Editor's Introduction

Abstract

In a sense, post-Mao China may be witnessing a decline in the status of women at the same time that Chinese researchers are engaged in increasingly sophisticated and wide-ranging studies and debates on women's roles. Western writings on Chinese women have recognized, for over a decade, that the popular Cultural Revolution slogan alleging that "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" was more an aspiration than a statement of fact. A series of persuasive studies focusing primarily on the period prior to the current reforms have documented a continuing lack of sexual equality in China, and the difficulties of achieving "women's liberation."1 Those concentrating on post-Mao China have seen little indication that the policies of Deng Xiaoping and the reformers offer new solutions to this old problem.2 On the contrary, recent scholarly writings by China specialists in the West have asserted-in the words of one-that current policies emphasizing economic modernization may be "more detrimental to women's interests than (has) been the case at any time in China since 1949."3 The argument, of course, is that Deng Xiaoping's development strategy represents an open repudiation of the Maoist emphasis on the transformation of Chinese society as a core component of the pursuit of economic development. Women's liberation as presently conceived, therefore, can only follow-not precede or even be concurrent with-economic success.