He Xin on Why Don’t Chinese Divorce Courts Better Protect Women? Efficiency and Stability Matter More (U.S.-Asia Law Institute)

"Why Don’t Chinese Divorce Courts Better Protect Women? Efficiency and stability matter more"

He Xin

U.S.-Asia Law Institute blog, Volume 1, Number 22

Published on 13 May 2021

Why do so many Chinese women suffer or even die from domestic violence? Why are personal safety protection orders rarely issued? Why are women still at a disadvantage in Chinese divorce courts when property is divided and child custody is awarded? Why are the laws protecting women’s rights not well implemented? 

     Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews in various court settings over more than a decade, I argue that institutional constraints to which Chinese judges are subject, a factor largely ignored by the existing literature, play a crucial role in generating outcomes unfavorable to women. The bureaucratic incentives of the court distort the implementation of the divorce law. Judges are responding to two sets of interrelated institutional constraints: efficiency concerns and stability concerns. 

      Click here to view the full text.

Need for More Sensitivity When Reporting on Domestic Violence in Hong Kong (Puja Kapai)

"Hong Kong's media must show more sensitivity when reporting on domestic violence"

Puja Kapai, Yenni Kwok, Linda To, Shirley Kong
Hong Kong Free Press
14 September 2017

A murder-suicide case shocked Hong Kong last week. Last Monday, a man allegedly killed his wife at a luxury apartment building in Yau Ma Tei before taking his own life. The police said the husband had moved out of their home on Friday after the wife discovered he had been cheating and demanded a divorce.

     Domestic violence in the city remains one of Hong Kong’s most neglected problems and unfortunately, also its most hidden. Yet, the media coverage of the murder-suicide case highlights a critical lack of understanding about the issue. As the horrific news about the young couple, who were both civil servants, gripped the city, reports speculated that the act of violence was the inevitable consequence of the wife earning a higher salary than the husband.

     The front-page story of Headline Daily on Tuesday, 5 September 2017, was titled: “Wife’s salary is more than double her husband’s. Wife in a higher position is a recipe for a tragedy.” News website HK01.com also linked the murder-suicide to the wife’s high salary. In a story published on 4 September, it quoted Szeto Hon-ming, a senior social worker, who said a wife shouldn’t “injure the pride” of the husband. He also advised wives who earned more than their husband not to use “terms that may undermine men’s self-esteem.”

     Media ethics exact a higher standard of reporting than what is sadly on display from the headlines and stories which have emerged over the course of the week. The reports have irresponsibly showcased and perpetuated a sexist narrative which blames the victim.

     Although the homicide rate in Hong Kong remains comparatively low given the size of our population, the number of domestic murder-suicides among homicides features prominently. This is no cause for comfort but rather, calls for targeted approaches for prevention by frontline personnel who need to understand that such incidents are often the breaking point in a relationship likely to have been peppered by escalating violence earlier on. The majority of the victims are women, and the perpetrators are usually their partners or former partners. Hong Kong — along with Japan — has the highest rate of female homicide victims in the world: women comprise 52.9 per cent of the total homicide victims in these two jurisdictions, followed by South Korea at 52.5 per cent... Click here to read the full article.

Role of Culture in Intimate Partner Violence (Video of CCPL Event)

The video for the CCPL’s recent conference ‘Mind the culture gap’: understanding and appreciating the role of culture in developing effective Interventions for IPV is now available for viewing on the CCPL YouTube channel.

     This seminar, hosted by the Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, is the sixth and final event in the Economic and Social Research Council Seminar Series, and will focus on cross-cultural strategies and approaches to understanding and addressing Intimate Partner Violence. The effectiveness of the frameworks and institutional capacities for protection against domestic violence are predominantly dependent on individual user capacities and their internal cultural response systems, which either drive or discourage certain courses of action. Findings from multiple studies now confirm that women of colour, immigrant women, and those categorised in other minority status groups such as persons with disabilities tend to be most vulnerable to becoming entrenched in situations of violence. The failure to account for and consider the internal and external conflicts in value systems which these predominant frames of characterizing and addressing violence represent for the victims concerned, creates a critical gap in the provision of effective redress against violence for particular groups of women. This seminar, therefore, brings together experts to examine approaches to cultural mapping in the context of developing effective responses to intimate partner violence to assist victims and perpetrators by locating knowledge and strategies in the lived realities of ethnically and culturally diverse victims and perpetrators of violence. Details of previous ESRC seminars can be found here.  The playlist of individual presentations arranged by speaker and open discussions can be found here.

CCPL Submission on Combatting Domestic and Sexual Violence (HK Legislative Council)

"Submission to the Legislative Council Social Welfare Panel's Subcommittee on Strategy and Measures to Combat Domestic and Sexual Violence"

Puja Kapai

Centre for Comparative and Public Law

2 October 2015

The Executive Summary of the Research findings (Appendix) makes a number of Recommendations, including: 

1. Set up a multi-agency response network with regular cooperation between police, health services, legal profession, government agencies and NGOs for each case to improve the quality of domestic violence services for ethnic minority victims. This would obviate the need for victims to repeatedly tell their stories and would also save resources and time, particularly where interpreters and third party interveners are necessary to come to a comprehensive view of the situation and conduct risk assessment. 

2. Set up and implement a uniform and coordinated data intake and collection process to record disaggregated data and allow for a systematic review and evaluation of the patterns of help-seeking, follow up and service provision on an ongoing basis. This would assist in informing strategies for intervention to ensure their suitability in cross-cultural settings. 

3. Mandatory and Regular in-service training for front line responders, including the police officers, lawyers, healthcare professionals, social workers and other service providers, in human rights and cultural sensitivity to ensure that knowledge can be harnessed and applied when handling domestic violence amongst ethnic minorities. 

4. Review the quality and impact of existing materials.The experiences shared by the ethnic minority women in their encounters with frontline staff and respondents and the interviews with frontline responders revealed that some of the materials used in cultural sensitivity training contain harmful and negative stereotypes about ethnic minority and immigrant women. 

5. Establish a one-stop shop service centre in the long run for ethnic minority and immigrant women, to improve cultural intelligence and competence to handle the needs of ethnic minority victims and empower them in terms of financial independence, literacy, vocational training and social integration. 

6. Establish specialist agencies for the intake of ethnic minority and immigrant victims of domestic violence, such as those in place in United Kingdom.

Click here to download the full submission.

Susan Finder on China Domestic Violence and US-China Cooperation on Judicial Reform

"Why Hong Kong must point out failings of mainland's draft law on domestic violence"
Susan Finder (Adjunct Professor)
South China Morning Post
13 October 2015

The tragedy of an injured and malnourished seven-year-old girl from a cross-border family dramatically highlights why Hong Kong needs to express its views on a draft anti-domestic violence law issued by the National People's Congress Standing Committee last month for public comments.

      Hong Kong is affected by such legislation because many of the domestic violence cases that occur in the city are found in cross-border families. According to a study in Shenzhen, 55 per cent of Shenzhen families have experienced domestic violence, though it is unclear how many of those families have children who study here in Hong Kong. Many of the domestic violence issues the city faces are also prevalent on the mainland.

     Hong Kong has a great deal of expertise in such issues against the backdrop of a multi-ethnic, primarily Chinese society. The city's organisations concerned with children, women, the elderly and ethnic minorities should work with the Law Society or volunteer lawyers to submit comments on the draft legislation, because domestic violence experts who have worked with mainland authorities on improving enforcement have described the draft as disappointing.

     Inadequacies with the draft include the following.... Click here to read the article.

"Comments on cooperation between the US and China on judicial reform"

Susan Finder (Adjunct Professor)

Supreme People's Court Monitor Blog

13 October 2015

One of the lesser known outcomes of Xi Jinping's trip to the United States is the commitment by the United States government to work with China on judicial reform. 

     The official White House press release (mirrored in statements by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) states: 

the United States and China commit to conduct high-level and expert discussions commencing in early 2016 to provide a forum to support and exchange views on judicial reform and identify and evaluate the challenges and strategies in implementing the rule of law. U.S. participants are to include leading members of the U.S. judiciary, U.S. government legal policy experts, and officials from the Departments of Commerce and Justice and the Office of the United States Trade Representative. Chinese participants are to include officials from the Central Leading Group on Judicial Reform, leading members of the Chinese judiciary, and Chinese government legal policy experts. This dialogue is to result in an improvement in the transparency and predictability of the business environment. This dialogue does not replace, duplicate or weaken existing regular bilateral legal and human rights dialogues between the United States and China. 

This statement deserves more attention from the legal community than it has received so far. Some brief comments below... Click here to read the full article.

CCPL Publishes Empirical Study on Domestic Violence and Ethnic Minority/Immigrant Victims

Press Release: "HKU Empirical Study on Help-Seeking Behaviour of Ethnic Minority and Immigrant Victims of Domestic Violence Reveals Institutional Incompetence of Frontline Responders"

     Existing protections and institutional capacities to effectively combat domestic violence continue to be challenged by cultural and religious frameworks that predominate individuals’ private and public lives. Inadequate attention to the differences in value systems (internal factors) and personal circumstances that impact the capacities (external factors) of ethnic minority or immigrant victims to access relief measures effectively forces the women to live at the peripheries of society, in isolation and grossly vulnerable to future violence and at risk of falling through ‘the justice gap’. 

      The Director of Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, Ms. Puja Kapai, critically examined the assumptions underlying existing laws and policies governing protection against domestic violence in a recent Study. Upon an intersectional impact assessment and analysis of the responses of 100 participants, the findings in the Study bear out the importance and indispensability of accounting for factors that impact help-seeking behaviour of ethnic minority and immigrant women, including race, culture and religion, language barrier, financial dependence on their partners, immigration status, their perceptions of the legal system and frontline responders to domestic violence, and lack of relevant legal and practical knowledge. Furthermore, institutional incompetence of frontline responders on multiple levels often deters ethnic minority victims from seeking help from existing resources when they face domestic violence.  

      The study was presented at a HKU seminar on 3 October 2015, deputations were made in the Legislative Council on 6 October 2015 and a press conference with legislator Fernando Cheung and others was held afterwards.  For media coverage of the report and its impact, see on.cc (Chinese), EJInsight, immediahk.net (Chinese), yahoo (Chinese), Hong Kong Standard, South China Morning Post, and FinTV (Chinese) .  To download the report's executive summary, click here, and to access the submission to the Legislative Council, click here.