Feminism with Chinese characteristics: A scoping review of the new generation of feminist activism in China

The current status of feminism in China reflects its precariousness as a school of thought, an activist practice, and a topic of study. By historicizing the study and practice of feminism since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, this essay reflects upon conducting research and teaching feminist activism in contemporary China. The shift from state feminism to NGO feminism to a loose and current network of feminists who greatly rely on digital media and the internet for their visibility and advocacy sits in accordance with the liberation of the market, the proliferation of consumer culture, the embrace of all things feminine, and the convergence of state control and market capitalism. Ever-evolving gender dynamics in Chinese society oblige researchers to investigate these dynamics when they seek to explain Chinese feminist activism, given the nuances of history, transnational influence, impact of media and technology, and specific geopolitical factors.

A group of private lawyers known as rights-protection (weiquan) lawyers are emerging in China showing keen interest in solving the cases affecting the public interest. These different types of weiquan lawyers helping public to shape the development of civil society.

Standpoint theory One of the obvious casualties has been feminist standpoint theory (FST). This emerged out of the philosophy of consciousness raising, which held that women had common experiences by virtue of their social positioning, and that the “subjugated knowledge” which came from that perspective was not only different but better. In other words, women were epistemologically privileged. In its more sophisticated versions this became the view that by reflecting on their common women’s perspective through a process of collective intellectual and political work, feminists could reach a more accurate take on reality than was available to those with vested interests in its misrepresentation. By the time black women, lesbians, working class women and others had angrily repudiated the amalgamation of their experiences to those of white, professional, straight women; by the time judgmental relativists had insisted there could be no grounds, other than those of affiliation and preference, for judging between feminist knowledge and other “knowledges”, by the time its Enlightenment heritage had been properly picked over and disparaged, FST’s sun was very low. In an article published last year in Signs, Hekman claims that FST always tried to reconcile the irreconcilable by bringing together a conception of truth as perspectival and an opposing notion of truth as absolute and subject-centred (1997, 356). For her, FST represented a bridge from modernism to postmodernism. She wants us to welcome the demise of the modernist notion of objectivity, which opens the door to a Foucauldian understanding of knowledge — and of power. But what Hekman, and others, see as a contradiction in the heart of FST stems from their own confusion of the transitive and intransitive, of epistemology and ontology. The conceptual and practical means we use to grasp the world are historically relative, but the characteristics and powers of the world they address are independent of our means of knowing. Knowledge is situated and perspectival, but that does not mean all perspectives are equally good, or that there are no good ways of judging between them. While there are no self-evident criteria for making such judgements, the internal coherence of the account, its scope and power to “situate possibilities” (Bhaskar 1989, 46), its implications for other accounts, and its practical effects are all relevant. Certainly, FST needs radical overhauling. It must substitute for the notion of “epistemological privilege” the idea of different opportunities for, and interests in, knowledge afforded by different social positions. But if FST is repudiated rather than developed or replaced, with it goes the aim of a non-sexist, yet fallibilistic, “successor science” which looks to explain the often ignored varied phenomena of women’s lives in order to change their unwanted features.

Since fourth-wave feminism rose in the early 2010s, digital feminist activism has attracted increasing scholarly attention, bringing a new perspective to feminist research and practices. Drawing on the analytic framework of digital feminist activism, this paper primarily investigates how Chinese feminists use social media platforms, especially Weibo, to speak up, facilitate feminist awareness, and resist patriarchal oppression. Through analysis of two online activities in China since 2018, namely the #MeToo movement and the protest the Korean deepfake crisis, this paper closely studies media discourses of Chinese Internet users in support of feminism. The main objective is to highlight how Chinese feminists challenge deeply ingrained patriarchal values and contribute to the development of feminism under China’s online censorship and restrictions. Ultimately, this research sheds light on the role of Chinese feminists in online activities and their efforts to promote the values of feminism.

In recent years in China, NGO activism, street gatherings, and the direct expression of gender and sexual rights have been curtailed, yet paradoxically, online feminist expression and organizing, as well as gay visibility, are happening on an unprecedented scale. Inspired by the notions of slow violence and slow hope, this article proposes the concept of slow resistance in relation to ‘illiberalism’ to think through this paradox. Analyzing recent rich and multifaceted, yet often overlooked, feminist activism in China as an example of slow resistance, the article considers slow resistance in ‘illiberal’ contexts as characterized by its context-dependent (in)visibility due to censorship and limitations in global knowledge production and information circulation. Furthermore, slow resistance can be used to understand activism on a global and transnational scale, beyond the oversimplified liberal/illiberal binary. This binary often fails to capture the complexity of political shifts and social changes within ‘illiberal’ contexts. Moreover, the concept of slow resistance challenges the understanding of power solely as state power and resistance solely as opposition to state power. Developing the concept within feminist activism also highlights the importance of gender and sexual politics in understanding social and political change. Slow resistance offers an indeterminate temporality of resistance that challenges narratives of progress in modernization projects and narratives of decline and despair often associated with ‘illiberal states.’ It is important to note that an excessive emphasis on state oppression or illiberal tendencies may paradoxically hinder, rather than facilitate, the potential for (slow) resistance in such contexts.

While China’s environmental problems have been well publicized to a global audience, its citizens’ environmental activism is lesser known. This paper assesses the major environmental activism that Chinese environmental Non-Government Organizations and Chinese citizens have engaged in since the mid-nineties to date, focusing, in particular, on the unique nature of such activism in an authoritarian context. I argue that environmental activism in China has garnered legitimacy and provided citizens with opportunities to become agents of social change. Chinese citizens have become adept at taking advantage of the state’s wish to enforce environmental regulations at the local level, adept at developing alliances with Chinese officials as well as with, in some cases, transnational actors, and adept at using communicative technology to demonstrate and to organize their environmental discontent. Chinese environmental activism has also helped environmentally affected victims to learn of, and to exercise, their rights as citizens.<strong></strong>

This article seeks to extend the theoretical discussion of interstitial emergence to an authoritarian context. An interstitial space is a space whose relations with the dominant power structure are not yet institutionalized. In analyzing interstitial emergence in an authoritarian context, it is necessary to examine the interaction between interstitial space and the state as an institutionalizing force and recognize that 1) institutionalization is an ongoing process that spans over a period and 2) a state’s intervention may induce unintended consequences. The rise and fall of labor NGO activism in China between 1996 and 2020 are used as a case to illustrate the theoretical discussion. Labor NGOs emerged out of the interstices of state control since the 1990s. Although the state started to regulate these organizations since the late 2000s, its intervention lacked consistency. Before the state finally gained the capacity to enforce rules, which was around 2015, labor NGOs had already launched a series of advocacy activism and cultivated a group of activists who identified with the value of social movement. Hence, although the activism was eventually incorporated, it had successfully thematized labor issues and produced enduring impact on the culture of public discussion.

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsThe Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan. Teresa Wright Tony SaichTony Saich Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The China Journal Volume 49Jan., 2003 Published on behalf of the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3182215 Views: 8Total views on this site Copyright 2003 The China JournalPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

"Book Review: Teresa Wright, The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 192, US$ 24.95.." Political Science, 53(2), p. 80

This article explores the dynamics and practices of feminist data activism that engages with grassroots data to archive cases of sexual violence in China. Drawing on Cammaert’s notion of the mediation opportunity structure, we investigate the mediation process of a feminist data campaign and activists’ communicative practices in contemporary China. By practicing data-activist research, our study shows that the data-based action repertoire opens up hybrid and contingent mediation opportunities for an anti-sexual violence campaign under the current political opportunity structure. We find the paradox of seeking visibility while refusing mainstream media coverage in activist tactics, which embodies a form of adaptive and resilient feminist data activism in the authoritarian context of China. This case study suggests that the dynamics of feminist data activism in China are configured by the tripartite interaction among the disruptive action repertoire, mediation opportunity structure, and political conditions.

While much research stereotypes mass media in authoritarian contexts as mouthpieces of the ruling party, we argue that successful social media–driven activism also requires the support of mass media, even in authoritarian contexts. To investigate the roles of social media and mass media on collective mobilization, we analyzed a case in Guangzhou, China, and conducted in-depth interviews to conceptualize the interconnected relationship between social media and mass media from the perspective of resource mobilization. Findings reveal that social media facilitated the mobilization of participants by providing less fungible and timely resources at the initial stages of collective action. However, it is the more fungible and enduring resources provided by the mass media that sustain the intensity of external pressures to the government. The complementarity between social and mass media in atomized collective action in China is in essence the configuration between exclusive and monopolized resources mediated by a middle-ground discursive mode—“implied truth.”

This article focuses on three key debates within China about the formation of Chinese feminisms: the origin of the Chinese women's movement; the theoretical debates on the origin of women's subordination; and what constitutes legitimate knowledge. It considers these internal debates in relation to the dialogues that Chinese feminists have pursued with western feminisms, and more specifically UN-based international feminisms. Chinese feminism is above all heterogeneous, and despite common beliefs about Chinese political discourse, meaningful debates do take place within Chinese feminism. However, the spectre of the West always lurks in the background of domestic debates. I situate the Chinese feminist debates in the political economy of knowledge production (how is knowledge produced, by whom and for whom, and who pays). My purpose is to shed light on the emergence of these debates and the stakes involved, in a society that is transitioning from an autarchic, centrally planned economy, from a Maoist politics of mass movement and from the devaluation of intellectuals and book-based knowledge. Central to the course of these debates is the emergence of a globally connected market economy, technocratic rule and a ‘knowledge economy’.

Before the nation-form paradigm of political realism most commonly associated with Western inter-state politics came to dominate China, its imperial logic of external state interaction was traditionally organized by a cosmological-political ordering of tribute relationships that we might want to call ‘soft power with Chinese characteristics’. One of the ways in which outside influences have been made local in China in recent decades was the increase in the importance of the Olympic Games as a meaningful political event. This essay focuses on an element of this new Chinese appropriation of this originally foreign idea to show a corresponding utilization of a ‘competitive ethic’– not really new, and perhaps only newly positioned, but novel in this field nonetheless – that has been internalized in Chinese politics. This ethic was in the West descended from muscular Christian sentiments and eventually caught up in an atmosphere of prevailing ideas about war and political strength in the social Darwinist climate at the beginning of twentieth century; and its particular Chinese history has allowed a popular imaginary of China's place in the world that is rife with tropes of ‘strong bodies’ making a ‘strong state’ in a global economic battlefield. This epistemological framework illuminates resource diplomacy moves made in east and south Asia, and a few anecdotal observations of China's activities in the world show how its competitive ethic is alive and well. Nonetheless, the exact ramifications of this ethic with Chinese characteristics are as yet unknown.

The Ultimate Social Network: China's Expansionary, Internationally Oriented United Front Strategies 1923-2020

This research aims to explore the phenomenon of taking pets to tourism activities in China based on the hierarchical leisure constraints model. In-depth interview with 23 participants were conducted. The results identified intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of taking pets to tourism activities, as well as the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural constraints. The analysis gave emphasis to the Chinese contextual characteristics, among which public acceptance and restrictions, and the strategy of sneaking pets into some tourism activities were highlighted. This paper provides insights into the salience of pet-human joint tourism behaviors in China and generates implications for pet owners and government.