On the morning of April 16, 2025, the case involving both criminal and civil cases related to bride price refund was adjudicated in the second instance at the Intermediate People’s Court of Datong City. The court rejected the defendant’s appeal and upheld the first-instance verdict of three years’ fixed-term imprisonment for rape.
Since this incident occurred in 2023, some time has passed. Before the court’s ruling, the defendant’s family released a large amount of out-of-context, distorted evidence and statements favorable to the defendant, which attracted considerable public attention. Therefore, we need to first clarify the evidence, then analyze the relevant circumstances and interests.
On January 30, 2023, the defendant and the plaintiff began dating after being introduced by a marriage agency. During their relationship, both parties verbally agreed on a bride price of 188,000 yuan. On May 1 of that year, the defendant’s family held an engagement ceremony for the couple, paying 100,000 yuan in bride price and giving a 7.2-gram ring. At the same time, the defendant and his parents made a written promise to add the plaintiff’s name to the property deed after one year of marriage. On the noon of May 2, the plaintiff and her family hosted a banquet according to local customs to entertain the defendant. After the meal, the defendant and plaintiff went together to the defendant’s apartment on the 14th floor of a building in a community in Yanggao County. The defendant proposed to have sex with the plaintiff, who refused, saying they should wait until after marriage. Subsequently, the defendant disregarded her resistance and forcibly engaged in sexual intercourse with the plaintiff.
After the incident, the plaintiff was emotionally agitated and set fire to the bedroom wardrobe and the curtains in the living room, then fled the room via the stairs to the 13th floor shouting “Help,” and was forcibly dragged back into the room on the 14th floor by the defendant. During this process, the defendant took her phone to control her until they returned home, when the mother of the plaintiff called, and the defendant returned the phone to her. That night, the plaintiff reported the incident to the police.
Forensic examination showed bruises on her left and right arms and right wrist. Scene investigation revealed the curtains in the bedroom had been pulled down and burned, and the curtains in the living room showed signs of burning. Surveillance footage from the community showed the plaintiff escaping from the room via the stairs to the 13th floor and then being forcibly dragged back to the scene in the 14th-floor apartment. DNA analysis confirmed the presence of semen from the defendant and mixed DNA from both parties on the bed sheets.
When questioned, the plaintiff stated she had explicitly expressed her opposition to premarital sex during their relationship. Her mother also confirmed that the plaintiff cried afterward, claiming she was raped by the defendant. That night, her mother also spoke with the defendant by phone, with a recording showing: “We are engaged, this is an undeniable fact… but you raped my daughter, that’s also undeniable, right?” The defendant responded “Yes, yes.”
Audio recordings from the return trip also confirmed the defendant told her mother, “If I dare to do it, I dare to take responsibility. I never said I didn’t do it.” All these audio materials, physical examination records, scene investigation notes, and photos form a complete chain of evidence sufficient to establish that the defendant raped the plaintiff.
The court held that, although the two were in a dating relationship and even engaged according to folk customs, they had not registered their marriage. The defendant violated the plaintiff’s will by forcibly having sex, constituting the crime of rape.
After organizing this evidence and reasonably analyzing the scene, it is clear that this behavior constitutes completed rape. However, afterward, both families sought to leverage the incident for greater benefits. The plaintiff’s family used the incident as leverage, demanding the defendant add her name to the property deed, and that they register their marriage at the civil affairs bureau as soon as possible, also proposing that some bride price could be paid later. The plaintiff herself insisted on fighting back. During negotiations between her family and the defendant’s family, the police were notified of the defendant’s phone number for investigation.
In January 2024, the plaintiff returned the bride price to the marriage agency, which asked the defendant to collect it. However, the defendant’s mother refused to retrieve the bride price, citing “fear of additional disputes.” Subsequently, the defendant’s family spread false information online, attempting to smear the plaintiff. They claimed “no actual rape occurred,” accused her of greedily accepting bride price to cheat marriage, and said she only reported rape four days after the act. They also claimed the two were cohabiting and had engaged in many intimate acts, citing her “underwear” as evidence.
The defendant’s father even posted a Weibo to manipulate public opinion, distorting the facts with questions like “Did the plaintiff have at least two other matchmaking records at the agency? Is there some hidden story?” and “The tested underwear and vaginal swab tissues showed no semen or STR profiles.” He tried to justify his son’s actions by claiming, “My son said they had consensual intimacy, not rape.”
Meanwhile, the defendant’s family led many men with similar views, and rumors spread that the plaintiff had a history of marriage and was trying to cheat through bride price, with accusations of “entrapment.” However, they failed to identify the flaws in her statements, while their own statements contained many unreasonable points. They only claimed that semen was not found on certain items, ignoring the fact that semen and mixed DNA were found on the bed sheets, and that the plaintiff’s intact hymen was used as evidence of no sexual assault—an absurd argument.
In fact, the hymen can have a hole, and menstrual blood flows through it; it does not necessarily rupture during sex, and some women only experience hymenal rupture during childbirth. Even if ruptured, the hymen can heal naturally. Using hymen status as proof of sexual activity is mistaken; women can also tear their hymen through other activities like exercise.
Even after the second-instance verdict, the defendant’s family remained intent on appealing, claiming they would “accept an acquittal” and that “the plaintiff still did not appear in court, and her son looked quite strong,” continuing to defend the rapist’s “justice.”
During their various distortions, many questions arise: Why do so many support defending the rapist and distorting facts? Why do the plaintiff’s family demand money for marriage but ignore her suffering? Are the plaintiff’s parents and she aligned? Why, despite sufficient evidence, are there still rumors and attacks against the plaintiff? To clarify the facts and find the root causes, dialectical thinking must be used to properly understand this case.
In reality, this incident involves complex contradictions. It is not just a conflict between the defendant’s and plaintiff’s families on the surface, but a deeper contradiction between the plaintiff’s family and the vested interests of the defendant’s family and other beneficiaries, as well as the victim herself.
The private ownership system in modern society has peeled away the “veil of tender family relations,” immersing it in “self-interest ice water,” reducing so-called kinship to pure monetary relations. Feudal parents naturally regard their children, raised with effort and money, as their property, demanding unlimited ownership and control over them. The economic root of China’s twisted feudal parentalism stems from this. Since parents treat their children as part of their property, driven by rampant selfishness under capitalism, they seek maximum returns from this property.
Women, affected by physiological activities like menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth, have less time for social activities and are bound by reactionary ideas to undertake more household chores, making them “inferior labor commodities” rejected by the private production sector. Therefore, in patriarchal inheritance-based private households, sons are the heirs to property, while daughters become slaves of another family after marriage.
In marriage, it is “by the parents’ command,” and cannot be opposed. To extract more money from the “spilled water,” feudal patriarchs treat daughters as short-term investment tools, selling them as commodities at marriage to recover their “investment costs.” This is the root of the bride price phenomenon.
Bride price is not a gift given to the woman but an expenditure to purchase her as a “commodity” from her parents. The woman is not a “little fairy” counting her money with her parents but is sold by her parents to become a sexual tool and household slave of the husband’s family, subjected to dual oppression.
In this incident, the plaintiff’s parents only saw the benefit of selling their daughter and wanted to turn cold family affection into “warm money.” After the rape, they only asked the defendant’s family for compensation, more bride price, and transferring property rights, even if they could not pay immediately. They reached a consensus to use money to buy the victim’s body and dignity. But the plaintiff refused to accept this, returning the bride price and fighting for justice, ultimately bringing the rapist to court.
Why are there so many rumors, slanders, and attacks against women in Chinese society? To answer this, one must delve into the social system. In fact, male oppression of women is built on exploitation systems; gender oppression arises from class oppression. Without private ownership and patriarchal inheritance, there would be no economic disparity between genders, and no male dominance. The family as a basic economic unit also depends on private ownership, enabling patriarchs to control, dictate, and dominate other family members.
In private ownership societies, men can possess women, play with them at will, and patriarchs can own children, treating them as private property. Whenever these men are dissatisfied, they think of having a woman to play with or children to discipline, treating them as private assets for profit, which relieves their anger. Even without romantic marriage or family formation, men can continue oppressing women through consuming bourgeois-made spiritual opiates—galgame, borderline videos, pornography—and enjoy this while harboring resentment against the bourgeois patriarchal society.
Because the interests of oppressors exist, men who enjoy the benefits of gender oppression tend to ignore and suppress the women’s own struggles—women who face oppression from confucian patriarchs in their families, suffer sexual assault from men, are slandered and attacked by society. Those who wish to distort the rape case into a false story see women as commodities, believing money can buy their way to play with them at will. They spread rumors that the woman lied about marriage, took bride price, and then accused the man of rape, ignoring the fact that she already returned the bride price. This fact alone causes the loud-mouthed men to fall behind in public criticism.
This case once again proves that Confucianism’s support for patriarchal authority is a defense of the exploitative class system. Oppressors cannot achieve liberation themselves!
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/675071014
Previously, I wrote a brief commentary on related events: “订婚强奸案”二审结束，男方父母亲百般污蔑