Implications of the Detention of Five Chinese Feminists
Brookings Institute
Women, Sexuality, and Social Change in China
April 3rd, 2015
Thank you, Brookings Institution, for your kind invitation.
The detention of five young feminists before March the 8th International Women’s Day has changed the field of Chinese feminism. What I had originally prepared for this event at the Brookings Institution is no longer adequate. I have to rewrite my presentation. Today I want first to give a few personal snapshots as a brief review of the history of Chinese feminist engagement with sexist sexual norms. Then I will situate the young feminists’ action against sexual harassment in this historical context as a way to illustrate significant changes in Chinese feminist practices as well as in society. Finally, I will discuss the political implications of the recent detention of five feminists.
In 1985 I came from Shanghai to study US history at the UC Davis. I had quite a few American friends in the same graduate program. They were very curious about my life in socialist China and I was very proud of being a liberated woman from socialist China. I acted like an ambassador talking to different groups about the great accomplishments of women’s liberation in socialist China. Yes, as an urban young woman I enjoyed equal education, equal employment, equal pay, and equal opportunity for promotion. I had never experienced gender inequality, I thought. One day I was telling my friends how on the very crowded buss in Shanghai once I confronted a thief who had just snatched my wallet from my pocket. My friends Mackay and Chris were both very impressed. “Wow! You were so brave.” A few days later, we were chatting again. This time I mentioned that on the crowded busses there were often those very obscene men who would grope you. Mackay asked instantly, “How did you respond to them?” I replied without thinking, “What could I do? Just tried my best to move to another spot to avoid such rascals.” Mackay then raised a question that shattered my self-perception as a brave and liberated woman. “Why did you dare to confront a thief but not sexual harassment?” I answered, “Oh, I would be so ashamed if people around me noticed this.” Immediately I realized that was a highly problematic reply. That conversation set in motion a process of soul searching. Why would a liberated woman still carry on the patriarchal value of chastity? Why would women of my generation, the liberated Chinese women in socialist China, have no consciousness of serious problems in sexual norms? It was not only a personal reflection. From there I started a long review and reflection of women’s liberation in socialist China and realized that in the realm of sexuality state feminists were able to transform the double-sexual standard to single sexual standard for the general public (certainly not the top leaders). But that puritanical sexual morality did not shake deeply entrenched masculinist cultural values of women’s chastity and virginity, to the extent that a liberated woman like me would internalize such sexist values, with no consciousness let alone action to change such sexist culture.
In 1992 I attended a conference by Shanghai Women’s Federation. When a US feminist scholar asked if there were any cases of sexual harassments in China, the Chinese women participants all said “no, no, we don’t have sexual harassment.” So I stood up and named things happened everyday on busses as sexual harassment. By then I had long been empowered by my studying of feminist history and feminist theories.
In 1995 at the NGO Forum at the Fourth UN Women’s Conference, feminists in and outside China openly challenged pervasive sexist sexual norms. Sexual violence and sexual harassment were clearly defined as violation of women’s human rights. Feminist concept of gender was since quite widely circulated among feminist NGOs who also promoted gender training in the Women’s Federations and the government. I have been a participant in this process. Since then we have witnessed a continuous growth of feminist organized activities nationwide, even though every feminist knew the political environment was highly unstable and not congenial for NGO activism. Their strategy was mostly not to touch politically sensitive issues and mostly confined their actions in the realm of promoting gender equality as guaranteed by China’s constitution (by the way, the US constitution is yet to include gender equality) and laws protecting women and children’s rights.
As beneficiaries of socialist gender equality in education and employment, by 1990s from my cohort emerged a quite large size of women professionals who had access to policy making. So their feminist activities often aimed at participation in the policy making process, including drafting laws and promoting passage of laws and policies. They were mostly located in the official system, either in government, in Women’s Federation, or in academic institutions. Enjoying the dividends of socialist gender equality, this is the generation of feminists who have or have access to some resources and power in the system. They prefer to work behind the scenes, or not to attract unwanted attentions.
The young feminists adopted strategies different from the older cohort in promoting gender equality. Growing up in the era of privatization when many socialist institutional mechanisms for gender equality or any equality have been dismantled, the young generation of feminists, often the princesses of their one-child families with high aspirations, soon discover that this world is absolutely male dominated and every corner you turn you will encounter wanton gender discriminations and pervasive masculinist sexual norms that openly treat women as sex objects. In such a male chauvinist society young women have very little social resources to have their voices heard, let alone to participate in the policy-making process. Thus we see the emergence of a cohort of very brave, creative, and smart young feminist activists who are good at staging performative acts in public to catch media’s attention to gender discrimination and to engender social and cultural change in the realms previously unnoticed by the public, or even by old feminists.
It is in this context when I heard that young feminists were planning to launch anti-sexual harassment advocacy on public transportation as an activity to celebrate the International Women’s Day this year, I was truly delighted. In their action I saw significant progress in the history of Chinese feminism as I compared myself, a liberated socialist woman who at their age had to tolerate sexual harassment on public transportation, with these young women who take action to address the issue of sexual harassment. A sexist social environment enabled a young generation to acquire a gender consciousness readily. Although they do not have resources in the official system, they have enjoyed tremendous intellectual resources from transnational feminisms in this age of internet and globalization.
But just as I was watching their planning for March the 8th with tremendous joy, pride, and anticipation, they were arrested from multiple locations in China and sent to Beijing Haidian District detention center. (Slides) I have to point out a few historical facts for you to grasp the gravity of this detention.
Since 1913 when the Yuan Shikai government suppressed Chinese feminist suffrage movement, up to March 6th this year, no other Chinese government has ever openly suppressed feminists. In the past century, any political force that claimed to move China to modernity would treat equality between men and women as a badge of modernity. The Chinese Communist Party openly endorsed gender equality since its inception, which is one of the major reasons that the party attracted so many women and committed feminists in the long course of the communist revolution. These strong feminists in the party made substantial difference in transforming a patriarchal culture upon the founding of the PRC, to whom women of my cohort are deeply indebted. Even after 1989’s brutal suppression of the students movement, the Chinese government proposed to host the Fourth UN Conference on Women as a way to return to the international community. At that point the party was not too far fetched to assume that in the realm of equality between men and women, China had something very positive to show to the world. The 1995’s world conference with its accompanying NGO Forum that was attended by over 30,000 feminists from all over the world allowed Chinese feminists to legitimately launch women’s non-governmental organizations nation-wide. Other NGOs followed suit afterwards.
Against this historical setting I have just sketched out, the record-breaking detention of feminists in the PRC raises quite a few grave questions. I put them forward to invite your responses as well.
1. Does this detention symbolize the party’s rejection of the badge of modernity? If so, what are the domestic and global implications in this rejection?
2. With this detention, feminist activism is included in the zone of “sensitive issues”. At some universities, even lectures on gender discrimination were cancelled by university officials as being too sensitive. The attempt to criminalize legitimate feminist activism is not only a mockery of the state’s declared aspiration of rule of law, but also turning clock back twenty-five years to an era of pre Fourth UN Conference on Women, the post-1989 political environment. In other words, the case threatens to delegitimize all feminist NGO activism. What would be the recourse of Chinese feminists to redress this situation in a world when China’s money is widely sought after?
3. The global feminist organizations have shown tremendous support in calling to release the five young feminists. Over three thousand people from more than one hundred countries have signed the petitions. Feminist organizations in South Korea, India, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Japan have organized demonstrations to demand the release of Chinese feminists. But the speaker person of the ministry of foreign affairs said, “Nobody has the right to ask the Chinese government to release the five feminists!” The threatening tone indicates the full confidence in the Chinese authority to ignore such global protesting voices. For the global community what are the implications of witnessing the rise of an overtly powerful state and global player who nonetheless is afraid of a group of young women who advocated for stopping sexual harassment on busses?
I have noticed that the detention has functioned to galvanize young women who previously did not show much interest in social action. And the word “feminist” nuquanzhuyi, is not only quickly entering the public discourse on internet but also acquiring a positive image among many sectors of the public. So, in this sense, the five young women staged another highly successful performative act with the police as their props.
Finally, I would like to use this opportunity to appeal to your support. If in the audience there are people who have access to your president or Michel Obama, please inform them of the situation. It is to both countries’ best interest that the five young women be released as soon as possible. Otherwise, Xi Jinping’s visit to US in September may be a stormy one because transnational feminist organizations are mobilizing to boycott the Global Women’s Summit that is to be co-hosted by the UN and the Chinese government, if the five feminists are not released. Xi Jinping is scheduled to give a speech at the UN during his trip to the US. I truly hope your president can play a crucial role to make Xi’s visit to the US a smooth and successful one.
Thank you!
