The women and girls are captured on hidden cameras as they use public or school bathrooms, undress in fitting rooms or relax at home. The footage is posted in anonymous online chat groups with as many as 100,000 members each, from all over China.
In one group, people post nude or seminude photos of women they describe as their current or former wives or girlfriends. One recent message captioned “secretly taken photos of wife” includes pictures of a woman lounging in a nightgown, lying exposed from the waist down.
The group’s members also barter explicit footage that they have taken of women in their lives.
A vast trade in secretly filmed footage of Chinese women and girls has flourished, powered by the anonymity of Telegram, the availability of hidden cameras and the convenience of Chinese online payment apps. People share and trade photos and videos of their girlfriends, wives, relatives and acquaintances — a practice known in Chinese as “toupai chumai,” or “secret filming betrayal.” They also trade such footage of strangers.
Globally, the spread of such nonconsensual sharing of content, a form of what the United Nations describes as digital violence against women, has prompted new laws and enforcement in many countries. But in China, the authorities have not publicly condemned such groups or announced investigations into them even after they have come to light.
The lack of enforcement is striking for a country known for its expansive online surveillance and its ability to track users on platforms, including on overseas services. Instead, activists say, officials have moved to censor discussion of the issue, blocking searches and silencing those who have tried to warn women or press for action.
Some chat groups target young girls. In one Telegram channel, which has more than 65,000 members, for instance, people discussed installing hidden cameras in elementary school bathrooms.
An Underground Industry in Plain Sight
The footage is often described by those who peddle it as having been taken using hidden cameras or cellphones or obtained from hacked surveillance systems. Footage taken surreptitiously up the skirts of women, also known as “upskirting” featured heavily in these groups.
One Telegram channel posted a five-minute video in September tracking a woman in a dress walking through what appears to be an airport in the city of Chengdu. The camera, positioned at a low angle, moves closer to the woman as she waits in a check-in line until it is beneath her skirt. It stays trained on her crotch for almost a minute before she moves away.
Other groups post footage of women or girls taken in schools or at public facilities like hospitals.
Covert footage is used to entice people to pay for access to private channels promising more content. Group members also exchange tips on the best cameras and how to conceal them in water bottles, trash cans and other hiding spots.
This trade flourishes on Telegram because it is known for its minimal oversight of illicit content. Telegram is blocked in China but accessible via virtual private networks that route internet connection outside the country.
The use and sale of hidden cameras is illegal in China, but on the Chinese short video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, businesses openly sell small pinhole cameras, with ads featuring women wearing only underwear. Kuaishou and Douyin did not respond to requests for comment.
Private Telegram groups for the sharing of secretly taken footage of women and girls take payment via the popular Chinese digital payments systems Alipay and WeChat Pay as well as the cryptocurrency Tether. One group offers access to more than 40,000 videos of secretly taken footage from hotels, homes and public toilets for a $20 “V.I.P.” membership.
Alipay and WeChat Pay did not address questions about facilitating payments for content that was secretly filmed but said they forbade transactions related to illegal activity. Telegram said it had “a zero-tolerance policy” for child sex abuse materials and “strict policies” against nonconsensual pornographic images. Tether said that when its stablecoin was linked to criminal activity the company would work with law enforcement agencies.
Perhaps the biggest reason the industry has been able to thrive, according to Chinese citizens who have been investigating these forums, is the inaction on the part of the government.
In South Korea, the discovery of a similar network of Telegram chat rooms sharing exploitative footage of women and girls, known as the “Nth Room” scandal, led to protests, long prison sentences for those involved and changes to the law. In the United States in May, President Trump signed into law the Take It Down Act, criminalizing the sharing of intimate images without consent and requiring platforms to remove them.
In China, a public outcry erupted last summer when a woman exposed a Telegram forum called MaskPark where people shared sexually explicit footage of their current and former female partners, as well as of other women and girls they knew. The woman had discovered the channel, which had more than 80,000 members and dozens of subgroups with more than 300,000 members, after learning that her ex-boyfriend had shared photos and videos of her there.
“It alerted Chinese women that they are not safe in their everyday environment, when they travel, even when they are with their partners,” said Lin Song, a senior lecturer in gender studies at the University of Melbourne.
Yet, despite the firestorm on Chinese social media, government officials remained silent. Groups like MaskPark continue to operate. China’s Ministry of Public Security, the main law enforcement agency, did not respond to requests for comment.
The episode prompted women like Cathy, a recent graduate from Guangdong Province who lives overseas, to try to find the people behind MaskPark. Cathy, who asked to be identified only by her English name out of concern for her security, said she had submitted information to China’s internet regulator with screenshots from inside the group.
“If they wanted to investigate, they have tons of leads to pursue,” she said.
Little Enforcement
Under Chinese law, the legal tools for addressing secret filming are limited. Producing or distributing pornography for profit is a crime punishable by prison, but filming people without their consent is not itself a criminal offense.
As a result, instances of secret filming are usually treated as minor public security violations, according to Zhou Chuikun, a lawyer from Beijing-based Yingke Law Firm, carrying a punishment of up to 10 days of detention and a fine of about $140. (If such explicit footage is shared or sold, the fines can go up to $700.) He said that because Telegram was hosted outside of China, investigating users on it and collecting evidence could be difficult.
“Victims have a very hard time defending their rights,” he said.
Lao Dongyan, a prominent law professor in Beijing, criticized the Chinese legal system’s fixation on obscenity, which she argued came at the cost of women’s rights in the case of MaskPark.
“The women captured in these filmed videos are the primary victims,” she wrote on Weibo. “Treating these videos simply as obscene materials is tantamount to treating them as parties involved in pornographic work. This is absurd.”
The use of V.P.N.s masks the I.P. addresses of users in China. But Chinese police have in the past identified protesters and government critics who have used overseas platforms including Telegram.
Chinese police have also arrested people for posting pornography on those platforms. Last year, a court in Shanghai handed a man surnamed Xu a suspended eight-month prison sentence for posting pornographic videos on X and Telegram, where he charged people for the content. The authorities used transaction details on Alipay and WeChat Pay as evidence against him, according to the judgment.
The authorities in China have many tools to investigate these abuses because domestic payment systems require users to register for accounts with their real names, and police units are embedded in these companies, according to Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“The Chinese government has much more access to people’s personal information compared to many other police around the world,” she said. “If it’s a priority I’m sure they can be tracked.”
Telegram’s features, including its large groups, encryption options and opposition to government interference, have made it a haven for criminals as well as dissidents. The company rarely responds to government requests for information.
Telegram said it deleted a MaskPark group in March 2024. But groups using the same name and sharing similar content were still active until last July. And new ones have formed, several of them claiming to be the original.
Searches on Telegram using Chinese terms related to covert footage turned up more than 200 groups with “secret filming” in their names. The New York Times verified more than 30 active Chinese-language groups where members or administrators regularly posted footage of women and girls that was described as having been secretly filmed.
In one channel formed in November that used the name MaskPark, an administrator of the group told members to stay quiet for a few days. “Otherwise we might be banned again,” the administrator said.
Silencing Those Who Speak Up
The Chinese authorities appear to be muzzling people like Cathy who are trying to bring attention to the problem.
On Chinese social media, search terms related to MaskPark were blocked. Cathy and two other activists whom The Times spoke to said their posts on the issue of secret filming had been removed and their accounts muted or suspended. Chat groups on WeChat for the purpose of warning women and exposing groups like MaskPark also disappeared.
“I feel like the entire government is silencing everyone, preventing them from speaking out and spreading the word,” said Cynthia Du, a 23-year-old from the eastern province of Shandong.
Standing up for women’s rights is increasingly sensitive in China where the government views feminism as disruptive, especially as officials push women toward more traditional roles in hopes of reversing falling birthrates.
As a result, calls for action have been met with suspicion, with some online commentators accusing feminists of making up MaskPark as a way to smear Chinese men. Cathy and Ms. Du have received messages from anonymous internet users threatening to expose their personal information online.
When Cathy posted an ad online looking for volunteers to investigate MaskPark, she got an email with a list of women and their personal information. “Bitch, you’re next,” the message said.
Cathy is worried about getting doxxed. But she has also been encouraged by the dozens of people who want to help expose these groups.
Among those who messaged her are experts in blockchain technology, law and cybersecurity, as well as other Chinese women living overseas who can better access Telegram and other sites. One woman sent her notes on a book about Korea’s Nth room incident and what Chinese activists can learn from it.
“Other people haven’t given up,” she said, “so neither should I.”
Berry Wang contributed reporting.