A growing nationalistic fervour is fuelling a torrent of vitriol against anyone speaking out against the state, especially women’s rights activists

Late last month, an “unknown hill in the Chinese desert” was blanketed in scores of large red and white banners, flapping vitriol in the breeze. “I hope you die, bitch,” said one. “Little bitch, screw the feminists,” said others.

They were all actual messages sent to women, a direct act of harassment anonymised by social media. They were sent during weeks of intense debate about the treatment of women on platforms such as Weibo, sparked by the abuse of Xiao Meili who posted video of a man who threw hot liquid at her after she asked him to stop smoking.

Some artists and activists established a temporary physical “Internet Violence Museum” to show how online violence on the Internet in China brutally attacked feminists. This project responded to the recent persecution of feminists by nationalist trolls and major online platforms. pic.twitter.com/PbNVbtH98a

Related: The Chinese government is trying to rebrand forced sterilization as feminism | Arwa Mahdawi

Every time nationalistic sentiment runs high, a woman is cyberbullied, from Fang Fang to Tzu-i Chuang, from Vicky Xu to Xiao Meili. Ethnic Chinese women are seen as theState’s property; whenever they’re deemed to have strayed from patriarchal values, they are damned. https://t.co/cwlRolETQU

This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.