Sexual harassment claims true, professor removed from position

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Allegations of sexual abuse from a professor at Beihang University were found to be true, the school announced after a probe. The professor in question, Chen Xiaowu, was accused of sexual harassment by four female graduate students years ago, while they were in college.

Beihang University announced the investigation results on its official Weibo account Thursday evening. There have already been more than 20,000 "likes" and over 4,000 comments, the vast majority of which support the university's actions.

Chen Xiaowu will lose his professorship and his teaching qualifications. He was also removed from his position as deputy head of the university's undergraduate school.

The first to come forward of the four women, Luo Xixi, told her story on Chinese social media site Weibo at the beginning of this year, lighting up the platform with comments.

Luo said Chen tried to force himself on her after luring her to his sister's house more than 10 years ago. She eventually left crying, but unharmed, After years of silence, Luo said she finally decided to come forward after hearing about the #MeToo campaign in the US.

Started last October after multiple accounts from actresses brought down Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, the #MeToo campaign encouraged women to share their own stories of sexual harassment, using the hashtag #MeToo.

Conducted by an NGO, 2016 survey in China's megacity Guangzhou found that nearly 70 percent of the 7,000 women surveyed reported being harassed. And nearly half of them choose to keep silent, just like Luo did in the past years.

Beihang University says its next step is to further improve regulations to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Maybe a small step for the country, but a good take off for the Chinese version of the "MeToo" campaign.