The recording began with a scratchy fumbling sound, followed by a deep inhale and the clear, high tones of a young woman singing a cappella in Chinese. In a bell-like, pitch-perfect voice, Li Maizi – just twenty-five years old – sang the song of defiance that has become an anthem of China’s new feminist movement, to the melody of Les Miserables’ “Do You Hear The People Sing,” but with lyrics:

Are you the same as me?

We believe in a world with equality

This is a song of freedom and dignity

A song for all women!

Li Maizi (born Li Tingting) Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Li Maizi (whose birth name is Li Tingting) circulated her digital recording on social media, just days after she was released from more than a month of arbitrary criminal detention by Chinese authorities in April 2015, along with the other women who are known as China’s Feminist Five: Wei Tingting, Zheng Churan, Wu Rongrong and Wang Man. China’s security apparatus is in the midst of an unprecedented crackdown on feminist activists across the country. But Li’s song announced to the Chinese government that in spite of sustained abuse and threats by security agents during her incarceration, she was unbroken and ready to fight back.

I believe that American women distraught over the election of Donald Trump can learn from persecuted feminist activists in China and around the world. I – like so many other women – believed we were on the verge of making history by electing our first woman president, Hillary Rodham Clinton. When I heard the election result, I felt a profound sorrow mixed with rage. I cried every day. I could barely sleep and when I did, I woke up feeling revolted.

When I heard the election result, I felt a profound sorrow mixed with rage. I cried every day Leta Hong Fincher

My rage and heartbreak are intensified by the fact that I had only just found the courage weeks ago to come out about my own traumatising sexual assault at age 15. I felt ashamed and afraid I would be blamed for what they did to me. So I deeply repressed it, never confronted my attackers when I saw them in my neighbourhood and did not mention it for more than three decades. When I think about the fact that Donald Trump – who has boasted about grabbing women by their genitals and has been accused of sexual assault – will become the next US president, I relive the trauma of my own assault all over again.

Then I remember the extraordinary bravery of young Chinese feminists and I am determined to resist.

On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, security agents arrested Chinese feminist and LGBTQ activist Wei Tingting for planning to hand out stickers about sexual harassment on subways and buses. They confiscated her glasses so she couldn’t see and took away her snow boots so she would freeze in the sub-zero interrogation room of a Beijing police station.

Wei, 26 years old then, had never challenged China’s one-party political system before, but now she began to despise her country and want to escape abroad. She felt a deep grief overpowering her, so she kicked her legs up to keep herself warm and sang songs out loud to let the other arrested women know that she, too, was with them. She put her ear up against the wall of her isolation room and when she heard the voices of the other arrested feminists, her spirits were buoyed. In recovering her sense of defiance, she writes in a personal account of her detention that she experienced “the joy of betraying Big Brother.”

Chinese Feminists including Li Maizi (Li Tingting) Photograph: No credit

All of China’s Feminist Five suffered severe psychological and sometimes physical abuse in detention. Many more of their feminist partners across China continue to face constant surveillance and harassment by a patriarchal, authoritarian state. Yet these women find inspiration in solidarity and are more energised than ever before in their struggle for equality and social justice.

China’s government does not allow freedom of assembly, so women cannot take to the streets to protest violations of their rights. Yet in many countries, women have been galvanised by crises to rise up against their patriarchal governments. In Poland, women in dozens of cities held a general strike October 2016 to protest a proposed law that would effectively ban abortion. In response to the massive outpouring of anger, Polish lawmakers rejected the proposal.

Unlike autocratic countries, the US guarantees rights to freedom of assembly, and we must exercise those rights

In India, thousands of people took to the streets in 2012 to protest the death of a woman who had been gang raped in Delhi. Collective anger at the gang rape fuelled new forms of feminist resistance, such as the campaigns Why Loiter and Take Back the Night Kolkata, according to Srila Roy. In America, the critical race scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum launched the #SayHerName campaign in 2015 to raise awareness about police killings of black women and girls.

As women prepare for a terrifying future under a president who has boasted about sexual assault, chosen a vice president who is anti-abortion and surrounded himself with white supremacists, let us not lose hope. Unlike autocratic countries where open protests are banned, the US guarantees rights to freedom of assembly, and we must exercise those rights. No doubt a Trump presidency will undermine the UN sustainable development goal 5 targets of eliminating discrimination and violence against all women and girls. The UN must play a much more active role in denouncing inevitable attacks on women’s rights in America and globally.

Many women – particularly women of colour – feel betrayed by more than half of white women in America who voted for a bigot who boasts of sexual assault. The votes of these women show how powerful internalised sexism can be. But the time for mourning is over. In America, women must come together with those most oppressed in our society – black women and Native American women – and form coalitions with other persecuted groups such as Muslims and LGBTQ communities. In forming these coalitions, we must be vigilant about the sexism of male “progressives” who see the oppression of women as a marginal – rather than central – issue.

This election result is a catastrophic blow for women, but it should also be our call to arms. Let us harness our collective rage to use nonviolent protest and other forms of peaceful resistance against our misogynistic and racist institutions. Let us build a stronger, more inclusive, global feminist movement. Let us forge deeper bonds in solidarity with our sisters around the world, who are all fighting in different ways against a common enemy: patriarchy.

Leta Hong Fincher is the author of Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. She is working on a second book about the feminist movement in China (forthcoming from Verso).

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter. Join the conversation with the hashtag #Dev2030.