The female employee at the Chinese e- commerce giant was fired after accusing her former supervisor and a client of rape.
The state-owned newspaper reported that Zhou was terminated at the end of November. She was terminated by a letter signed off by a Hangzhou-based affiliate of the Chinese internet company, Alibaba.
The employee disseminated false information about the case, according to the letter. It said that the accusation triggered strong social concern that negatively impacted the company.
Zhou told the company in August that her supervisor and a client had sexually assault her during a work trip. She reported the incident to her supervisors but didn't hear back. After two weeks without a response, Zhao posted an 11-page PDF to the company's intranet, exposing her case to more than 250,000 employees.
The case went public and caused a lot of discussion about sexual harassment and China's culture of business drinking.
According to a memo seen by the news agency, the accusations prompted the CEO to take aim at the "ugly culture of forced drinking" in the company. The manager in question was fired and will never be rehired, according to the memo. Ten employees were dismissed for sharing Zhou's account.
The sexual assault case against the manager was dropped by the Chinese prosecutors.
She told Dahe Daily she would fight her dismissal.
She told the outlet that the company has no right to fire her because she didn't make any mistakes.
An Insider request for comment was not immediately responded to. The woman's lawyer confirmed her dismissal to The New York Times.
