Alibaba fires manager accused of rape

China's largest e-commerce company, Alibaba, has fired a manager who is accused of sexually assaulting a female employee after her detailed account of the incident on the company's intranet emerged among the top-trending items on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

The manager, who worked at Alibaba's grocery delivery unit City Retail, admitted that he was involved in "intimate acts" when the victim was intoxicated, Alibaba Chief Executive Daniel Zhang said in an intranet memo. The police are investigating the incident.

The president of the City Retail unit, Li Yonghe, as well as his human resources chief resigned for failing to act on the victim's complaint, the memo read.

Alibaba has pledged to introduce policies to prevent sexual harassment, saying the company had a "zero-tolerance policy against sexual misconduct" and that ensuring a safe workplace for all our employees was its "top priority." 

"This incident is a humiliation for all Alibaba employees. We must rebuild, and we must change," Zhang said.

What are the accusations?

The female staffer has alleged that her supervisor and a client sexually assaulted her in a hotel room during a business trip to the city of Jinan in the eastern Shandong province.

In an 11-page internal post, she wrote that her superiors forced her to drink alcohol with her coworkers during a dinner on the trip before she was molested. The victim said her complaints made to superiors and the human resources department were ignored.

How does Alibaba plan to prevent sexual abuse?

Zhang said the e-commerce giant will conduct training for all its employees to prevent incidents of sexual misconduct. The company will also launch a channel for staff to report incidents.

The company plans to issue a formal, zero-tolerance anti-sexual harassment policy.

Zhang condemned "the ugly culture of forced drinking."

"Regardless of gender, whether it is a request made by a customer or supervisor, our employees are empowered to reject it," The Alibaba CEO said in the memo.

What are other Alibaba employees saying?

The incident has sparked a debate among Alibaba employees on the company's culture, an employee told Reuters news agency. The staff have demanded justice for the victim and rigorous measures to prevent sexual harassment.

The state media has hit out at Alibaba for acting on the victim's complaint only after she went public.

"Alibaba could not offer an answer that satisfies public opinion for this ham-handed inaction," said an editorial in the Global Times tabloid.

The incident is the latest setback for the e-commerce company which has been under scrutiny from the government. The latter has been seeking to rein in the clout of China's tech titans.

The company was fined a record $2.75 billion (€2.34 billion) in April for abusing its dominant market position.

In April last year, users on Alibaba-backed Weibo complained that critical reports on the platform about an affair involving a top Alibaba executive disappeared.

What does the incident mean for #MeToo in China?

The Alibaba incident has put the spotlight on the plight of women in Chinese companies, which are infamous for sweeping cases of sexual misconduct under the carpet aided by political apathy.

The global #MeToo movement has not had much success in the country where taking sexual harassment cases to court can be an ordeal and online feminist groups are routinely censored.

However, in a recent case, a Chinese-Canadian singer and actor, Kris Wu, was arrested in Beijing on suspicion of rape after a university student accused him of forcing girls to drink alcohol and then sexually assaulting them.

"Even if this doesn’t lead to serious consequences for Alibaba, I think people are learning from this kind of protesting experience," Pocket Sun, co-founder of SoGal Ventures, which invests in female entrepreneurs, told Bloomberg.

"If this is not the real turning point, then the next one might be, or the one after the next might be, because people get less tolerant over time."

ap/hg (Reuters, AFP, AP)