Abstract
Due to conservative social views and the private nature of the offense, rape remains a rarely reported crime, with a high “dark figure” of unreported cases in China. Social biases as well as insufficient legal regulation contributed to this problem. The U.S. once faced a similar situation: the prevalence of rapes, low reporting rate, social biases against victims and massive intrusion into victim’s privacy. The establishment of a rape-shield law helped reduce sexual assaults and fight social biases. Though China and the U.S. have different legal mechanisms, China still has the necessity and possibility of building a similar law. For China, a rape shield law will help protect victims’ privacy, encourage reporting, regulate judicial proceedings and raise social awareness. Such law generally forbids the use of victim’s sexual history in rape cases, but it allows prior sexual history between the victim and defendant, and non-sexual character evidence to be beneficial at the present stage. With better protection, it can also encourage more victims to testify in court, which in return could promote defendants’ rights to confrontation.

I. Introduction

Rape infringes upon women’s right to sexual behavior. In China, the attitude towards sex is relatively conservative and people tend to judge women’s sexuality harshly. There is an old Chinese saying: “Death by starvation is preferable to loss of chastity.” Rape in China involves complex factors: legal relations, social influence, and evidence verification all bear some special features. The law of rape stresses social values and sets the protection of women’s safety as crucial social goals. The study of rape in China can thus contribute to developing legal reforms that can help reduce sexual assaults on women and bring benefit to our society.

This paper will first look at the official rape statistics in China. It reveals that rape cases registered by Public Security Organs (China’s police departments) are about 30,000 per year, a number relatively small compared to other crimes. However, due to conservative social views and the private nature of the offense, it remains rarely reported, with a high “dark figure” of unreported rapes.

To get a better understanding of the real situation, this paper will look into a study by United Nations focusing on the prevalence of sexual assaults in several Asia-Pacific countries. The research results show that in China, one in five men admitted having committed rape, and nearly one in five women admitted being victim. The United Nations’ survey, along with other surveys, shows the prevalence of rape in China is greater than what official statistics reveal.

This paper will study reasons behind the prevalence of rape in China: the social biases, the male sexual entitlement, the unwillingness of victims to report, and the insufficient legislation. To change this situation, it is important to learn from other countries’ successful practice. The U.S. faced a similar situation from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The U.S. responded by revising rape shield law, at whose center is the basic concept that the rape victim’s sexual history is generally inadmissible in sexual assault cases. This paper will analyze those problems in China and the U.S., and will assess the possibility for passing a rape shield law in China.

To this end, this paper used ‘rape’ as the cause of action and searched on China Judgments Online to see how victims’ sexual histories were used in courts. Due to the high dark figure and the use of victims’ sexual histories in courts, it is necessary for China to have a rape shield law. Meanwhile, there are many differences between the two countries’ legal systems, so revising the rape shield law according to China’s needs will help implement the law and curb the crime in China.