Liu Jingyao, the college student who accused JD.com founder Richard Lui of rape, describes what it's like to be slut-shamed by the Chinese internet
Liu Jingyao, a college student, describes what it's like to be slut-shamed by 800 million people. — MINNEAPOLIS — When Liu Jingyao introduced herself …
New York TimesLi Yuan
Context & Ripple Effects
This first-person account sits in the middle of an arc that began with Richard Liu's 2018 arrest in Minnesota and ended, criminally at least, when Minneapolis prosecutors declined to bring charges that December. What Liu Jingyao adds here is the layer the criminal process never touched: her description of being slut-shamed by hundreds of millions of Chinese internet users after the accusation became public.
Liu Jingyao bears the direct cost of speaking publicly: coordinated harassment from Chinese social media users that continued even after prosecutors found no grounds to charge Richard Liu.
For JD.com, the founder's conduct stays a live reputational liability — the criminal case closed, but the accuser's public narrative keeps the episode attached to the company.
Second-order effects
The harassment dynamic pushes other accusers toward civil litigation rather than public testimony — a path Richard Liu himself eventually took, agreeing to settle the University of Minnesota student's lawsuit out of court.
Employee activism at Alibaba signals that platform companies face internal pressure to police the casual sexism that fuels this kind of pile-on, not just the headline incidents.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, accountability for founder misconduct in Chinese tech shifts from criminal courts — which declined to act here — to civil settlements and workplace movements, while the social punishment of accusers remains largely unmoderated.
The gap between legal outcomes and public opinion becomes structural: an executive can be cleared by prosecutors yet still carry a permanent narrative risk that boards and investors must price in.
The trend: Sexual-misconduct accountability in Chinese tech is migrating from criminal prosecution toward civil litigation and employee-led pressure, while accusers absorb large-scale online retaliation that platforms have not contained.
This story is a must read. Traumatizing. How many women have their world, choices, power taken from them...because the person who takes from them has the world, makes the decisions, has all the power. https://twitter.com/...
When you strip back every accusation of this woman's lack of virtue, it's really about her refusal to bow to patriarchy. Despite what she says about herself, Liu shows tremendous strength in continuing to believe her own story and fight. https://www.nytimes.com/...
When you are the weaker more vulnerable party, the narrative often goes: if you didn't do everything right, you did NOTHING right. Therefore, everything that happened to you is richly deserved. Internet justice only amplifies this dynamic. https://www.nytimes.com/...
The social-media attention directed at Liu has been vast and often vicious. On Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, her case has been one of the most popular topics of the last 2 years. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Liu said she felt powerless — that she couldn't make the public see how scary it was for a 21-year-old to sit among a group of powerful middle-aged men, and how she couldn't make the most powerful among them leave her alone. https://www.nytimes.com/...
The man she accused said it was consensual. Prosecutors didn't press charges. Edited videos showed her entering her apartment with him. https://www.nytimes.com/...
After Liu Jingyao, a college student, accused a Chinese billionaire of raping her, the Chinese internet turned against her, calling her a slut, a whore, a liar, a gold digger and many other things. She talked to our reporter about what she endured. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“It may be difficult for Westerners to grasp the scale and intensity of her online shaming. But the @MonicaLewinsky frenzy is a good comparison, had it taken place in the era of Twitter and YouTube in a country with 800 million internet users” https://www.nytimes.com/...
When the #MeToo movement is not at your back and you get shamed by the Chinese internet. @LiYuan6 speaks to the university student who https://t.co/...'s CEO was accused of raping. https://www.nytimes.com/...