalp and
establishing a new hashtag with the Chi-
nese characters for “me too”: #Wo Ye Shi.
China’s movement against sexual ha-
rassment is very different from those in the
West. So far, accusations have all come
from universities, not the film business or
politics. No celebrities have tweeted
#Wo Ye Shi. Almostall the accusations have
been made anonymously. Ms Luo’s story
stuck out because she used her own name.
That was partly, she said, because she lived
in America, where she had some protec-
tion from the retaliation she might have
suffered were she in China.
The movement there faces greater chal-
lenges than elsewhere. Tian Dong, a law-
yer who specialises in gender-related
cases, says there is no legal definition of
sexual harassment in China. Chinese com-
panies often ignore harassment in their
terms of employment and training. Social
attitudes have changed profoundly in the
past 30 years, but traditional sexual roles
remain entrenched. Women are expected
to shut up and look demure. A study by the
Guangzhou Gender Centre, an NGO,
found that almost 70% of students said
they had been harassed. Fewer than 4%
said they had, or ever would, report as-
saults to the police.
Above all, #Wo Ye Shifaces the Commu-
nist Party—the most powerful organ of
which, the Standing Committee of the Po-
litburo, has never had a female member.
Given the party’s ingrained sexism and
hostility to any form of activism, the sur-
prising thing is not that #Wo Ye Shihas had
less impact than #MeToo. It is how far it has
come in a short time. Universities face a
wave of accusations. There have been peti-
tions in 68 of them demanding systems for
reporting and investigating harassment
charges, says Feng Yuan of the Women’s
Study Centre at Shantou University.
In 2015 five activists were arrested for
trying to campaign against sexual harass-
ment on public transport. Recently, inter-
net censors have been busy deleting
#Wo Ye Shipetitions. But the party appears
to have changed its tune. In an online com-
mentary, its flagship People’s Dailypraised
Ms Luo, saying “being brave is the best
stance.” By sounding sympathetic, the
party may hope that it can forestall de-
mands that could evolve into a broader
popular movement. 7Sexual harassment#ChinaToo
BEIJING
The #MeToo movement has arrived in
China. The Communist Party is worried