Since there is no specific law on domestic violence, such cases are dealt with under broader women's rights and anti-violence legislation such as the 1992 Law on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women and the criminal law that covers deliberate injury caused within families, which carry less harsh punishment.
Seven State agencies, including the ministries of public security, justice, civil affairs and health, issued a joint statement last month urging policemen answering calls on the hotline (110) to respond to domestic violence complaints.
"Elimination of domestic violence requires the efforts of the whole of society," Chen Benjian says. "We need to establish a set of effective measures to curb domestic violence so that the perpetrators are punished From a social and cultural perspective, we have to build gender equality and make domestic abuse socially unacceptable. Above all, women have to learn to say 'No' (to violence) bravely."
The case has aroused great concern among the online community. Their worry is not baseless because a recent survey shows one-third of the country's about 267 million families have witnessed domestic violence. Complaints against domestic violence, too, have increased to an average of 40,000 a year from 2005 to 2007 - more than double that of 2000 - according to All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) figures. Not surprisingly, more than 94 percent of the victims are women.
The first legal definition of domestic violence came as late as in 2001, when the revised Marriage Law defined it as "an act involving beating, tying-up
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Although Chinese law acknowledges the right of self-defense, it does not consider the psychological state of battered women. As a result some of the battered women who killed their male abusers have been treated like common criminals and charged with murder, Chen Min says.
Li Li is a waitress in a Beijing restaurant. She ran away from home a decade ago to escape the beatings from her mother. Now in her late 20's, she is considering running away again - this time to escape her violent husband.
"Domestic violence has become one of the main reasons for divorce. One-fourth of the country's divorce cases are triggered by domestic abuse," says ACWF Vice-Chairperson Mo Wenxiu. Earlier this year, Mo called for incorporating a domestic violence prevention law into the country's legislation plan for the next five years.
After talking with Xie, Li has promised to defend herself and seek community help if her husband beats her again.
"I am so depressed with marriage and family life," says Li, who got married three years ago. "I wonder why violence and loneliness has shadowed me all my life." Li has already sought the help of Maple Women's Psychological Counseling Center, a non-profit women's organization in Beijing, by calling its hotline.
"A combination of a bias against domestic violence and weak law enforcement have forced victims to sometimes turn to desperate measures," says researcher Chen Min of the Supreme People's Court. More than half of the women imprisoned in recent years are victims of domestic violence who took revenge on their abusers.
"Migrant workers' families will be especially vulnerable to domestic violence in the near future because some of them have already lost their jobs and others have seen their family income go down."
That is exactly what Maple center's counselor Xie Hua has told Li Li. When Li said, "Sometimes I hate myself for being such a coward but I dare not defend myself for fear of inviting more trouble", Xie told her that "too much tolerance and too many concessions sometimes invite more violence".
Chen Benjian
air jordan heels for women, director of China Law Society's Center for Combating Domestic Violence, agrees: "Above all, we need an anti-domestic violence law that experts have been seeking for more than five years."
But even though the criminal law does not exclude private matters, police are reluctant to deal with "family affairs", China Politics and Law University professor Xia Yinlan says. Police start investigating a domestic violence case only after someone is killed or seriously injured. "That only brings perpetrators of crime to justice but does not help prevent such incidents it does not protect the victims' rights or interests, either."
Apart from that, several civil affairs departments have set up shelters for women, and some women's organizations and health departments have jointly set up domestic violence injury identification centers.
The Maple center has been receiving about 1,000 complaints against domestic violence a year since launching its hotline in 2004. There are dozens of such hotline services in the country through which women can report domestic abuse. Though traditionally regarded as a private family affair for years, wife-beating is now socially and legally unacceptable.
A woman hits at a rubber torso labeled "domestic violence" to relieve stress at a counseling center in Chongqing. [China Daily]
But despite not having a specific law on domestic violence China has taken strides, especially after the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, to protect domestic violence victims. Twenty-five provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have already introduced anti-domestic violence regulations, largely because of the efforts of local women's NGOs and women's federations.
Though police in Liaoning province began responding to complaints against domestic violence four years ago, such interventions can only deal with emergency situations and cannot be the final solution.
In the 1970s, American forensic psychologist Lenore Walker coined the phrase "battered woman's syndrome" to explain the extreme behavior women who suffered from long-term violence took against their abusers. Battered woman's syndrome has been used as a defense for women charged with murder for killing their abusers.
What makes matters complicated is that prosecutors in some cities regard "wife-beating" as a private matter. Even the Beijing procuratorate introduced a rule in 2002 to exclude "light injuries" cases, including domestic violence
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But now there is a new factor that could increase domestic violence: the global economic downturn. The loss of jobs or the fear of losing work can make even the coolest person tense, forcing him/her to vent his/her anger on family members.
The latest casualty of domestic violence was a 33-year-old woman, who was beaten to death by her jobless husband in Haikou, capital of Hainan province, in August. For years, their neighbors had heard them fighting but none of them though of reporting the matter to police, Hainan Special Zone News reported. They did not intervene to solve their dispute, either. It is only after the woman died and her husband was arrested did they realize the gravity of the situation.
"Though complaints received by the center haven't risen sharply in the past two months, the financial crisis has begun to hurt China, putting many families under pressure and in situations like this it's common for one spouse to blame the other," Hou says.
Organizations and research institutes such as the Maple center and the Legal Center of Peking University, too, have sought laws to protect victims of domestic violence. Maple center director Hou says she expects legal steps to be taken across the country to remove wife-abusers from the family and to re-educate them.
"Studies show domestic violence, physical and mental alike, can take place in families of any social class," Chen says. "Living without violence is the right of every family member. Community intervention can greatly help reduce such violence," Chen says.
"In traditional Chinese society, men played the dominant role inside as well outside the house, and women were expected to be their subordinates," says Maple center director Hou Zhiming. "As a result, domestic violence was hushed up or even tolerated."
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