04/15/25 - Sha'anxi Datong Rape Case

This is a case that happened all the way back in 2023. I don’t remember if I covered it at the time, but I do remember how everyone was talking about it. It became the main topic of the gender war. And now, discussion about the Shanxi Datong Engagement Rape Case has been drummed up again as the case had just went through appeals court, which maintained the initial court ruling, and neither side is particularly happy about this.

As always, I’d like to first look at the facts of this case. What follows is the story that’s in the court documents, which is about as objective a source as I can find for this, because a lot of details are debated:

The victim (let’s call her Ms. A for now) met the culprit, Xi, through a matchmaking service. Their relationship must have been going well, because on the 1st of May, 2023, they got engaged. The terms of the engagement was that Mr. Xi would pay Ms. A 188K RMB in bride price (100K right now, 88K at the wedding), plus a 7.2g gold ring, and promises that after 1 year of marriage, he would add her name to the deed of his house. They wrote up a contract about this, with terms that if he breaks the engagement, then she will not have to return the money or the ring, but if she breaks the engagement, then she must return both.

The next day, they have a celebratory lunch with both sides of the family, and afterwards, they return to their apartment together. The security cameras at this point still shows them being happy and loving. Once they get into the apartment, Xi asks to have sex with Ms. A, who had always expressed that she wished to wait for marriage. She refused, and he forced himself on her against her wishes. Afterwards, she was very emotional and demanded to go home, but Xi took away her phone and locked her in the room. She (somehow) set the window curtains on fire, and while Xi ran out to get water to put out the fire, she ran out of the room and down the stairs while screaming for help. Xi chased her down the stairs, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her into the elevator and back to his apartment, while she was kicking and screaming the whole time.

At some point the same night, he agreed to return her phone to her and drive her back to her mom’s place, and she called her mom and cried about how Xi had raped her. Her mom apparently got Xi on the phone and asked him, “But you did rape her. You can’t deny that, right?” To which he replied, “Right.” And he also said something like, “I did it so I’m gonna take responsibility for it. I never tried to deny anything.” That very night, A called the police and reported the crime, where her statements were taken, photos of her bruising documented, DNA analysis was ran on the semen on the bed (which was a combination of Xi and Ms. A’s DNA, unsurprisingly), and all the security camera footage was logged.

The police asked if Ms. A really wanted to press charges. And after much consideration, Ms. A’s mom said that if Xi is willing to add Ms. A’s name to the deed of his house right now, then they won’t press charges. At the time, he agreed to this and even signed a promise at the police station that he would do so. But he failed to show up to the appointment to add her name three days later. So Ms. A called the cops right away and said she wanted to go ahead and press charges.

The case went through court, and at the same time, Xi countersued to get his bride price back. The court determined that Ms. A had already returned the money to the matchmaker, who had repeatedly attempted to contact Xi to come pick up his money and he has refused to do so. The court asked the matchmaker to instead deliver the money to the court, where they repeatedly attempted to contact Xi to collect his money, but he refused to do so. So the court dismissed his case and sentenced him to 3 years.

Xi was unhappy about his result and appealed on the grounds of “insufficient evidence”, claiming that the only evidence the police had on him was just Ms. A’s statement and they can’t prove that he did anything to her. In particular, he points out that on the rape kit, it showed that Ms. A’s hymen was intact.

To which the judge said, “The condition of the hymen in a rape case is the realm of personal privacy. It should not be publicly revealed. Whether or not intercourse breaks a hymen has to do with the nature of the intercourse and personal differences. The condition of the hymen is not proof of whether or not intercourse has taken place. This is common knowledge in the medical field. The condition of the hymen cannot be used as proof for or against rape. Our nation’s laws and precedents are quite clear about this.”

On the feminists’ side, the takes are quite obvious. “Wow, only three years for rape? That’s, like, a third the sentence people get for writing gay fanfics. If you tried to rape a panda, you’d get sentenced to death.”

As for the other side, their argument is…a bit harder to explain. I think it goes something like, “This is almost certainly a scheme she set up to get money out of him. It’s extortion—give me half your house or I ruin your life. It doesn’t matter how much evidence there is, if all it took was running down a flight of stairs and getting dragged around for a bit and having sex with a guy and then turning around and accusing him of rape, and you get half of an asset worth millions upon millions to your name, wouldn’t you try it too? If the courts rule this way, we’re going to see every woman try to replicate this case, and men will never feel safe having sex or getting engaged. The only reason the courts ruled the way they did is because Xi had been in jail waiting for a judgement for two years now, and if they declare him innocent now, they’d have to be accountable for how long he’s been held. There’s no evidence anything happened. They’re engaged. Her hymen was intact. How can anyone think this was actual rape? This is just as bad as the Nanjing case, where the judge was like, “If you didn’t run him over, why would you help him?” This ruling is going to do more damage to China than Trump can even dream of.”

Now, I obviously think this is a very silly take. Never helping old people who are hurt and begging for help in the streets is hard. It makes you feel like a shitty human being to have to do. But if during a sexual encounter, your partner runs from your apartment screaming for help, I don’t think it’s that hard to not chase after them and drag them back. I think without the burnt curtains, and the security camera footage, and the extensive bruising, and the admissions on the phone, this case probably wouldn’t have gotten a guilty verdict. But I’m not here to preach to the chore.

I don’t hold grudges against the…men’s rights activists? (I don’t think this demographic really has a name for themselves, I’m just reaching for the closest western equivalent.) Because a part of their narrative does name sense. “But they agreed not to press charges if he put her name on his house. That means she would’ve been fine with what happened if she got enough money out of it. So really, how can you claim it’s non-consensual? All that happened here was that they couldn’t agree on a price.”

That single detail really muddies this case a lot and makes the other side sound like they have a point. And I see a lot of people blaming Ms. A’s mother, that she ruined the moral high ground they had. That she made it about money. But I don’t think it’s her fault at all.

I think the fault here lies squarely with the cops.

Police in China are under the heavy yoke of a ridiculous KPI system which makes them extremely reluctant to open investigations into domestic violence, marital rape (or engagement rape in this case), or other “relationship conflict” cases. Police have a relatively low base pay (only 3-4K in less economically developed areas like Sha’anxi), and the rest of their pay comes from titles, bonuses, awards, and other things that are affected by their numbers. And their numbers require that they:

1. Keep the amount of crime in an area low. And obviously, there are crimes that they have to deal with, like murders and grand theft autos and and people smoking weed. So in order to cut down on the number of crimes they have, they’ll often focus their efforts on persuading victims of domestic/relationship crimes to not press charges.

2. Resolve every case they have, because every unsolved crime becomes a penalty against this. This problem is so bad that a lot of cops are known for not accepting any cases in the last half of December, because it means they only have a couple of weeks to crack the case or else it’ll become a mark against them when summarising their statistics for the year.

3. Not let anything become a public embarrassment. When it comes to touchy issues like engagements, bride price, gold digging, and rape accusations, this case has every element needed to almost guarantee that it would dominate internet discussion. And when it comes to something controversial like this, no matter how you rule on it, you’re going to piss off half the people. And nobody likes the guy who brought a huge embarrassment to the department.

With all these reasons combine, I am sure that the cops were very pushy in that first conversation to get them to not press charges. I’m lucky enough that I’ve never had to witness how a Chinese cop deals with rape, but I have seen plenty of how Chinese cops tend to deal with domestic violence. Their script is pretty similar every time, “Are you sure you want to press charges? You are married, after all. If you do this, you’re gonna be ruining your marriage. Think about your kid. What’s he gonna do? If his dad goes to jail, he’ll never be able to get a government job. His classmates are all going to make fun of him. What are you going to do? Nobody’s gonna hire you with that much of a gap on your resume, and even if they did, who’s gonna take care of your kid while you’re at work? Are you sure he isn’t going to resent you for robbing him of a dad? I’m sure the guy was just in a bad mood. This is the first time he’s done it, no? We can sit down and talk this out. How about we get him to sign a promise to never do this again, and if he breaks it, you call me and I’ll show up and give him a real lecture?”

And I’m sure it’s the same script they used in this case. And I don’t even know that I can blame the cops, because I’m sure they’re under a lot of pressure too. They tend to be understaffed and overworked to begin with, and police work requires a lot of camaraderie with your coworkers. You need to know they have your back. If you took on a messy case that never ends up resolved and that ends up impacting the whole department’s numbers, nobody is going to get paid their bonus this year, and guess who they’re going to be mad at? And I’m sure as cops, they’ve seen plenty of cases where they offer to help a domestic violence victim just to have them turn around and refuse to cooperate anymore. I know it happens plenty to American cops. I imagine the pressure to smooth things over and pretend like nothing happened is only stronger in China, where there is a lot less help for single parents.