Feminism in China: History, Confinement, and Stratification

Feminism in historical context

Looking back at the modern history of China, with consecutive wars against invaders and a series of domestic revolutions, feminism has actually been playing its important role in social movements for over a century. From the sacrifice of Qiujin— an early feminist and revolutionist, which triggered the Xinhai Revolution that finally ended 2000-year imperial rule in China— to the female officials of the Chinese Communist Party in last the century who brought series of social changes by abrogating the married name, polygamy, and advocating gender equality, feminism has already taken its root in this Eastern land. However, in most situations, feminism in China is usually covered under a broader political narrative. Although these feminist movements have greatly improved the social status of females in China, it is rarely recognized as the same “feminism” seen in western society, but more or less a localization of the concept under the communist system that aims to eliminate inequality among social strata.

Stepping into the 21st century, with the hosting of the fourth World Women Conference in Beijing, feminism in China seemed to welcome its summit. This event also introduced NGO— which was an unfamiliar concept to Chinese citizens— into China. Women of new generations, who are mostly the single child in their family and receive higher education even more resources from their parents (which is ironically one of the few positive effects of the one-child policy since traditionally Chinese parents back in those days would prioritize their sons in education and accommodation) become the new force to thrive feminism. They are more aware of the inequalities existing in societies than their previous generations, and dare more to make changes.

Feminism Struggle under Confinement 

However, this prospering feminism has encountered a backlash since 2015 in real life in China. With five feminists who posted anti-sexual-assault signs on subways being detained for 37 days and a block of #metoo on social media, it’s not difficult to see that the government in China has started to strengthen the censorship of feminists’ movements. The officials have  claimed that they restricted these movements only because they were “disturbing the social orders” and “meddling in Chinese domestic affairs by hawking feminism and equal-rights protection, with an ultimate goal of subverting the Party’s rule.”(Cheng, 2019). While these terms have vague meanings and few proofs to support, they do offer a binary mindset that convinces some citizens that all those people who try to protest and demand their rights are potential trouble makers.

With the highly limited public parade opportunities in China, social media has become  the main warzone for Chinese females to express their demands and fight for their equal rights. Though it is not an easy thing, media censorship constantly troubles them. When the ‘Metoo’ movement set the fire on sexual assault globally, it has been kept silent in China. More accurately speaking, it was suppressed by the government by blocking the hashtag #metoo. They immediately figured out other ways to replace the hashtags such as “Rice Bunny”(which pronounces similar to “me too” in Chinese) and “Sisters are coming”( which echo the Korean feminism movements), but these tags didn’t survive long.

Confined and restricted, the Chinese feminism movement still makes its way in the world of media thanks to the fast dissemination of the internet. Feminist influencers on social Weibo have already attracted millions of viewers and supporters and the number of which is still growing. They usually post feminism quotes and criticize the sexism phenomena both online and in real life. But what they contribute the most in the feminism movement is their influence to confront capitalists and authoritative power via the media.  

In 2018, Qianqian Luo, a Doctor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics which is one of the most renowned universities in China, accused professor Xiaowu Chen (of the same institution) of sexual assault. The university took measures to take down the trending headline of this incident on social media to avoid public attention. It was those feminist influencers who widely spread the Doctor’s story and accusation while the mainstream media kept silent in reporting that made this incident known to the masses. The ripple effects were obvious. In a few weeks, hundreds of female students from other renowned institutions like Xiamen University, Beijing Film Academy and Nanchang University made their accusations of their professors as well. It was then that citizens in China  got shocked by such a broad existence of sexual assault in universities, and realized that sexual assault has become a non-neglectable issue.

Although these influencers are not the only ones to make voices for feminism movements, and it’s not sensible to completely credit the success of online feminism conversations to them, they do provide a sense of identity and community to certain groups of females in China who seek to be heard and understood by the public.

The Pan-feminism Era: Fragmentation and Stratification

Like feminism in other countries, feminism in China is also faced with stigma. To many Asian people, especially males, feminism is an unsettling, radical and even unreasonable quest. Some people stigmatize feminists as women who are non-obedient and not willing to play the traditional female roles in private spheres, which they claim as “the responsibilities of women”. Others think that feminists’ radical announcements are depressing males, and their moves might even hurt their benefits. I’m not going to extend my discussion here to explain this misogyny further, but it’s worth mentioning that “feminist” is not a monolithic group in which all the feminists believe the same absolute definition of feminism. Rather, each feminist has her/his life experiences and backgrounds that shape her/his outlooks and beliefs. There is no such thing as “ the real feminist” or “the good feminist” so long as this person is advocating for a more equal society. Feminists are blends of people with varied opinions and different behaviors shaped by subcultures. It is a pan-feminism era. The Pan-feminism era empowers women by providing a sense of identity and a community where they can share their struggles and thoughts together. Yet it also causes unexpected repercussions. 

Nowadays on social media in China, feminists influencers are gradually separated into different groups with contrasting assertions. Some feminists claim they are non-radical and “harmless” in response to the worries and stigmas. They try to differentiate themselves from the “radical” feminists whom I will introduce later. They even echo the stigma enforced on those radical feminists, which is called “Countryside feminists”(slightly similar to “feminazis”), creating hashtags to prove their “innocence”. While these feminists might try to appeal to more audiences to stand with the rights of women, they probably don’t realize that a social group can’t escape from stigmas by differentiation. Since as a united social group, people won’t recognize who you are by what you think and what you say. Rather, they distinguish who you are by which co-culture you belong to. Labeling is easy, but eliminating labels will cost more than they afford.

As for the so-called radical feminists, they are considered radical partially because of their assertions of anti-marriage. Ironically, they also stigmatize other self-proclaimed feminists and even other married women as “harming females’ rights as a whole”. They believe that marriage is a broken system that erodes women’s rights. So long as women refuse to marry and give birth to children under the patriarchal system, society will reconstruct as a women-centered one. What they believe the most is that if a woman can’t escape a male’s manipulation, she deserves the suffering and should not be helped. Their assertions seem to overlap with some statements made by Beauvoir, who is one of the most renowned feminists. Beauvoir (1949) wrote in her famous work Le deuxième sexe that so long as women are allowed to obtain benefits from males as housewives, their dreams of reaping where one has not sown will continue to be fulfilled which in the end cripples their success. 

However, these feminists who attack the housewives and married women seem to neglect a point made by Beauvoir that it is due to the gender inequality in economics that women are still confined in the private spheres. Even Beauvoir probably didn’t realize the importance of housewives’ work. The social reproduction work which is a generalization of care work done by housewives, teachers and other social groups accounts for approximately half of the GDP. If housewives are enjoying the benefits of the patriarchal system, how come their work is never acknowledged and uncovered? While most people recognize the working class, few people acknowledge the existence of the servant of the working class (Marçal & Vogel, 2016). Like the previous group of feminists, these feminists also ignore the fact that stigmas are representative of a group rather than something that can be separated. As Federici Silvia (1975) argued, so long as the enforced ideas that women are innate to do care work are left to be attacked, women’s identity as a unity will always be considered as someone’s wife and servant so much that even in the workplace, their jobs will be highly overlapping to the ones at home.

Another thing worth noticing is that most women who claim breaking the marriage system is the sole solution to empower females are usually from the upper class and have better education and are blessed with advantageous resources (according to their profiles on social media). This identity of a higher social status makes them believe that it’s entirely a woman’s fault or it’s because of a woman’s weakness if she fails to confront her unfair treatment. This kind of point of view was once quite popular and had great impacts on many feminism movements especially when it comes to confronting domestic violence. Some feminists blame the victims of domestic violence for being obedient to power and claim that they should have been able to leave the situation. Stratification among feminists is making the discourse of feminism more difficult. Since within the groups of feminists, they argue and attack more than collaborate. Many of them never realize that people with “lower class” have less opportunities of accessing knowledge and are more likely to be stuck in their dilemma. They lack the so-called sociological imagination by Charles Wright Mills that they are usually structurally blinded by their own milieux and ignore the fact that it is hard to count on an individual’s effort to change the environment that shapes him/her (Mills, 1961). If this fragmentation and stratification continues, the feminism in China will be under a deadlock that women in weaker positions will possibly never be able to have a voice, as many sociologists worry (n.d.).

References

Beauvoir, S. de. (1949). Le deuxième sexe. Gallimard.

Cheng, A. (2019, November 5). China Has Been Slow To Embrace #MeToo. Pop-Up Sexual Consent Workshops Might Help. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/11/05/774697401/china-has-been-slow-to-embrace-metoo-pop-up-sexual-consent-workshops-might-help

Federici, S. (1975). Wages against housework. Bristol: Power of women collective jointly Falling Wall Press.

Marçal Katrine, & Vogel, S. (2016). Who cooked Adam Smiths’ dinner? a story about women and economics. New York, NY: Pegasus Books LLC. 

      Mills, C. W. (1961). The sociological imagination. New York: Grove Press.  

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