Chinese Feminism Research Articles

The Influence of the Western Feminist Movement on the Chinese Feminist Movement through the Mass Media

The Influence of the Western Feminist Movement on the Chinese Feminist Movement through the Mass Media

Carl Schmitt and Chinese political thought: Relevance for Papua New Guinea and the Pacific

This article considers the relevance of the theories of German jurist Carl Schmitt for understanding Papua New Guinea (PNG) politics and international relations, with a focus on relations with China. In pursuing this analysis, the text gives particular emphasis to Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction. In order to understand the regional context in which China has a growing presence, this article initially highlights the preoccupation of Chinese intellectuals with the ideas of Schmitt. It proceeds to mention the use of Schmitt’s ideas in supporting the particular ideological positions of Chinese liberals, the New Leftists, those who articulate the China Path and even the Chinese state. Through a comparative analysis I both compare how Schmittian ideas have been used by Chinese intellectuals to critique the economic inequality in Chinese society and alternatively the relevance of such critiques to the issues of social inequality in PNG. The discussion subsequently focuses on PNG’s international relations and China’s increasing economic and political influence. While the United States and its regional partner Australia appear to be alarmed by an expanding Chinese presence, others do not necessarily believe that Beijing has overreaching ambitions of global dominance. The article considers the suggestion that Chinese thinking on international relations has been influenced by Schmitt’s concept of the Großraum, an alternative to the Westphalian system, in which international relations are marked by a dominant hegemon and self-contained regional blocks consisting of constellated nations. As PNG finds itself in a critical position and subject to pressures from both the West and China, the text considers PNG sovereignty within a possible regional system in which China serves as the dominant hegemon.

Postfeminist heroes and heroines in contemporary Chinese advertising

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that the postfeminist performance of contemporary Chinese advertising deflects attention away from the feminist call for gender equality. First, I explain why Chinese feminist development leads to “femininity melancholia.” I then examine the postfeminist heroes and heroines—that is the ideals of masculinity and femininity that inspire audience imitation—in contemporary Chinese advertising campaigns and femvertising vlogs (recent advertising with a focus on empowered women). In unveiling the pressures of young Chinese men’s idealized masculinity, I suggest Chinese men dread female individuation and desire to preserve women’s dependence and domesticity. Such pressures are intensified by idealized masculinity in advertising to men’s ambivalence towards femininity via Judith Butler’s gender melancholia. Engaging with Angela McRobbie’s ideas about postfeminist heroines trapped in performing perfectly balanced femininity, I propose that the postfeminist performance by Chinese female vloggers indicates that young women have maintained a sense of self-definition without abandoning their femininity in the face of intense scrutiny from social and cultural gazes. My analysis of the interplay between the “femininity melancholia” shown in contemporary Chinese advertising and Chinese people’s feminist consciousness contributes to the postfeminist debate about the relationship between feminism and femininity.

Rethinking the Spirit of “Self” and “Theory”: The Practice of “Autotheory” in Contemporary Chinese Art

From genre to interdisciplinary and trans-medial artistic practice, “autotheory” has attracted great attention for formally distilling a troublesome contradiction of dualistic opposition between theory and practice in arts and attempting to solve it. In this paper, autotheory is understood as the joining of reflective thinking through the “collective self” and the reflective thinking of “theory”. Based on Lauren Fournier’s research, this paper investigates two kinds of art practices in contemporary Chinese art. The first developed from the art movements of the late 1970s to the late 1980s, when there was a rethinking of collective selfhood in Chinese art circles. This “collective self” in Chinese culture expands the parameters of autotheory’s individualized, autobiographical “self”, as described by Fournier. The second example of autotheory discussed in this paper explores contemporary Chinese feminist art. Due to its cultural background and historical trajectory, different dimensions of individualized autotheoretical practices have developed in feminist contemporary art in China in the new era. The case studies presented in this paper show the flexibility of autotheory as a methodology, the complex conditions it applies to, and the potential to generate theory from expanded notions of “self” in art practice.

Dependency as Situated Knowledge: A Reflexive Politics of Location on the Positionalities of Chinese Feminist Scholars

While feminist knowledge has historical roots in China, the academic knowledge production about women’s and gender studies (WGS) as situated knowledge has always been a contestation between opposing forces. The Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, marked the critical discursive and organizational moment for grounding the feminist concept of gender as an analytical and action framework. Since then, WGS have flourished, but the label of feminism has been ambivalent. To examine the complicated state of academic dependency and the politics of location in this interdisciplinary academic field, I interrogate researchers’ positionalities in some recent publications on feminism and gender studies about China by pointing out the interplay of diasporic and domestic positionalities in English and Chinese publication outlets. This article argues that for an interdisciplinary program like WGS, with its inextricable connection to the political state of China and socialist state feminism, the theory of academic dependency cannot adequately capture the often contested, strategic, and situated standpoints of feminist scholars. While diasporic and domestic scholars are deeply aware of their own positionalities in the channel of publications that grant them voices, they are also caught in the current hegemonic political economy of knowledge. This article interrogates the contested positionalities of overseas and domestic feminist scholars in creating a feminist academic field about China.

Critical Socialist Feminism in China: Xingbie (Gender), the State, and Community-Based Socialism

Recent publicity of Chinese feminist activism highlights the urgency for scholarly attention to historically and contextually grounded knowledge about socialism and feminism. This essay explores current Chinese feminism as a contentious and geopolitically mediated subject, introducing critical socialist feminism within the Chinese feminist theorizing that has emerged in the last decade. Specifically, the essay discusses how several scholars reexamine gender, socialist legacy, and community-based socialism and argues that this new terrain of Chinese feminist theory should be read critically while paying attention to recent theoretical developments in East Asia. Grounded in the context of Chinese state capitalism, critical socialist feminism holds potential to challenge certain Eurocentric tendencies in the transnational flow of socialist feminism.

Развитие и вызовы феминистской теории Джудит Батлер в Китае

From a historical point of view, the development of modern feminism in China coincides with the modernization and democratization of China, accompanied by the liberation of women. The development of feminism in China can be divided into four stages. In this process, Western feminist theory had an important influence on the development of Chinese feminism. Among them, Butler’s theory has been widely translated and presented in China. However, due to the different cultural genes of China and the West, Butler’s theory also faces problems in China. In this article, we will analyze in detail the specific reasons for this challenge and the direction of development of Chinese feminism.

Late Qing Feminist Discourse and Natiionalism

Chinese feminist discourse began its development embedded within late Qing period nationalist discourse in the form of proscriptions against foot-binding and advocacy for women’s education. Specific rhetorical terms conflating feminist and nationalist discourse include “mothers of citizens (guomin zhi mu 國民之母)” and “women citizens (nü guomin女國民).” This paper analyzes ways in which feminism was embedded in nationalist discourse and the legitimacy this established for the women’s movement. Such an inquiry uncovers the dependence of feminist discourse upon nationalist discourse, contributing to the unique development of feminism in China. This paper also looks at gender anxiety in Qiu Jin (秋瑾, 1875-1907) in an attempt to describe how male subjectivity influenced late Qing feminist discourse.

On Chinese feminist art from the perspective of globalization

In comparison with the expression of feminist art during the second wave of the feminism movement in the United States, Chinese feminist art embodies similar development paths but with different pursuits. Immigrant countries determine that feminist art in the United States has different aims on account of artists of different races and nationalities, such as black women discussing racial discrimination and immigration; European immigrants criticize patriarchy from the perspective of Western art history; and LGBT people are oppressed by society. However, Chinese feminist art also has its own unique artistic expression objects and goals in the development and evolution of feminist theory. Aiming at the prevalent problem of preference for boys over girls and gender inequality, Chinese female artists criticize the hidden gender discrimination in society in a particular way.

Feminist podcasting: a new discursive intervention on gender in Mainland China

ABSTRACT The recent decade has witnessed thriving discourses of feminism on social media in mainland China. Feminist podcasting rose in popularity in 2019. By analyzing 35 podcasts, I sketch a landscape of Chinese feminist podcasting in terms of discussion subjects, content, and business mode. Through close textual analysis of Surplus Value (剩余价值) and Bie Renxing (别任性), supplemented by interviews with three feminist podcasters, I will argue that feminist podcasting combines academic depth and social immediacy, complementing feminist discourse in both academia and popular culture. Its subscription technology offers a bargaining chip to feminist podcasters, perhaps more than any other social media, to negotiate with censoring power. The pleasure of evading and teasing the authorities is not only felt by podcasters but also shared among listeners, leading to a consolidation of the host-audience alliance.

Beyond Confucianism: Feminist Scholarship on Daoism and Buddhism

Abstract In this paper, I present and assess feminist philosophical thinking related to Daoism and Buddhism. I argue that despite the complexity, feminist scholarship on Daoism and Buddhism illustrates the diversity of feminist scholarship regarding Chinese traditions because it goes beyond the dominant Confucianism. I also argue that it exhibits a transcultural trend in which issues about gender intersect with Daoism and Buddhism. In addition, I suggest that Chinese philosophy should interact with Chinese feminism and gender studies in China to cultivate an explicit Chinese feminist philosophy.

Chinese Centrist Liberal Critics of Trump: A Reconsideration of Contemporary Chinese Liberalism

This article challenges the existing scholarship’s characterisation of Chinese liberal intellectuals as Trumpian intellectuals. By conducting a close reading of Chinese academic publications, lectures and opinions aired on social media, this article finds that besides Trump’s Chinese liberal fans, many leading Chinese liberal intellectuals harshly criticised Trump. However, they do not align themselves with American liberals in making all-out partisan criticisms of Trump and American right-wing politics. Instead, their criticisms are mostly centrist. This article argues that Chinese liberal intellectuals’ centrist criticisms of Trump reflect their Confucian, egalitarian and moderate nationalist sympathies, dimensions of their thoughts which have been ignored by existing scholarship regarding them. By exploring Chinese centrist liberal critics of Trump, this article brings to light the ideological heterogeneity within the Chinese liberal camp previously lumped together under the umbrella of “anti-authoritarianism.”

A Chinese feminist analysis of Chinese social media responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

A Chinese feminist analysis of Chinese social media responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Virginia Woolf in China: translation, study, and influence

Abstract The translation and study of Virginia Woolf began in the late 1920s out of pure artistic interest, then became stagnant due to the extreme tendencies of the left-wing movement. In the new era, when the literary exchange between the East and the West resumed, the Chinese translation and study of Woolf came to flourish in literary circles with the second wave of Modernism and the rise of feminist criticism. This paper, by combining the historical development with the cultural context, conducts a full-scale inquiry into the features of the Chinese translation and study of Woolf during the period of the Republic of China (1929–1949) and the period of the new age since the reform and opening-up (1978–) and gives a detailed analysis of the spiritual connection between Woolf’s cultural view of feminism and contemporary Chinese feminist writers.

Counter-revolutionary in Revolutionary Times?

This article addresses two related questions: how do we read He-Yin Zhen’s political writing in relation to her broader political life and how should her political ideas be introduced to the English-speaking academy? I first concur with recent translators of He-Yin, Lydia Liu, Dorothy Ko, and Rebecca Karl, that He-Yin’s anarcho-feminism marks a significant moment in the modern Chinese history of political ideas and can potentially contribute to transnational feminist theories. Following this, I revisit and reconstruct He-Yin and her life partner Liu Shipei’s (刘师培) life trajectories as documented in Chinese sources by at least two generations of Chinese historians of the late Qing dynasty revolution. I argue that, when introducing her to English-speaking audiences as part of “the birth of Chinese feminism,” her translators have provided a diluted picture of He-Yin’s political world that could easily give rise to a reductionistically heroic reading of her politics. He-Yin’s political participation includes but is by no means limited to her one-year career as the prolific anarcho-feminist theorist for the journal (Tianyi Bao, 天义报).

Visible Women in Chinese Feminist Movies

AbstractThe past decades have witnessed the birth and growth of feminist movies in China since the Second Enlightenment following China’s reform and opening up. While a movie, like other forms of art, mirrors its times and cultural milieu, the female characters reflect specific groups of women living in specific contexts. Focusing on the works of three representative female directors born in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s, this article illustrates the development of China’s feminist movies by analyzing the themes they highlight and decoding the underlying similarities of their female characters as they are shaped by Chinese culture.

MCROBBIE'S THEORY OF POST-FEMINIST DISARTICULATION AND THE PRECARIOUSNESS IN CHINESE CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

This paper analyzes the theoretical transferring of post-feminism and the concept of “disarticulation” from western feminism discourses to the Chinese contemporary media landscape. By introducing the connotation of post-feminism and its disarticulated precarious consequence to the feminism agenda, the paper argues that Chinese native feminism discourses represented the precariousness of post-feminism in the way which de-politicized, decentralized and self-governed individualization has dominated the narratives of feminists. The paper proposes that there is a new Chinese feminist ecology widely growing on media platforms with the characteristics of stigmatization of feminists, breaking down the unity of all feminist groups as well as women as a whole by labeling and gazing upon them, and further disarticulated feminist groups from the primary activism agenda and political alliance. The paper warned that due to the peculiarity of Chinese politics, namely, the long absence of official recognition of feminism and authoritative oppression of it, the precarious consequence of disarticulation pervades contemporary Chinese media landscapes by saturating the online feminism discourses and interrupts its developmental courses.

Chinese Feminism Under (Self-)Censorship: Practice and Knowledge Production

Chinese Feminism Under (Self-)Censorship: Practice and Knowledge Production

(Self-)Censorship and Chinese Feminist Networking in a Global Perspective

(Self-)Censorship and Chinese Feminist Networking in a Global Perspective

Dinamika Pertumbuhan Feminisme Di China Dalam Perspektif Konstruktivisme

This article describes how the growth process of feminism in China in the perspective of constructivism regarding the life-cycle of norms. In theory, there are three stages of how a norm which in this case is feminism through the life-cycle of norms. This research method uses a qualitative method of literature study. In this article, the findings are that there are three propositions related to the emergence of international norms in feminism in China, the first is Norm emergence which is described by the emergence of one of the famous female figures, namely, He Zhen, who adopted western feminism by not leaving Chinese cultural identity which was considered good for her. Chinese women's social change. In contrast to other reformers, He Zhen specifically separates the case of feminism from nationalism, stating that women's liberation is not for the sake of the nation, but rather a moral necessity. Second, the Norm Cascade is illustrated by the influence of China's state ratification of the Convention Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) held in Copenhagen Denmark, by accepting international norms on gender equality which in turn will require domestic laws to make some changes to suit the issue. Third, Internalization is described by the growth process of Chinese feminism, namely the process of fusion with culture within the body of feminism itself, or in other words, feminism that develops has its own unique characteristics that are not owned by other countries and only China has it.Keywords: Chinese feminism, constructivism perspective, the life-cycle of norms