Intimate Partner Violence in Chinese Societies

Abstract

The Chinese are the largest ethnic group in the world. In the United States, Chinese Americans are the largest Asian-American group, constituting about 22.6% of the Asian-American population (Uba, 1994). Although the number of studies on intimate partner violence (IPV) in Chinese societies has been increasing during the last decade, there are many unanswered questions about specific patterns of IPV and culture-specific risk factors among Chinese. This article reviews and summarizes, in both text and tables, some of the most significant research to date, with a special focus on answering these questions: What do we know about the prevalence of different types of IPV? What are the universal and culture-specific risk factors? Are any critical issues identified in studying Chinese culture-specific risk factors? What are the implications for future research?