Li Jia, a tall, skinny 16-year-old from the countryside of northern China, remembers when her mother finally screwed up the courage to leave her abusive husband. Mother and daughter fled to a relative's house, but Dad kept calling. One day, he apologized. "He cried, and my mom also cried," the teenager told NEWSWEEK. "And then she brought me back." As dusk set in that night, her parents began fighting again and her father turned violent. Enraged, he grabbed a can of gasoline and splashed it all over their small house. When Li's mother protested, he threw gasoline on her--and emptied the rest of the can onto Li. He then lit a match, dropped it and ran from the house, closing the door behind him. Li escaped, but her mother was burned to death.
Now Li lives in a dirty, dimly lit hospital room in the industrial city of Shenyang, Liaoning province, not far from her hometown. Her face is covered with scars and blisters. Her hands are claws. Not so long ago, she would have faced permanent suffering and a life on the streets. Her father may have been punished, or could just as easily have slipped back into a normal life. Instead, in a rare sign of progress, lawyers from the Communist Party-controlled women's federation helped send Li's father to prison. And they're trying to raise money so the girl can get plastic surgery.
After centuries of ignoring abuse against women, China is finally confronting a massive domestic-violence problem. According to government surveys, one in three husbands hits his wife or children. Chinese women suffer the highest suicide rates of any women in the world--a fact some believe is directly related to spousal abuse.
China long considered domestic violence a matter for families to resolve themselves, but that began to change in 1995, when Beijing hosted the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women. Since then there has been evidence of real action: the government last year gave women the right to sue for divorce on the ground of abuse, and state television broadcast a popular show designed to raise awareness of domestic violence. Last summer a women's group set up a special hot line in Beijing and plastered posters across the city urging victims to call in. Hundreds did. "At least now women realize that being abused is unfair," says Guo Jianmei, head of the Beijing University Center for Women's Law Studies and Legal Services. "Before 1998 or so, women didn't come here to talk about domestic violence. Maybe they would talk about divorce. They might even have scars. But they wouldn't mention abuse." The government now cites domestic violence as the cause for up to two thirds of the country's divorces.
Even so, most women in abusive relationships don't leave their husbands. Divorce still carries a stigma in Chinese society, and it can be difficult to obtain one. When incidents of physical abuse occur, Chinese police officers and prosecutors favor mediation rather than arrest. Often police will ask a man to sign a written agreement that he will never beat his wife again. And splitting up the family is the very last resort. "If it's not that serious we will educate the couple, because it takes two people to fight. It's not just the man," says one police officer in the city of Anshan, a steel town that Chinese experts say is doing more than most to protect women.
Women are also learning to fight back--in the courts. A doll-faced salesclerk in Beijing says that after getting married in her early 20s, she and her husband often fought over finances, in-laws and when they should have a child. Then, about two years into the marriage, her husband beat her up for the first time. Last summer, when he beat her again, damaging her eardrum, she went to the police. They documented her --injuries. Then she called a lawyer. Because her husband confessed to beating her, the court quickly granted a divorce--in part because of the new law. Her husband was never prosecuted, but she was satisfied. "No woman wants to drag out the process," she said, adding that one of her friends had to bribe a judge to get her a divorce--and give her abusive husband the house, too.
Chinese courts are also increasingly showing leniency toward women who kill their husbands out of desperation. Instead of ordering the wives to be executed, which has been the standard punishment, judges are now handing down life sentences or even less. In Shenyang, where Li lives, attorney Fu Guangrong has started a home named Sunlight Village for children whose mothers have been imprisoned for killing their spouses. In a recent case, lawyers at the Beijing University Center borrowed a controversial concept from the West and argued that a woman was suffering from battered-woman's syndrome when she killed her spouse. A judge agreed to set aside her death sentence for two years and consider overturning it if she behaves in prison. "This is a big change," said the woman's lawyer, Liu Wei. "At first the judge didn't know about the theory, but we explained it to him." China may be learning slowly, but its women can be thankful the knowledge is at last beginning to spread.