2 Countries, 2 Struggles for Justice

BEIJING â€" China and India are regularly compared â€" as Asian giants with well over a billion people each, as fast-developing countries with high economic growth. What about in terms of rape

In both countries recently, highly publicized gang rapes have dramatically raised public awareness of a hidden problem. Of course, rape is to some extent a hidden issue everywhere, even in societies with efficient legal systems and liberal attitudes toward women. But in China and India, as in other places where traditional notions may judge a raped woman as “ruined,” there are especially powerful disincentives to reporting the crime, experts say.

Here are the painful stories. On Dec. 16, a 23-year-old student was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi, the Indian capital, dying of her injuries two weeks later.

In China last week, the 17-year-old son of a popular singer and general in the People’s Liberation Army was detained with four others in Beijing on allegations of gang-raping a woman, according to widespread reports carried by Xinhua, the state news agency, and other official media like Beijing News.

The son, Li Tianyi, also known as Li Guanfeng, had been in the news in 2011 after a violent altercation on a Beijing street landed him in a correctional facility for a year. (The South China Morning Post, based in Hong Kong, reported that his parents changed his name to Guanfeng after that case.) The five suspects were taken into custody in the early hours of Feb. 21 and are now in investigative detention in connection with the alleged rape, which was said to have taken place Feb. 17, according to the China News Service. The evening of the alleged attack they had been drinking alcohol and celebrating the birthday of one of the members of the group, the China News Service said, quoting “police officers familiar with the case.” Mr. Li, a friend identified only as “Wei” and the three others used threats and violence to drag the woman from the bar to the Hubei Hotel, where she was raped, the China News Service said.

These are the individual, tragic tales. But how widespread are such crimes in the two countries No one really knows, since the figures are highly unreliable, experts say.

In China, according to Zhang Rongli, a professor of law at China Women’s University, citing statistics from the Ministry of Public Security, there were 24,495 “solved” rape cases in 2008. In 2009, the number rose slightly to 26,404, she said.

“Rape is a common crime,” Ms. Zhang said. “But the rate is pretty much the same every year in China, without clear increases or decreases,” she said, making her suspicious of the numbers.

Few believe that’s the full extent of it, but the Chinese conviction figure is apparently higher than India’s. Women in China also experience far less sexual harassment in public, or “Eve teasing,” as it’s known in India.

Privately, researchers confide they have no idea what the real number of rapes is. Some estimate that less than one in 10 cases is reported. That might make at least a quarter of a million a year in China, but probably far more. In the United States, with less than a quarter of China’s population, Census Bureau figures show a fairly consistent rate of “forcible rape” (excluding statutory rape) of just over 80,000 a year over the last decade.

“With this crime there’s a problem of hidden figures, because some people aren’t willing to report it and bring a case. So it’s very hard for the state to bring swift cases,” said Ms. Zhang.

If a case is brought to court swiftly, if there is proof of an attack (like evidence of resistance), if there are “not too many conflicts of interest between the two parties,” she said, Chinese justice can move quickly. “Such cases can be pretty smooth and the outcome quite fast and the result quite sincere,” she said. However, she and other feminists warn that these conditions are frequently not met.

What of India

Here, too, the data are problematic. The National Crime Records Bureau indicated that 22,172 women reported rape in 2010, according to a report on the Web site of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

A leading newspaper, The Hindu, put the figure slightly lower, at 20,262, noting that the number of rape reports was rising but the number of convictions declining.

Either way, the statistics are considered neither reliable nor up to date, according to the report on the U.N.H.C.R. site, by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. Figures from India’s individual states were “factually and alarmingly incorrect,” the report said, citing a program officer at the Asian Human Rights Commission, a nongovernmental organization based in Hong Kong.

The same issues pertain in both of Asia’s giants. Shame. Ruined reputations. Threats by the rapists, who may be power holders, against the victims.

But major cases can change social attitudes. India has been shaken by the horrific crime in December. In China, there is a high level of interest in the case involving the singing general’s son.

This week, Mr. Li’s name was a top trending topic on Sina Weibo, the country’s leading microblog site, used by millions of people. But many comments focused less on the alleged crime than on his status as a “second-generation star,” the offspring of prominent and wealthy parents in the entertainment industry, and speculated whether the victim would strike a deal in return for hefty financial compensation.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 27, 2013, in The International Herald Tribune.