Alibaba manager fired amid storm over rape allegations

BEIJING • Alibaba Group Holding has fired a manager accused of rape, moving to contain the fallout after an employee's account of her ordeal went viral on social media and ignited fierce debate about rampant sexism across China's tech industry.

The Chinese Internet giant did not identify the manager.

Mr Li Yonghe, appointed just last month to lead a newly created division overseeing much of Alibaba's non-retail businesses from food delivery to travel, has resigned alongside his human resources chief for mishandling the incident.

The sexual assault allegations, first reported by the employee on Aug 2, have unearthed systemic challenges with the firm's mechanisms, chief executive officer Daniel Zhang said in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News.

The incident, which involved an external client and several executives during a night of heavy drinking, highlighted pervasive mistreatment of female workers across companies in China.

Mr Zhang, in a lengthy pre-dawn memo, vowed to step up protections for women across the firm while addressing its failure to act.

Yesterday, one of the top trending items with over 800 million views on the Twitter-like Weibo was an online declaration by about 6,000 employees protesting against "systemic inadequacies and a lack of protection for female employees".

"Behind everyone's deep concern about the incident was not just sympathy and care for the traumatised colleague but also tremendous sadness for the challenges in Alibaba's culture," Mr Zhang wrote, issuing an impassioned plea to "Aliren", or Alibaba's people.

"This incident is a humiliation for all Aliren. We must rebuild, and we must change."

It is unclear how Mr Li's departure will affect Alibaba's business - the so-called local services division was one of the corporation's fastest-growing arms, tasked with competing with other on-demand giants such as Meituan in nascent arenas such as groceries.

Many of the comments over the weekend centred on Alibaba's failure to act until the allegations went public. The scandal engulfed Alibaba just as it was trying to move past a bruising months-long investigation by antitrust regulators into monopolistic behaviour, which helped kick off Beijing's campaign against industries from ride-hailing to fintech and education.

Alibaba has become the highest-profile symbol of abuses regarded as prevalent throughout Chinese businesses and at tech firms, rooted in a hard-charging environment that often prioritises profit and achievement over culture.

The #MeToo movement first came to prominence in China in 2018 when allegations against a professor at a Beijing university were published on social media. Since then, a number of allegations have been made against academics, environmentalists and journalists.

President Xi Jinping has pledged to fight against workplace discrimination amid a shrinking workforce, even as the country cracks down on feminist activists and scrubs the Web of sensitive #MeToo content.

China bans job discrimination based on gender and stipulates the importance of equal opportunity. Yet a lack of enforcement means there are few repercussions to discriminatory practices.

The country's largest corporations have thus far been largely shielded from the upheaval of the #MeToo movement in the West, in part because of a lack of recourse for reporting incidents and longstanding sexist norms.

Businesses have also tended to deal with gender discrimination away from the public spotlight.

From hazing rituals during which women simulate sex acts to forced drinking and job ads that use women as bait to lure male workers, sexism remains endemic particularly in the tech industry.

Alibaba will now work with the police on their investigation, based on an account the female employee posted online after she first reported the incident internally.

The employee's story emerged only after she began handing out fliers in the company cafeteria last week, hoping to be heard.

According to the woman, her boss came into her hotel room and raped her when she was inebriated after a night of drinking with clients in the city of Jinan.

The accused has confessed he performed intimate acts with the female employee and law enforcement officials will determine whether he broke the law, according to the memo.

BLOOMBERG