Chinese feminist media blooms amid censorship

When Dorah started as a reporter in a Hong Kong newsroom in 2017, she could not have predicted that within a year, the taboo subject of sexual abuse would hit national news and set the trajectory of her budding career.

Like many young female journalists in China, Dorah was on the cusp of a nascent #MeToo movement that would send shockwaves through Chinese institutions, dominate global headlines, and bring stark discussions of sexual harassment to the fore.

“Before gender became a common topic in China, traditional newsrooms and audiences mostly saw ‘gender issues’ as LGBT matters or domestic violence,” Dorah told NüVoices in a phone interview, using a pseudonym to protect her identity.

When Chen Xiaowu, a professor at Beijing’s prestigious Beihang University, was removed from his teaching post in 2018 for sexually harassing his students, tales of scandals by other powerful men flooded the news cycle, sparking unprecedented interest in gender issues in an otherwise conservative media landscape.

And despite rising media censorship across mainland China and Hong Kong, it also led to more women reporters joining the industry, eager to pursue the burgeoning gender beat in local newsrooms and abroad.

In 2024, over 50% of all licensed journalists in China were women, a jump from 44% in 2015, according to data by the All-China Journalists Association, a state-affiliated industry body.

New media wave

Dorah says while the #MeToo wave in China "fizzled out" around late 2018, there was no turning back from the societal shifts and conversations it unleashed.

“Although it seemed like nothing was achieved. For me, it was the beginning,” said Dorah, who now lives in North America and writes for progressive Chinese media outlets in the diaspora.

Chinese women began questioning a swathe of gender stereotypes - from beauty standards and patriarchal norms in relationships, to the representation of women in pop culture, as well as LGBTQ+ issues and other forms of social marginalisation.

Through social media, these topics spread like wildfire online, emboldening a new generation of young women to speak out on issues traditionally considered taboo.

Meanwhile the desire to flee China - a phenomenon dubbed 'run philosophy' - also grew, spurred on by harsh lockdown measures, rising unemployment and diminishing freedoms.

Disillusioned and armed with newfound freedoms abroad, some digital natives in the diaspora mobilised to establish civic groups and feminist Chinese media outlets such as 'Women', 'Mangmang' and 'Diyin', bypassing Chinese surveillance by keeping their locations and membership base private.

Mangmang's Editor-in-Chief Taylor said they were able to pursue hard-hitting stories because of the receptivity towards gender issues over the past few years.

In 2024, Mangmang published a series of explosive reports exposing sexual harassment within the overseas Chinese pro-democracy movement.

Taylor, who used a pseudonym, said there had been several incidents of abuse previously, but it was one of the first times this issue was reported with such depth. It caused an uproar.

“When gender-based abuse occurs in the community, political participation drops noticeably, and the atmosphere becomes tense. This is likely to be a major challenge for overseas Chinese communities,” Taylor said in a phone interview from Europe.

Severe repression

But momentum is waning, says Taylor, as government crackdowns shut independent publications, silence reporters and drive more journalists out of the industry.

More than 300 journalists were imprisoned in 2025, with China the leading jailer of reporters, followed by Myanmar, Israel and Russia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Freelance reporter Dorah says she started her career during the 2018 censorship of 'Feminist Voices', a media outlet hosted on WeChat, and the arrest of the Feminist Five, a group of women who were detained for planning an anti-harassment protest in 2015.

Since then, she says, not much has changed in the political landscape.

“When I first started covering gender-related news and reporting on #MeToo, it was also after the Feminist Five were detained and during the same period 'Feminist Voices' was shut down. Everyone felt that feminism in China was under severe repression. It feels like I was already on the last train from the start."

Still, Dorah says she hopes her gender reporting will help bring greater awareness to younger generations.

“So maybe, without me even knowing, there are some people who remember the events I reported on … and that will influence their decisions to do something. Like planting seeds.”

For Jacky, who reports for 'Women', the gender beat is here to stay.

“In many other fields - like law, labour, and freedom of speech - discussing these issues have been almost entirely suppressed. Only gender has a little space left," said Jacky, who also used a pseudonym.

About the writer
Yeo Foon (楊不歡）is a Hong Kong journalist, columnist and critic with 14 years of experience covering gender, culture, and social issues in Chinese societies. Her work focuses on gender inequality, media representation, and marginalized voices, with bylines appearing in Ming Pao, The Reporter, and Initium Media, among other outlets. Find out more in her column.

About the editor
Lin Taylor is a contributing editor at NüVoices. She has been a journalist, editor and producer for over a decade and currently works as a staff correspondent at the Thomson Reuters Foundation in London covering human rights.