Chinese Feminism Research Articles

Fashioning Chinese feminism: Representations of women in the art history of modern China

Artworks record history. The images of women’s fashion and beauty presented in the art history of modern China illustrate explicitly the challenging, changing and circuitous development of women’s rights and feminism in the country. In this study, I analyse and contextualize the most widespread representations of Chinese ‘modern women’s fashion’: (1) the geisha-like ladies of news illustrations before the 1911 Revolution, (2) the poster-calendar girls in the republican aesthetics of an early commercial society, (3) the papercutting folk art that profiles ‘half the sky’ in the uniform aesthetics of Marxist–Leninist–Maoist propaganda, (4) the gender-specific art themes and materials applied by female artists after the opening-up policy and (5) the feminist art in the Chinese contemporary art world. The resulting analysis helps to elucidate the interconnections among fashion, art and women’s status in China, in pursuit of modernity, the radical expansion of western colonization, domestic political turmoil and, in particular, longstanding patriarchal cultural norms and values.

Feminist Translation: Translator's Subjectivity, Strategies and Influences

Feminist translation theory is the academic fruit of the further development of feminist movement and also the portrayal of women's reflection fueled by feminism. Based on Skopos theory, the paper explores how translator's subjectivity acts in translation activities from the feminist perspective, aiming to reveal the relationship between feminist translation and translator's subjectivity. On the basis of a brief introduction, description and evaluation of major feminist translation theories, this study will analyze and evaluate different feminist translation strategies, and conduct critical research of translator's subjectivity, focusing on how feminist translation theory traveled on Chinese soil and the influence of translator's subjectivity combined with Chinese feminist translation.

Empathy as exoneration or resistance? The politics of male empathy in the Chinese #Metoo movement

ABSTRACT Chinese digital feminism has attracted increasing public and scholarly attention, and yet men’s participation remains understudied. Drawing on interviews with male supporters and textual analysis of online archives, this paper examines how men empathize with women’s experiences and interact with the broader context of Chinese digital feminism. To map out male empathy, the article proposes a two-dimensional framework that differentiates emotional and cognitive empathy on the one hand and draws from Megan Boler’s view on passive and transformative empathy on the other. The political implications of male empathy in digital feminism are discussed. The author argues that although male empathy displays unarguable potentials to subvert patriarchal society, it also succumbs to the pitfall of exonerating men from the obligation to change, hence obscuring structural gender inequalities.

Knowing oneself and one’s home country: Reflections on Fang Junbi's experiences from the perspectives of emotions and feminist history

Fang Junbi 方君璧 was a famous Chinese female painter of the twentieth century and a core member of the Wang Jingwei 汪精衛 clique. As an intellectual woman of both the old and new eras, she had fierce national affection and patriotic zeal and also held moral ideals on the lasting loyalty and unchanging nature of love and friendship. During World War II she experienced the loss of country and family and the course of Wang Jingwei seeking peace with Japan. While extremely pained internally, her feelings for Wang remained as strong as ever, and when he fell gravely ill she risked her life to travel to Japan to be with him. Wang gave her an inkstone as a parting gift, signifying that the affection between the two was as solid as stone. During the 1970s she accepted an invitation to return to China where she witnessed the historic achievements of New China and sincerely identified with the Communist Party of China and its revolutionary culture. Knowing herself and her home country was the deepest sentiment of her life, and these two sentiments cannot be fully accounted for using the narrative of "women's liberation" in Chinese revolution or Western feminist discourse. Through the winding path of affection in the deep spiritual connection between Fang Junbi and her sister Fang Junying 方君瑛, her husband Zeng Zhongming 曾仲鳴, and her teacher and friend Wang Jingwei, we can understand their personalities, values, and modes of behavior, enriching our knowledge of the world of affection, ethics, and souls of modern Chinese female intellectuals, and providing resources for reflecting on the personal growth of women today.

The liberalism of fear in China: Hu Ping and the uses of fear and memory in contemporary Chinese liberalism

ABSTRACT Contemporary political theorists have sought to invoke Judith N. Shklar's liberalism of fear in discussions about human rights across cultural and national boundaries. These discussions would benefit from thinking with Chinese liberal thinker and activist Hu Ping, who considered the liberalism of fear an accurate description of the rediscovery of liberalism in contemporary China after the post-Cultural Revolution. Hu's different uses of memories of the Cultural Revolution not only reflected Shklar's thesis in the liberalism of fear that liberals should speak to memories of cruelty to inspire a liberal politics of cruelty-prevention. They also demonstrated how social and political contexts shaped political needs, which, in turn, changed readings of the past and challenged important assumptions in Shklar's political theory. Hu's uses of memory and fear shed light on the limits of Shklar's approach, revealed the importance of confronting the question of courage in any applications of the liberalism of fear, and called for more nuanced discussions about the conditions upon which memories of cruelty could be considered a pro-liberal force.

An Investigation on the Legislative Tradition of Should Be Rough Rather Than Detailed in China's Marriage Law—Also on the Early Practice of Chinese Feminist Movement

The Civil Code of the People's Republic of China, which was reviewed and passed in May 2020, continues the tradition of should be rough rather than detailed in China's marriage and family legislation since the promulgation of the Marriage Law of 1950. The embodiment of this tradition in the marriage law text is fewer legal provisions, more general provisions, and more moral norms. This legislative tradition did not come from the Soviet Union but was mainly due to the unique legal nature of the Marriage Law of 1950. This law is the product of the victory of the Chinese feminist movement since the Revolution of 1911. Its legislative tradition of should be rough rather than detailed is determined by the legislative purpose of this law to break the feudal marriage system and protect the rights of women and children, and its unique legal attributes. The formulation of this law was subject to the legislative difficulties and the social reality faced by the marriage law drafting group centered on women leaders. It was a helpless choice in a particular period. In the modern society where China's economy, society, and marriage and family relations have undergone significant changes, it is crucial to improve marriage legislation and reverse the legislation tradition of should be rough rather than detailed, so that the improvement of legislative techniques and legislative goals meet the needs of economic and social development.

Outsider Within: Young Chinese Feminist Activism in the Age of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom

Outsider Within: Young Chinese Feminist Activism in the Age of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom

An Anatomy of Trump’s Appeal to Chinese Liberals: A Conversation with Teng Biao

An Anatomy of Trump’s Appeal to Chinese Liberals: A Conversation with Teng Biao

Reporting Strategy and Gender Perspective in Chinese Media Coverage of COVID-19 News

This article examines the reporting strategy and gender perspective in Chinese media coverage of COVID-19 news. The article employs a mixed-method approach to analyze news reports, using quantitative statistics and qualitative semantic materials that complement each other. The study found that the media construct a stereotypical image of female healthcare workers absent from public participation. Media reports on the actual number of female healthcare workers involved in treating COVID-19 patients are lower than those about men. Reports focusing exclusively on female staff tend to focus on their private affairs, that is, on their non-professional identities and characteristics, and show an excessive gaze on the female body. To understand this phenomenon prevailing in Chinese media, it is necessary to highlight the predicament of Chinese women in society as well as acknowledge the work of contemporary Chinese feminism in raising awareness on Chinese women’s experiences.

When positive energy meets satirical feminist backfire: Hashtag activism during the COVID-19 outbreak in China

Amid the eruption of the COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020, the Chinese Communist Party Youth League promoted VTubers on Weibo to diffuse positive energy. However, the female VTuber Jiangshanjiao was appropriated immediately as political satire by netizens to air public grievances. While political satire is widely considered as political resistance in authoritarian states, little research has addressed its combination with feminist narratives and online activism. This article builds on previous literature on the propagandistic nature of positive energy and the Chinese feminist movement to consider how positive energy lying under Jiangshanjiao was deconstructed and how femininity was invoked to serve for broader political purposes in a repressive online environment. Drawing on the framework of online connective action and political satire as a networked practice, this research sheds light on the hashtag #JiangshanjiaoDoYouGetYourPeriod#. This research explores how the satirical hashtag was collectively produced in an Internet trolling culture and contributed to building a collective identity through personalized narratives. Through the feminist hashtag, netizens expressed their multilayered grievances against misogyny, state propaganda, and censorship. However, this article also offers evidence that the satirical hashtag and ambiguity associated with it limited the influence in catalyzing online and offline changes.

Gendering Jiang Shanjiao: Chinese feminist resistance on Weibo during the COVID-19 lockdown

After the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October 2012, the leader of the People’s Republic of China, President Xi Jinping, delivered a series of important speeches o...

Doing Ethnography on Social Media: A Methodological Reflection on the Study of Online Groups in China

This article draws on the two authors’ extensive fieldwork experiences in studying Chinese feminists and lawyers on social media to offer some thoughts on how to conduct qualitative research in the digitalized world. We argue that qualitative methods such as participation observation, in-depth interview, and textual analysis can provide thick descriptions and deep, localized knowledge of social processes that go far beyond the sketches of Big Data. Social science data collection and analysis on social media need not only Big Data’s bird’s-eye view, but also the day-to-day ethnographic immersion—“living on the sites” and interacting with research subjects over a long period of time. The rise of social media has not changed the basic principles of doing ethnography, such as the importance of immersion and reflexivity. Nevertheless, ethnography of online groups presents new challenges and opportunities in terms of accessing field sites, analyzing ethnographic data, and research ethics.

Вслед за Сюань-цзаном: о книге Э.А. Синецкой «“Путешествие на Запад” китайской женщины, или Феминизм в Китае»

The article is devoted to the problem of studying the history of feminism in China – from the activities of Christian missionaries to Chinese revolutionaries. The prerequisites and stages of the formation of the women's movement for their rights are considered on the example of the book “The Journey to the West” of a Chinese Woman or Feminism in China by Elvira A. Sinetskaya. This book actually presents the first for Russian science study of development of Chinese movement for women rights, as well as constitutes a try to describe its characteristic feature and to place it in the context of world feminism. The author begins from definition such core terms as “feminism”, “gender”, etc., and then considers the history of feminism beginning in China and possible causes of its appearance. She analyses an attitude to women in traditional Chinese society through the lens of family relationship, society and religion, which is viewed from historical perspective. The study is based on variety of sources, including fiction literature. E.A. Sinetskaya connects the first attempts of Chinese women to obtain equality of rights with spread of Cristianity, but in this paper another point of view on this problem is presented. Then Taoism gave equal rights and possibilities for its progeny regardless of sex and social status. In this religion one can find pantheon of female goddesses, etc. The issues of family and marriage, the right to education, the right to independent earnings and problems with the exercise of their rights by women are being raised in the article, it highlights the connection between the Chinese women’s movement and the problem of human freedom

Queer Chinese Feminist Archipelagos: Shanghai, San Francisco, and Miami

Martinican-born poet and theoretician Édouard Glissant suggests that a shift to “archipelagic thinking” can allow one to see the world metaphorically as a collection of islands connected to each other. Foregrounding the body and affect, I will consider the exhibition WOMEN我們, organized by Abby Chen, that traveled from Shanghai (2011) to San Francisco (2012) and Miami (2013) through what I refer to as “archipelagic feeling.” WOMEN 我們 explored queer Chinese feminism, and in a nod to cities in which the venues were located, the curators expanded the checklist at each leg of the tour. In this way, the curators aimed not to essentialize or center queer Chinese feminism but productively connect it to (for example) Latinx subjectivities and Asian-American feminist concerns. In so doing, I suggest this exhibition offers a new framework for thinking about the transnational through both queerness and creolization.

The Drama of Chinese Feminism: Neoliberal Agency, Post-Socialist Coloniality, and Post-Cold War Transnational Feminist Praxis

The Drama of Chinese Feminism: Neoliberal Agency, Post-Socialist Coloniality, and Post-Cold War Transnational Feminist Praxis

The Vagina Monologues in a Chinese Context: Discussing the Value of the Localized Adaptations

The silence around female genitalia and sexuality is a prevalent phenomenon with grave implications. Eve Ensler, an American playwright, wrote the famous Vagina Monologues to combat such issues and aim to end violence against women. While Ensler’s play is popular on a global scale, the localized versions inspired by Ensler are also emerging in various regions. A Chinese feminist organization, The Vagina Project, has created their own script and organized several localized performances in the past few years. A close analysis of one of the scripts written by the Vagina Project demonstrates that the localized versions of The Vagina Monologues, though less paid attention to, are effective in creating connections with the audience. Being attuned to the regional feminist differences allows the play to be more powerful and thoughtful when presented to the audience.

Girl power in boy love: Yaoi, online female counterculture, and digital feminism in China

ABSTRACT This article employs in-depth interviews with 64 female authors of Yaoi fiction, a popular online narrative genre among young Chinese women, to examine the discursive strategies adopted in their creation of homoerotic stories, and theorize such strategies within contemporary Chinese political, cultural, and social contexts. Three discursive constructions are distilled and discussed through analysis of Yaoi fictionists’ cultural production practices: the idealization of intimate relationship, the deconstruction of the heteropatriarchal gender norm through female gaze, and the imagination of female power in negotiation with state discourse. The article then indicates the deliberate intention incorporated in the production of the Yaoi counterculture to subvert the state-backed gender hegemony. It proposes that a comprehensive understanding of contemporary Chinese feminism can only be achieved through intersectional analysis of its interactions with China’s authoritarian state discourse, and calls for closer attention to the feminist political potential brought about by digital technology.

Jia, as in Guojia: building the Chinese Family into a Filial Nationalist Project

The Chinese state acts in concert with the patriarchal family to sustain its authoritarian legitimacy, and both institutions are grounded in paternalistic cultural norms. The state also harnesses the “quality” of Chinese families through the law, which often saddles women with more burdens and responsibilities than it does men. From the 1950 Marriage Law to the 2015 Universal Two-Child Policy, the state has directly politicized the family through explicit mandates on marriage and reproductive control as well as repressive deployment of families as a tool for social stability and national security. To unpack this state-family project, this article addresses how the patriarchal state constructs and manages a filial nationalist population in order to secure its authoritarian rule. Through the lens of emerging Chinese feminist and queer scholarship on families, this article also asks how the state-family project has affected people and families that are intersectionally marginalized by gender, sexuality, class, household registration [hukou 户口], and so on. Lastly, this article spotlights new developments in feminist and lgbtq movements as they advocate for marginalized individuals and families.

Gendered Globality as a Cold War Framework

Originally penned by Mao Zedong in 1961 as an inscription on a photograph of female militia, “Bu ai hongzhuang, ai wuzhuang” 不爱红妆爱武 装 (“They love their battle array, not silks and satins”) for many sums up a presumed erasure of femininity in favor of a universalized masculine subject position within socialist China. This article reconsiders the discursive work done by militarized female bodies—physically and representationally—focusing on alternative international and internationalist futures following the Sino-Soviet split of 1960. The article critically engages state-to-state relations and internationally circulating PRC-produced cultural material that articulated feminist ideals as part of Afro-Asian-Latin American solidarity. This article returns to well-known texts of Maoist China to rethink state-produced Chinese feminism as a Cold War framework and gendered globality. It shifts the analytic from Cold War dichotomies that legitimate what most scholars misrepresent as an insular Chinese socialist female subjectivity of the 1960s to focus on the complex global dimensions of Cold War socialist feminism.

Remaking “Women” and Contemporary Chinese Feminism——Based on The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism

The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism gives an historical retrospective of China in the past 100 years with a 20th century global perspective, probes about in-depth and multi-level Chinese women and contemporary social problems by tracing the evolution of the left-wing ideological context, and elaborates on the remaking of “women” creatively by virtue of the historical heritage of socialism. It is of great significance in responding to new changes and new issues taking place in contemporary Chinese feminism. For instance, in today’s China, while analyzing gender equality, people have to focus not only on the relationship between the sexes, but on development within women’s groups and on relations among class/strata also. Therefore, remaking “women” and how to remake “women”, in the Chinese context today, are important issues to feminists, as they will tell, to a certain extent, if gender studies can effectively respond to social issues in contemporary China.