Mention of Xi Jinping’s divorce from his first wife, after only three years of marriage, is taboo
were so brutal that Dong Fang was left partially deaf, and her daughter needed three stitches in her hand. Not long ago, China’s courts would probably have ignored such an assault, because the attacker was both Ms Dong’s husband and the girl’s father. Luckily for the victims, however, the country had recently enacted a domestic-violence bill. This enabled Ms Dong to obtain a restraining order from a court in Chengdu, the south-western city where she lives.
But the one-in-six cases that end up in court are complicated. Last year two-thirds of them were rejected at the first hearing. Domestic violence has been a legal ground for divorce and damages since 2001. But abused spouses often remain trapped. Sometimes judges refuse to approve divorces for the sake of their own jobs. Performance targets often involve finishing a certain number of cases. As citizens become more litigious, caseloads are growing fast.
Possibly helped by public attention to her case, Ms Dong eventually got her divorce in June, two years after the beating that temporarily damaged her hearing. “Whether or not to permit a divorce should be based on whether feelings between husband and wife have been ruptured,” the court said. In this case, it ruled, they had been. The court said each should have one of the couple’s two houses, and compensate the other for any difference in value.
Such rulings are common, says Xin He of the University of Hong Kong. Judges often allow a divorce while dismissing charges of domestic violence, thus allowing the husband to avoid any penalty. As a result, says Kwai Ng of the University of California San Diego, “the courts have become an unreliable guardian of the lawful rights and interests of women.” Ms Dong still has some faith in the system: she has filed an appeal. She expects a ruling by January.
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