It is 2:40 am on 10 June 2022. Three young women are dining in a barbecue restaurant in Tangshan, Hebei province when a middle-aged man, a stranger, approaches one of the women and puts his hand on her back. The woman, who is dressed in white, pushes his arm away and raises her voice at him, questioning his intention and telling him to leave her alone. The man slaps the woman in the face. While she stands up to fight back, one of her friends (dressed in black) breaks a beer bottle on the man’s head. The woman in black is pulled away immediately and beaten by the man and two of his companions. Meanwhile, several other men drag the woman in white outside by the hair. The harasser kicks her repeatedly and smashes a beer bottle on her head. The video ends with the woman lying on the ground, covered in blood, and it’s unclear what has happened to her friends off-camera.

As with ‘the woman in chains’, this incident triggered a nationwide uproar on social media, with over 4.8 billion views of the leaked surveillance footage within a few days on Sina Weibo. It reverberates with many other gender-based acts of violence caught on camera. These include the high-profile domestic violence case of Kim Lee, an American, who shared photos of her bruises online in 2013 after being brutally beaten by Li Yang, her Chinese husband, the creator of the famous English learning method Crazy English. Then there was footage of a woman being attacked by a man in a Beijing hotel in 2016, with no bystanders or staff stepping in to prevent the assault; the livestreamed murder of the Tibetan vlogger Lhamo 拉姆, who was set on fire by her ex-husband in 2020 as her horrified followers watched; and a husband frenetically beating his wife right next to their toddler at home in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province in 2022.

Wave after wave, these stories spilled into the public consciousness. Each time they triggered momentary outrage, which then subsided until the next wave rose. Violence against women has always been widespread in China but hidden from sight. However, it appeared to grow prominent in recent years triggered by heightened misogyny that has come about as a backlash against rising feminism. What does it tell us about gender relations, rule of law and social morality in China today?

Gender Relations

In 1949, women under the People’s Republic of China gained constitutional rights equal to those of men as well as increased mobility and higher than ever social and economic status. They were aided by the banning of arranged marriages and concubinage and, in the mid-1950s, Mao’s dictum that ‘women hold up half the sky.’ (He was commenting on a report that when a village decided to pay women the same number of ‘work points’ as men, productivity tripled). However, this did not result in a fundamental change in gender relations. China remains a modern patriarchal society in which most of the power is held by males at all levels of the social and political hierarchy. And women still live with various forms of gender inequality, from disparity in wages and educational opportunities, workplace discrimination, unfair distribution of domestic labor, to rampant sexual harassment and domestic violence. Tech-savvy feminists have been calling out these issues on social media for years, exemplified by the ‘Bloody Brides Against Domestic Violence’ campaign in 2012, in which young women wore red spattered wedding gowns in public to draw attention to the problem; the #MeToo movement that began in 2018; and the #SeeingFemaleWorkers campaign on Weibo in 2020 that called for the recognition of women’s contribution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite official crackdowns on feminist protests, including the detention of the Feminist Five in 2015 for planning to protest sexual harassment on public transport, feminism has grown stronger in China in recent years. This has been accompanied by a patriarchal/misogynistic backlash, causing a ‘gender war’ in cyberspace, where misogynistic sentiment fuels the use of sexist labels such as ‘feminist whores’ 女权婊 (Chinese feminists who criticize Chinese men harshly but behave warmly towards Western men), ‘green tea bitch’ 绿茶婊 (an ambitious woman who pretends innocence), and sayings likening women older than thirty to tofu dregs女人三十豆腐渣. Intertwined with rising nationalistic sentiments, misogynistic labelling has also applied to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on account of her high-profile visit to Taiwan in early August 2022: misogynistic nationalists mocked her as an ‘old witch’ 老巫婆, ‘old devil’ 佩老妖 and ‘unhinged hag’ 神经病老太婆 by users on different online platforms.

Looking back at the Tangshan restaurant attack, even as the majority of netizens were condemning the gang of abusive men at the Tangshan barbecue restaurant, a few others were blaming the female victims for going out too late at night, or for reacting too strongly to the harassers, with some even called the attack ‘a fight between street rogues’.  At the same time, authorities censored discussion around this attack, suspending 900 accounts on Chinese social media site Weibo for such breaches of the rules as attacking national policies and stirring ‘gender confrontation’, and the messaging app WeChat removed several articles on this topic. In the contemporary Chinese patriarchal environment, one that exists within an increasingly commercialised society, there is an emerging Sino-‘manosphere’ (described by Xiaoting Han and Chenjun Yin as ‘a fragmented group of digital communities promoting misogynist discourses’). It is similar to what Laura Bates described in her book Men Who Hate Women, which describes misogyny in Western societies. This also echoes some feminists’ view that sexism functions to maintain patriarchy and misogyny serves as its ‘police force’. [1]  From this perspective, wherever women are subjected to the degrading view that they are sexual commodities and inherently inferior to males, misogynistic men may resort to violence when confronted by women strongly defending their rights or ‘breaking the gender rules’.

The Chinese government under Xi Jinping is campaigning for boys to toughen up and be more ‘masculine’. It also promotes traditional feminine virtues and encourage women   to have several (ideally three) children. While the last has to do with the need to address China’s demographic imbalance and aging population, taken as a whole, these campaigns are about consolidating national identity, social stability and familial harmony – and at the same time reinforcing patriarchal norms and structures. In this context, misogynistic violence may grow new roots.

Rule of law

Violence against women takes various forms, including sex trafficking, domestic/intimate partner violence and sexual harassment or assault, all of which can result in physical, mental, sexual, and emotional harm. As soon as the PRC was founded, the Communist Party of China (CPC) implemented a Marriage Law (1950) that abolished arranged marriages, the extraction of money or gifts in connection with marriages and the buying and selling of wives. However, this practice has never completely stopped. Trafficking of women (and children) still prevails today in poor and remote areas of China despite the overall decline of reported trafficking cases from 14,458 in 2000 to 1,135 people in 2021. With marriage matchmaking and bride prices resurgent, many rural dwellers still do not distinguish between a legitimate marriage and the purchase of a woman. The gender imbalance created by unknown incidences of female infanticide and sex-selective abortion in the years of the one-child policy has made many, particularly rural men, desperate. Statistics of the ‘missing’ girls due to sex-selective abortion vary, some sources indicate it’s more than 40 million, other sources suggest it’s less than that, including unregistered girls at birth.

Under Chinese Criminal law, traffickers can be sentenced to five to ten years in prison or death, depending on the seriousness of the crime.[2] However, those who purchase women face a maximum imprisonment of three years, and some may evade criminal liability if they do not obstruct the bought women from going back to where they came from if they wish.[3] Three years is less than what the Criminal Law prescribes for buying a panda (ten years in prison) or two birds of rare species (five years).[4] It’s a good sign that China has launched a nationwide crackdown on human trafficking following the ‘Xiaohuamei’ incident. However, more needs to be done. At the very least, China’s lawmakers must consider increasing the penalty for human trafficking, including for buyers.

In 2001, the Chinese government first introduced the term ‘domestic violence’ 家庭暴力 in its revised Marriage Law and made it a valid reason for divorce (previous laws only prohibited mistreatment 虐待 and abandonment 遗弃 rather than domestic violence. The revised law, however, does not cover marital rape).[5] In 2016, China also welcomed its first, belated Anti-Domestic Violence Law. This increased public awareness about domestic violence, as evidenced by a growing number of calls to police and anti-domestic violence hotlines, as well as post-sharing about domestic violence on social media. However, in practice, domestic violence tends to be downplayed by local police as ‘a family affair’ 家事. They are often unwilling to intervene, in part because the law does not offer details about punishments for domestic violence. Domestic violence remains rampant: according to the All-China Women’s Federation, a woman faces domestic violence in every 7.4 seconds in China. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this problem was amplified not only in China, but also world-wide, when lockdowns trapped women at home with abusive partners.[6]

In addition, China has implemented different regulatory frameworks to deal with sexual harassment/assault, including the kinds of gendered violence detailed above. These include the Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests (2005), the Public Security Penalties Law (2012), the Criminal Law (2020), and the Civil Code (2020). However, they have not done as much as might be hoped to stem the tide of sexual harassment and assault and gendered violence – In reality, there have been few wins among #MeToo cases and many Chinese women do not report harassment and assault for fear of victim shaming and other reasons.

It’s reassuring that the deputy chief of the Tangshan police bureau was removed from office after he delayed arresting the women’s attackers and that the state launched a 100-day ‘Thunderstorm’ 雷霆风暴 campaign to ‘crack down on illegal behaviours to eliminate security problems’. It’s also a relief that the Chinese authorities charged twenty-eight people with eleven different crimes two months after the incident. On 29 August, China’ state media broadcaster CCTV also released an eleven-minute segment featuring police officers’ description of the attack, and with brief account from one of the victims.

However, to date, many questions remain unanswered regarding the shocking display of violence in Tangshan. For example, why was there no news conference on this incident? Why do the censors appear to be cracking down on internet discussion of the incident? Why is there no detailed information about the victims’ injuries (with doctors claiming they had ‘second-degree light injuries’ and that their conditions were improving) and no direct word from all the victims or their families? While there is a crackdown on gangs, there is no detailed information of the gang’s ‘protective umbrella’ (corrupt officials) despite the public loudly demanding answers on these issues.

Social Morality

‘Cry out at the sight of injustice, give a hand when others are in need’ 路见不平一声吼 该出手时就出手 are lyrics from The Song of the Heroes 好汉歌, the very popular theme song of the 1990s TV series The Water Margin 水浒传, adapted from one of China’s four great classic novels. This spirit, however, is fading away in present-day China. In the security footage from Tangshan, it is disheartening to see that no men stepped in to stop the violence leaving the three women diners to defend themselves. In the middle of the fight, one female bystander tried to intervene but was immediately dragged back by her partner. Others watched and filmed the attack: were they scared about being beaten or being charged with civil liability if they hurt someone (as has happened in the past)? Did they even care about what was happening to the victims?

In recent decades, people have grown increasingly unwilling to help strangers in distress for fear of extortion, as indicated by online surveys run by Chinese state media including the People’s Daily and Sina Weibo. There have been several cases of people who have helped elderly people who have fallen in public spaces but were sued by them as a result, leading to tremendous financial loss. The Chinese media have compared these cases to the story of The Farmer and the Viper from Aesop’s fable, in which a kind-hearted farmer was killed by a viper after placing it inside his coat to keep it warm on a freezing cold day. There have also been other incidents which have led to much agonized self-reflection, including that in which a two-year-old child, Wang Yue 王悦 (known as ‘Xiao Yueyue 小悦悦), was run over by two vehicles on 13 October 2011, with eighteen passers-by failing to help the little girl who lay critically injured and bleeding for more than seven minutes before a woman (a rubbish collector) finally stopped to help. She died of severe brain damage within a week. One witness confessed that she did not help because she was afraid of being prosecuted by the girl’s family who might allege that she had caused the child’s injuries.[7]

At the time, the media was reporting rising numbers of staged accidents (‘porcelain bumping’ 碰瓷 in Chinese). These cases, together with reports on abuses of power, official corruption, reports of toxic additives in food, and officials and celebrities’ extramarital affairs ran against the moral frameworks and the ‘positive energy’ the state intends to build. They have triggered widespread concern and debate over the decline of social ethics and morality in contemporary Chinese society. This widely shared perception of moral crisis has also inspired ‘soul-searching processes’ in society.[8] Gendered violence may be unavoidable in patriarchal societies. For such a ‘moral awakening’ to result in positive changes, however, the state must take a firmer stance on gender inequality and a more inclusive or transparent approach to discussions that question how best to build the genuinely ‘harmonious society’ that is supposed to integral to the China dream.

In a nutshell, violence against women in present-day China points to numerous issues: systemic inequality between men and women, rising misogyny, loopholes in the criminal justice system, gang violence connected to official corruption, and general deterioration in the moral sphere. In order for China to build a genuinely harmonious, violence-free and gender-equal society, profound reforms in education, law, policing and social ethics will need to be put in place.

References

[1] Ellis Gunn, Rattled, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2022.

[2] See Article 240, Criminal Law of the Peoples’ Republic of China, online at: https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/cgvienna/eng/dbtyw/jdwt/crimelaw/t209043.htm#:~:text=The%20tasks%20of%20the%20PRC,laboring%20masses%3B%20to%20protect%20citizens%27

[3] See Article 241, Ibid.

[4]See Article 341, Ibid; 买熊猫判10年，买鹦鹉判5年，买妇女最重判3年? [Buying a panda leads to ten years in prison, buying [two] parrots for ten years, the heaviest sentence for buying a woman is three years?] 163.com, 8 February 2022 online at:  https://www.163.com/dy/article/GVL49F650551LSF2.html

[5] See Article 32, Ch4 Divorce, Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China, 2001, online at: http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Law/2007-12/13/content_1384064.htm

[6] Pan Wang, ‘Struggle with Pandemics: Women, the Elderly and Asian Ethnic Minorities During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Portal Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2021, 17(1/2):14-22.

[7] Yan Yunxiang, ‘The Moral Implications of Immorality: The Chinese Case for a New Anthropology of Morality, Journal of Religious Ethics, 2014, 42(3): 460-493.

[8] Ibid.

The post Violence Against Women: Gender Relations, Rule of Law and Social Morality appeared first on The China Story.

Not coincidentally, 2021 also saw renewed attempts by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to revive and promote traditional ideals of femininity and promote a more rugged masculine ideal. Party and state policies interacted with increasingly diverse views in Chinese society itself about gender, women’s rights and men’s roles. As a result, heated debates erupted over the interpretation of men’s and women’s social, economic and familial roles, as well as their respective rights and interests.

Feminists win battles against sexism

Despite setbacks such as the arrest of the ‘Feminist Five’ in 2015 for campaigning against sexual harassment on public transport,  feminist voices have grown stronger in recent years. Following the ‘Occupying Men’s Toilets’ and ‘Bloody Brides Against Domestic Violence’ campaigns of 2012, the #MeToo movement that began in 2018 and the #SeeingFemaleWorkers campaign on Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020,[1] Chinese women (and men) continued to speak up in 2021 for women’s rights, interests and gender equality while calling out those who promoted harmful stereotypes or ideas.

In January, PurCotton, a Chinese manufacturer of cotton products, made an online advertisement that featured a young woman being stalked on the street at night. She pulls out a PurCotton cleaning towelette to wipe off her makeup. Her naked face immediately turns into an unattractive male’s face, the word ‘vomit’ 呕 appears on the screen and the stalker is successfully scared off. Tens of thousands of netizens, women’s rights groups and Chinese media lambasted the ad for objectifying women and for victim-blaming, as well as implying that sexual assault has to do with women’s appearance, rather than power and violence.[2] The company eventually removed the ad and issued a formal apology, although as the Global Times observed, their ‘two-page statement irked netizens even more, as the rest of the “letter” boasted about the company’s products and brand’.[3]

Also in January, China’s popular video-sharing platform Bilibili streamed a Japanese anime series titled Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation. Among other things, the main character, a thirty-four-year-old man, steals a woman’s underwear and, in another scene, uses his mental powers to give an underage girl an orgasm at a funeral. On 1 February, a top male live-streamer on the site sharply criticised the series, while other users accused it of insulting and objectifying women and trading in sexual exploitation.[4] went on to expose a number of other videos containing sexist and misogynistic content, and urged netizens and advertisers alike to boycott the site.[5] Among companies that cut ties with Bibibili were cosmetics brands UKISS and Spenny, sanitary napkin vendor Sofy and skin care company Lin Qingxuan.[6] This push, together with a campaign of criticism from feminists on China’s social networking site Douban,[7] ultimately led to Bilibili removing from its platform the four episodes that had been shown and stopping the release of a fifth.

The spotlight fell on another company the following month. On 24 February, the thirty-one-year-old (male) celebrity talkshow host Li Dan 李诞 posted , a Chinese underwear brand that calls itself the ‘pioneer of One Size underwear’ and claims in its advertising that it is about ‘embodying the true and natural beauty of you’.[8] The ad described the company’s products as women’s ‘lifesaving garments’, allowing career women to ‘win easily [without any effort] in the workplace just by lying down’.[9] While the ad was riffing on a popular slang term for slacking off, the implication was that women achieved workplace success by using their sexuality.[10] One Weibo user commented: ‘I find it particularly disheartening when it comes from a lingerie brand that’s supposed to empower women.’[11] This backlash grew into calls for a boycott of Ubras, leading to apologies from both Li and the company.

A similar controversy, in which seemingly no-one responsible realised the offence being caused until there was an uproar, surrounded an exhibition of work by Song Ta 宋拓 titled ‘Uglier and Uglier’ 校花 (Campus Flowers) at the OCAT Shanghai art museum in June. Song, a thirty-three-year-old male artist, had secretly filmed 5,000 young women on a college campus. He edited the footage into a seven-hour video, displaying their photos with numerical scores given for attractiveness.[12] The exhibition (which ran from 28 April to 11 July 2021) went viral online and stirred public outrage, as did Song’s comments from a 2019 interview in which he said it was unusual ‘to find so many ugly women at only one school’.[13] On Weibo, the hashtag ‘SongTaCampusFlowers’ 宋拓校花 attracted around 100 million views by mid-June, with users condemning it as ‘violating people’s privacy’ and a ‘disgusting display of Song’s misogyny’.[14] The museum eventually acknowledged that the work was ‘disrespectful and offensive to female friends’ as well as a possible invasion of their privacy, made apologies to the public, removed the exhibition and closed the museum temporarily.[15]

These incidents exposed the sexism emanating from the rapid marketisation and commercialisation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). However, they also manifest rising awareness around gender inequality and Chinese feminism’s growing strength.

Sexual harassment cases are also associated with China’s corporate drinking culture. After a female Alibaba employee detailed how she was sexually assaulted by a client and raped by her male boss during a work trip, police failed to file charges. Only after 6,000 Alibaba employees signed a letter demanding action against sexual misconduct in the workplace did the company fire the boss in question — but not before also dismissing ten employees who had helped publicise the woman’s accusations on social media.[16] This scandal not only mirrors Kate Manne’s depiction of the ‘himpathy’ phenomenon (‘the flow of sympathy away from female victims towards their male victimizers’) in her book Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, but also underlines the close ties between power, male privilege and violence against women.[17]

The picture is further complicated by the heated debate around the arrest of Chinese-Canadian singer-actor Kris Wu 吴亦凡 in late July on charges of rape. Some claimed the arrest of the thirty-year-old singer, about whom rumours and allegations of sexual harassment had been swirling for two years, was a major win for women’s rights activists. Others, including many of his fans, denied his misconduct and defended him, demanding that brands including Porsche and Bulgari reinstate him as a brand ambassador and even suggesting they fundraise for Wu’s legal proceedings and band together to break him out of detention.[18] This led to Internet and media regulators intensifying their crackdown on ‘unhealthy’ celebrity culture and online fan clubs;[19] authorities removed thousands of ‘problematic’ accounts related to Wu on social media.[20] While far more serious than allegations of sexism, Wu’s case blurred the battle lines between feminists and anti-feminists, revealing the anger, anxiety and apprehension of the public when influential individuals’ actions are suddenly put under a microscope, and scrutinised by a large number of people.

The cyberspace gender wars

As feminist voices made themselves heard, an increasingly heated ‘gender war’ erupted in cyberspace. Feminists used terms such as ‘straight man cancer’ 直男癌, while men threw around insults such as ‘feminist whores’ 女权婊, and women accused other women of being ‘married donkeys’ 婚驴 who conformed to patriarchal rules and submitted to their husband’s will after marriage.[21] As arguments intensified around women’s rights, men’s rights and feminism, netizens divided into various camps.

One ongoing debate centres on ‘surnaming rights’ 冠姓权. In April 2020, a woman shared on Weibo how she sued for divorce after her husband refused to give their baby her surname.[22] While her post, on 26 March, generated more than 240,000 likes and has been shared more than 47,000 times, others described it as extreme ‘feminism with Chinese characteristics’, arguing that women demand equal rights but do not bear equal responsibilities.[23] The following month, some feminists mocked the internet celebrity and comedian Papi Jiang 姜逸磊 as a ‘married donkey’ after a Weibo user named ‘Enhe-I’ 恩和-I pointed out that Jiang’s newborn baby had inherited her husband’s surname.[24] The post went viral, and the corresponding hashtag became one of the most searched in May.[25] In October, television host Zhang Shaogang 张绍刚 was criticised following his interview with the father of Chinese actress Jin Sha 金沙 (a.k.a. Kym) on the variety show Meeting Mr Right 女儿们的恋爱 on Mango TV. Zhang told Jin Sha’s father it was embarrassing to hear him say his daughter had her mother’s surname.[26] The incident triggered heated discussion on Weibo, with the corresponding hashtag generating 400 million views, and many comments indicating Zhang had ruined his public persona.[27]

Equal surname rights are enshrined in China’s Civil Code (2020: Article 1,015).[28] Traditionally, children in China inherit their father’s surname, ensuring the continuation of the paternal line.[29] Although women typically and historically kept their own surnames after marriage, they were considered part of their husband’s families. Because they could not continue their own family’s ancestral lines, they were thus seen as less valuable than sons/men. In the wake of the One-Child Policy, which was introduced in 1979, and a subsequent rise in female infanticide, the CPC introduced the 1980 Marriage Law, which stipulated that ‘[C]hildren may adopt either their father’s or their mother’s surname’ 子女可以随父姓, 可以随母姓.[30] In August 2021, published statistics revealed that 7.7 percent of babies born in the PRC the previous year had their mother’s surname; the percentage was even higher in the cities.[31] Others used the combined surnames of their parents.[32]

Yang Li 杨笠, a female comedian who appeared on the stand-up comedy series Rock & Roast, sparked another controversy, in September 2020, when she joked about men and their egos: ‘How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?’ 他那么普通却又那么自信? After men trolled her viciously, another comedian cautioned her not to test men’s limits. Yang replied: ‘Do men even have limits?’ 男人,有底线吗. She gained many (mostly, but far from exclusively, women) supporters, but online, men abused her for being what they called an aggressive ‘female fist’ nüquan 女拳 (a derogatory term that is a homophone for 女权, ‘female rights/power’, but is the equivalent of ‘feminazi’). They denounced her for ‘sexism’, ‘man-bashing’ and ‘creating gender-based antagonism’.[33] In response, Yang’s supporters accused the critics of being ‘oversensitive’, ‘fragile’ and ‘lacking a sense of humour’.[34] Joe Wong 黄西, a Chinese-born American comedian who appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert before moving back to China in 2013, supported Yang: ‘It totally makes sense for Yang Li to take a well-deserved piss out of men, whose voices are consistently elevated above women’s in society.’[35]

Such controversies reflect the narrowing pathway for the growth of feminism in China. Although Mao Zedong famously said that ‘women hold up half the sky’, in the new China, the CPC is not comfortable with any movement that comes from the grassroots or challenges authority and it censors social media hashtags like #MeToo along with ‘sensitive words’ including ‘feminism’ and ‘LGBTQ’.[36] Where the battle lines might be drawn was suggested by comments from another, far more conservative, male comedian and law professor, Chu Yin 储殷, who wrote that ‘gender politics from the West’ threatened ‘the unity of the working class’ and fanned ‘hatred against straight men’.[37] He also posted a video on Douyin (China’s TikTok) in which he asked how special a man needed to be to please Yang Li, saying, ‘[Y]ou’re probably the ugly one after you wash off your makeup.’ (Yang has said that ‘a joke can only get laughs for one reason. Because it resonates.’)[38]

In late March 2021, Zhang Kunwei 张坤纬, a twenty-eight-year-old graduate from China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, posted a dating profile with his photo on Douban. He labelled himself ‘an ordinary man’, despite his qualifications and income of more than 50,000 yuan (A$10,000) per month — six times what the average public service employee would earn in a year — and previous work experience at JPMorgan and Google.[39] He had given up the high life, he explained, to teach in his hometown in Shanxi province. The post went viral, with more than 400 million views on Weibo in ten days.[40]

Unexpectedly, Zhang was ‘body-shamed’ and interrogated by netizens on Douban. Some female users denigrated Zhang, who was overweight, as ‘ugly’ 丑 and ‘greasy’ 油腻 (a word used by many women to describe middle-aged ‘mediocre and sleazy’ men, typically chubby, sweaty and/or narcissistic).[41] Others quoted Yang Li’s famous catchphrase, questioning why ‘he is so mediocre but still so confident’.[42] Zhang was also called out for presuming that women would be attracted to his wealth, even though he had supposedly given all that up for the simple life of a teacher. Another Douban user commented: ‘Who cares if you are highly educated or not? Are women with doctorates less humiliated? Don’t you know how harsh it [the society] is on women’s bodies?’[43] Others defended Zhang and called out his ‘feminazi’ critics for their double standards. Zhang himself responded by writing an article bemoaning the ‘unprecedented pressures’ faced by men, whom women valued for ‘working hard and earning money’, and how hard it was for a man like him to find a partner. The conflict exposed the mounting pressures and anxieties faced by men and women around their looks, gendered expectations and marriage in contemporary China.

Enter the state

The state closely scrutinises feminist online campaigns and rhetoric. The Chinese Government has removed various feminist accounts in previous years and shut ten feminist forums on Douban in April 2021 alone, including ‘Can’t break a broken can’ 破罐子不摔 and ‘Catchup gender equality sisters’ 性别平等姐妹.[44] It has also banned the phrase ‘6B4T’, which derives from radical feminist forums in South Korea. ‘6B’ refers to not having sex with men, not having a boyfriend, not marrying men, not having children, not buying sexist products and offering support to single women. ‘4T’ refers to rejecting standards of beauty, hypersexual depictions of women, religion and pop ‘idol’ culture. The movement encourages women to step away from ‘the influence of male-centred political culture, and then form a full range of female culture and female power’.

The Chinese Government has many reasons to crack down on these forums. First, a ‘female-centred culture’ poses an implicit threat to China’s male-dominated political order. Second, given the existing gender imbalance in the population (105.7 males to every 100 females in 2020), if an increasing number of women choose not to marry, even more millions of men will be ‘squeezed out’ of the marriage market, resulting in social instability and almost certainly increased numbers of sexual offences, including human trafficking for prostitution or forced marriages.[46]

Furthermore, the CPC wants women to have more babies, not fewer. Data from China’s 2020 national population census show the country’s birth rate has tumbled to its lowest level since the 1960s despite the easing of the One-Child Policy; there were 12 million newborns in 2020 — down from 14.7 million in 2019.[47] On 31 May 2021, China launched its Three-Child Policy, with the intention of triggering a baby boom. Whereas the One-Child Policy had a rocky start because many people, especially in rural areas, wanted more sons, this policy faces resistance for the opposite reason. On Weibo, of the 31,000 people who responded to a poll by the state’s Xinhua News Agency that asked whether they were ready for the Three-Child Policy, 28,000 selected ‘I am not considering it at all’.[48] While welcoming the freedom to have more children, opponents believed it was ‘too little, too late’, especially given the soaring cost of raising children.[49] A number of women worried that having more children could make it impossible to achieve work–life balance and result in them facing further discrimination in an already male-oriented job market.[50]

Even mild versions of feminism challenge the Party’s increasingly conservative vision for Chinese women; on multiple occasions, President Xi Jinping has reminded the nation of the virtues of traditional families and femininity. In 2013, he encouraged women to take the initiative to care for the elderly and shoulder the responsibility for educating children.[51] In 2016, he described ‘wifely virtue’ 妻贤 and ‘motherly kindness’ 母慈 as exemplary qualities for Chinese women.[52] In 2019, Xi said women had a unique role to play in the preservation of family values,[53] while on International Women’s Day in 2021, Xi exalted motherhood by saying: ‘Without women, there would be no human race and no society.’[54]

A ‘masculinity crisis’

Having set out what it expects of women, the Party has also laid out strategies for men. On 8 December 2020, China’s Ministry of Education issued a notice in response to a proposal from Si Zefu 斯泽夫, a top policy adviser objecting to what he saw as the widespread ‘feminisation’ of male adolescents. According to Si, many young boys had become ‘weak, timid, and self-abasing’. He claimed this trend would endanger the survival and development of the nation itself unless it was ‘effectively managed’.[55] The official notice set out a plan for cultivating masculinity in boys, from kindergarten to high school. The stress was on building physical strength: increasing the number of physical education classes, recruiting and training more gym teachers, vigorously developing sports like soccer and testing students more comprehensively in physical education.[56]

On Weibo and other platforms, discussion focused on the dangers of the ‘feminisation’ 女性化 of young boys — exemplified by the pretty-boy Chinese male actors and pop stars dubbed ‘little fresh meat’ 小鲜肉, whose female fans refer to them fondly as ‘wife’ 老婆, ‘sister’ 妹妹 and ‘princess’ 公主.[57] Others urged parents to do more to encourage boys’ masculinity. One commented: ‘[M]en are not like men, but a bunch of fake women, what do you think this nation will look like?’[58] The implicit message was that effeminate boys weakened China, echoing the popular saying that ‘the strength of a country depends on its youth’ 少年强则国强, from Liang Qichao’s 梁启超 article ‘On the Young China’ in February 1900.

At the same time, feminist voices were quick to label the government’s message sexist. One comment cut straight to the heart of the matter with the question: ‘Is “feminisation” now a derogatory term?’ Some argued for a healthy diversity of human character and individual difference. Others questioned the necessity of the proposal, pointing out that for all the attention given to ‘building up boys’ masculinity’, there was seemingly ‘no time to popularise sex education’ or teach young people the wrongs of ‘sexual harassment’.[59] Ironically, traditional ideals of masculinity in China largely centred on the idea of ‘being delicate, pale and pretty’, which had little to do with the kind of ‘hard men’ the Party seeks to promote today.[60]

This is in fact just the latest ‘masculinity crisis’ to concern the Party in the post-Mao era. Worries about whether Chinese men were ‘manly’ enough became a social anxiety in the 1980s. In 1985, First Blood became one of the first Western films to publicly screen in China, sparking discussion about why China had no cinema idol like Sylvester Stallone. The following year, Shanghai playwright Sha Yexin 沙叶新 stirred the pot of unease with his play In Search of a Real Man 寻找男子汉. This led to an agonised debate that simmered on through the 1990s about whether Chinese men had enough ‘steely yang energy’ 阳刚之气. Anxiety about Chinese masculinity erupted again in 2016 around the gender-specific textbook Little Little Manly Man 小小男子汉, published in Shanghai, which aimed to help boys aged ten to twelve understand gender differences and sexual psychology and enhance their life skills.[61] It aimed to change ‘the tendency of male students to lack masculinity, and be outperformed and overshadowed by girls at primary and secondary schools’.[62] Praised by some, it was criticised by others for propagating gender stereotypes.[63] By this point, the Party had determined that masculinity was a social problem in need of state intervention. In 2019, the State officially banned male artists wearing earrings, with censors awkwardly having to blur men’s ears in photos and even television programs. In September 2021, cultural authorities banned the appearance of ‘girlie guns’ 娘炮 (who were defined as ‘men whose appearance, personality, posture, behaviour, mentality, and facial expressions are distinctly feminine’) on both television and streaming sites so as to purge ‘morally flawed’ acts.[64] There are now various training programs and vacation camps aimed at strengthening boys’ physical strength, toughness and resilience, and popular self-help books such as Putin: The Perfect Man in the Eyes of All Women (2013), in which the author, Liu Xiang 刘翔, presents Russian President Vladimir Putin as a role model for Chinese men seeking to boost their masculinity.[65]

Living in an era that is heavily influenced by ‘flowery men’ 花样美男 culture (popularised by ‘soft masculinity’ or ‘metrosexual’ males who take care of their physical appearance through ‘feminine’ means such as using makeup and other beauty products or even having cosmetic surgery)[66] and fan culture modelled on that in the J-pop and K-pop worlds, as well as more mainstream visibility of feminism, will China’s younger generation of boys choose to follow the ‘hard masculinity’ model prescribed by the state?

Conclusion

Overall, despite an ongoing crackdown, censorship and vicious trolling, 2021 witnessed the mainstreaming of feminism in China as women like comedian Yang Li used their popularity to put gender-related questions into the public sphere, and more and more women came forward to call out sexual harassment, discrimination and body-shaming via a variety of e-platforms including podcasts, Douyin videos and online forums. A number of young men, too, took up the feminist cause of defending women’s rights and calling for gender equality. It was highly polarising. Feminists who ‘opened fire’ on men or ‘crossed the line’ incurred the wrath of the patriarchy, from online trolls to the ruling authorities. Men were caught between staying ‘average but confident’ and being mocked by feminists or embracing their feminine side and going against the will of the state.

When the powerfully built woman athlete Gong Lijiao 巩立姣won China’s first gold medal for shotput during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, China’s state-run CCTV host described her as a ‘manly woman’ 女汉子 and even asked her whether she had plans for ‘a woman’s life’. Gong, causing her supporters to despair at the seeming necessity of conforming, replied she would lose weight and get married and have children as ‘it’s the path one must take in life’.[67] It is uncertain who will be the winner in this tug-of-war between feminists and the masculinist patriarchy. However, I believe these conflicts will ultimately catalyse progress towards gender equality in the PRC.

[1] Pan Wang, ‘Women’s bodies, intimate politics, and feminist consciousness amid COVID-19’, in Jane Golley and Linda Jaivin eds, China Story Yearbook: Crisis, Canberra: ANU Press, 2020, pp. 76–89, at p. 86.

[2] Yuche Li and Fandi Cui, ‘Chinese brand under fire over controversial ad, self-aggrandizing apology letter’, Global Times, 11 January 2021, online at: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1212489.shtml

[3] ibid.; Emilia Jiang, ‘Outrageous Chinese beauty advert is axed for “demonizing” rape victims’, Daily Mail Australia, 11 January 2021, online at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9134279/Chinese-firm-accused-insulting-women-controversial-advert-make-wipes.html

[4] Shen Lu, ‘China’s culture wars, now playing on Bilibili’, Protocol, 25 February 2021, online at: https://www.protocol.com/china/bilibili-misogyny; Rebecca Davis, ‘Bilibili faces brands boycott sparked by accusations of misogyny ahead of Hong Kong share listing’, Variety, 11 February 2021, online at: https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/bilibili-faces-boycott-over-anime-mushoku-tensei-misogyny-1234906727/

[5] Meng Shen Mu Mu, ‘The storm at Bilibili upgrades, netizens boycott over disrespect to women, multiple brands decide to terminate contracts’ B站风波升级,不尊重女性遭网友抵制,多个品牌发声解除合作, Sohu, 10 February 2021, online at: https://m.sohu.com/a/450313123_442458/?pvid=000115_3w_a

[6] Davis, ‘Bilibili faces brands boycott’.

[7] Shen, ‘China’s culture wars, now playing on Bilibili’.

[8] Ubras, ‘One size for all’, Ubras.com, 2021, online at: https://ubras.com/

[9] Jiayun Feng, ‘Chinese lingerie brand apologizes for joke about workplace sexism’, SupChina, 25 February 2021, online at: https://supchina.com/2021/02/25/chinese-lingerie-brand-apologizes-for-joke-about-workplace-sexism/

[10] Kejie Yi, ‘Ubras faces massive backlash [after] male celebrity’s sexist post’, China Marketing Insights, 2 March 2021, online at: https://chinamktginsights.com/ubras-faces-massive-backlash-after-sexist-sponsored-content-from-male-celebrity/

[11] Feng, ‘Chinese lingerie brand apologizes for joke about workplace sexism’.

[12] Jiayun Feng, ‘Shanghai art museum slammed for showing video ranking thousands of women by attractiveness’, SupChina, 18 June 2021, online at: https://supchina.com/2021/06/18/shanghai-art-museum-slammed-for-showing-video-ranking-thousands-of-women-by-attractiveness/

[13] Bryan Grogan, ‘Chinese artist Song Ta’s misogynistic video “Uglier and Uglier” caused outrage online’, RADII, 18 June 2021, online at: https://radiichina.com/song-ta-ocat-shanghai/

[14] Feng, ‘Shanghai art museum slammed for showing video’.

[15] ibid.; Lisa Movius, ‘OCAT Shanghai closes after public outcry over Uglier and Uglier video that ranks women’s attractiveness’, The Art Newspaper, 21 June 2021, online at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/ocat-shanghai-closes-after-public-outcry-over-video-piece-uglier-and-uglier

[16] Li Yuan, ‘Alibaba rape allegation reveals China tech’s seamy side’, The New York Times, 12 August 2021, online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/technology/china-alibaba-technology-sexual-assault.html; Coco Liu and Zheping Huang, ‘Alibaba fires 10 employees for leaking details of sexual assault’, Al Jazeera, 30 August 2021, online at: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/8/30/alibaba-fires-10-employees-for-leaking-details-of-sexual-assault

[17] Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, p.23; Yang Wanli, ‘Alibaba scandal sparks widespread public debate’, China Daily, 18 August 2021, online at: https://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/233973#Alibaba-scandal-sparks-widespread-public-debate

[18] Laura He, ‘Chinese regulators eye unruly fans and pop culture shows as their next crackdown targets’, CNN Business, 8 August 2021, online at: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/06/media/china-crackdown-fan-culture-kris-wu-intl-hnk/index.html

[19] Jiayun Feng, ‘Police arrest Kris Wu on suspicion of rape’, SupChina, 2 August 2021, online at: https://supchina.com/2021/08/02/police-arrest-kris-wu-on-suspicion-of-rape/

[20] Dong Xing, ‘Wu Yifan incident shakes China’s fan group culture; accounts blocked on Weibo and WeChat’ 吴亦凡风波撼动中国饭圈文化 微博微信集中封号, ABC News Chinese, 5 August 2021, online at: https://www.abc.net.au/chinese/2021-08-05/kris-wu-yifan-detained-in-beijing-weibo-accounts-suspended-china/100346608

[21] Jiayun Feng, ‘Papi Jiang, China’s internet queen, sparks messy feminist debate’, SupChina, 14 May 2020, online at: https://supchina.com/2020/05/14/papi-jiang-chinas-internet-queen-sparks-messy-feminist-debate/

[22] Jane Li, ‘A movement to pass mothers’ last names to their children is gaining traction in China’, Quartz, 22 April 2020, online at: https://qz.com/1841149/chinese-women-awaken-to-passing-surnames-to-children/

[23] ibid.; Zhang Wanqing, ‘Call them by my name, say China’s mothers’, Sixth Tone, 9 April 2020, online at: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1005460/call-them-by-my-name%2C-say-chinas-mothers

[24] Zhang, ‘Call them by my name, say China’s mothers’.

[25] Sina Weibo, ‘#Papi Jiang’s child inherits father’s surname causes controversy’ Papi酱孩子随父姓引争议, online at: https://bit.ly/3kHJvIi [page discontinued].

[26] YQQLM, ‘The famous host Zhang Shaogang’s personal setting is facing collapse, saying that Jinsha was embarrassed by his mother’s surname and was criticised by many netizens’, YQQLM, 29 October, online at: https://www.yqqlm.com/2020/10/the-famous-host-zhang-shaogangs-personal-setting-is-facing-collapse-saying-that-jinsha-was-embarrassed-by-his-mothers-surname-and-was-complained-by-many-netizens/

[27] ibid.; Sina Weibo, ‘#Zhang Shaogang says it’s embarrassing for Jin Sha to inherit mother’s surname’ 张绍刚说金莎随母姓尴尬, online at: https://bit.ly/3kJTNaZ

[28] Sino Weibo, ‘#surnaming rights’ 冠姓权, 2021, online at: https://bit.ly/37nNVh5; Civil Code of the People’s Republic of China 中华人民共和国民法典, Adopted at the Third Session of the Thirteenth National People’s Congress on 28 May 2020, online at: http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/c23934/202012/f627aa3a4651475db936899d69419d1e/files/47c16489e186437eab3244495cb47d66.pdf

[29] Jian Li and Rosemary Santana Cooney, ‘Son Preference and the One Child Policy in China: 1979–1988’, Population Research and Policy Review, vol.12 (1993): 277–296.

[30] Article 22, National People’s Congress, Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China, Adopted at the Third Session of the Fifth National People’s Congress and Promulgated by Order No.9 of the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on 10 September 1980, and Effective as of 1 January 1981, online at: https://www.cecc.gov/resources/legal-provisions/marriage-law-of-the-peoples-republic-of-china-amended#body-chinese

[31] Xinhua, ‘Report reveals most popular names of Chinese newborns in 2020’, China Daily, 14 February 2021, online at: http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202102/14/WS60291874a31024ad0baa8f26.html

[32] Xu Qi, ‘Why are more Chinese inheriting their mother’s surname?’, Sixth Tone, 23 July 2021, online at: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1008063/why-are-more-chinese-inheriting-their-mothers-surname%3F

[33] Zhaoyin Feng and Yitsing Wang, ‘Yang Li: The “punchline queen” who offended Chinese men’, BBC News, 25 January 2021, online at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55744860

[34] ibid.

[35] Jiayun Feng, ‘Feminist comedian accused of “inciting gender-based antagonism” after critiquing sexist haters’, SupChina, 29 December 2020, online at: https://supchina.com/2020/12/29/feminist-comedian-accused-of-inciting-gender-based-antagonism-after-critiquing-sexist-haters/

[36] Rebecca Kanthor, ‘Feminist activists in China speak out against online censorship despite government pushback’, The World, 14 July 2021, online at: https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-07-14/feminist-activists-china-speak-out-against-online-censorship-despite-government

[37] Feng and Wang, ‘Yang Li’.

[38] Tiffany May, ‘She mocked men’s bluster. Then came the complaints’, The New York Times, 30 December 2020, online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/world/asia/male-confidence-comedian-china.html

[39] Statista, ‘Average annual salary of employees working for urban units in China from 2010 to 2020 (in yuan)’, online at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/278349/average-annual-salary-of-an-employee-in-china/

[40] Global Times, ‘Money isn’t everything: Bachelor’s dating profile stirs up hot discussion among Chinese netizens’, Global Times, 6 April 2021, online at: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202104/1220352.shtml

[41] Sun Jiahui, ‘Grease is the word’, The World of Chinese, 9 November 2017, online at: https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2017/11/greasy-is-the-word/

[42] Alice Yan, ‘Man fat-shamed for dating ad says hard to meet expectations for love in China’, ABS-CBN NEWS, 7 April 2021, online at: https://news.abs-cbn.com/life/04/07/21/man-fat-shamed-for-dating-ad-says-hard-to-meet-expectations-for-love-in-china

[43] In Chinese: ‘管你是不是高学历, 女博士被羞辱的还少吗? 对女人的身材多苛刻心里没数?’, Douban group, 2 April 2021, online at: https://www.douban.com/group/topic/218755005/ [restricted access].

[44] Manya Koetse, ‘Censorship of Chinese 6B4T & feminist groups prompts wave of support for “Douban Sisters”’, What’s On Weibo, 13 April 2021, online at: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/censorship-of-chinese-6b4t-feminist-groups-prompts-wave-of-support-for-douban-sisters/; Josh Rudolph, ‘After shuttering of feminist Douban groups, women call for unity online’, China Digital Times, 16 April 2021, online at: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2021/04/after-shuttering-of-feminist-douban-groups-women-call-for-unity-online/

[45] Koetse, ‘Censorship of Chinese 6B4T & feminist groups’

[46] Pan Wang, ‘Going Solo: An Analysis of China’s “Single Economy” through the Date-Renting Industry’, Asian Studies Review, vol.45, no.4 (2021): 1–18, doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2021.1929068.

[47] John Carter, Sidney Leng and Orange Wang, ‘China population: Census confirms increase to 1.412 billion in 2020, but births fall again’, South China Morning Post, 11 May 2021, online at: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3132980/china-population-latest-census-confirms-increase-1412-billion

[48] Manya Koetse, ‘China’s “Three Child Era” announcement is met with banter and backlash on Weibo’, What’s On Weibo, 31 May 2021, online at: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/the-announcement-of-chinas-three-child-era-is-met-with-banter-and-backlash-on-weibo/

[49] ibid.; Michael Smith, ‘Why China’s three-child policy is too little, too late’, Australian Financial Review, 1 June 2021, online at: https://www.afr.com/world/asia/why-china-s-three-child-policy-is-too-little-too-late-20210601-p57x01

[50] Sina Weibo, ‘#Here comes the Three-Child Policy’ 三孩政策来了, Sina Weibo, 31 May 2021, online at: https://bit.ly/3xxO78h

[51] Lina Yang and Hongyi Cheng, ‘Xi Jinping: Adhering to the fundamental national policy of gender equality, giving full play to the great role of Chinese women’ 习近平: 坚持男女平等基本国策 发挥我国妇女伟大作用, People’s Daily, 1 November 2013, online at: http://cpc.people.com.cn/n/2013/1101/c64094-23396247.html

[52] Mengmeng Wang, ‘Xi Jinping’s speech at the meeting with the representatives of the first session of national civilised families’ 习近平: 在会见第一届全国文明家庭代表时的讲话, Xinhuanet, 15 December 2016, online at: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2016-12/15/c_1120127183.htm

[53] State Council Information Office, Equality, Development and Sharing: Progress of Women’s Cause in 70 Years Since New China’s Founding 平等 发展 共享: 新中国70年妇女事业的发展与进步, Beijing: State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 1 September 2019, online at: http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2019-09/19/content_5431327.htm

[54] Meng Bin and Liang Jun, ‘Xi Jinping on protection of women’s rights’, People’s Daily Online, 8 March 2021, online at: http://en.people.cn/n3/2021/0308/c90000-9826589.html

[55] Kerry Allen, ‘China promotes education drive to make boys more “manly”’, BBC News, 4 February 2021, online at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55926248

[56] Zixu Wang, Xin Chen and Caroline Radnofsky, ‘China proposes teaching masculinity to boys as state is alarmed by changing gender roles’, NBC News, 5 March 2021, online at: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-proposes-teaching-masculinity-boys-state-alarmed-changing-gender-roles-n1258939

[57] Zhang Wenjie, ‘Why are Chinese fans calling male celebrities “wife”?’, The World of China, 15 July 2021, online at: https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2021/07/why-are-chinese-fans-calling-male-celebs-wife/

[58] In Chinese: 男人不像男人, 一帮伪娘, 那你想这个民族成什么样了?, Sina Weibo, 17 March 2021, online at: https://bit.ly/3jA1EqL

[59] In Chinese: 有时间关心男生不够阳刚, 怎么没有时间加大全国普及一下性知识性教育, 减少女童被性侵的风险, Sina Weibo, 3 April 2021, online at: https://bit.ly/3jA1EqL

[60] Steven Jiang, ‘Under Xi’s rule, what is China’s image of the “ideal man”?’, CNN Style, 26 October 2019, online at: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/china-masculinity-intl-hnk/index.html

[61] Wang Zhenghua, ‘Gender-specific textbook targets primary school boys’, China Daily, 31 October 2016, online at: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-10/31/content_27221854.htm

[62] ibid.

[63] Lin Wanxia, ‘“Be a man!” New textbook offers Chinese boys advice’, Asia Times, 12 December 2016, online at: https://asiatimes.com/2016/12/man-new-textbook-offers-chinese-boys-advice/

[64] Victor Mair, ‘Gender bending in the Sinosphere’, Language Log, 4 November 2018, online at: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=40566; Shuaishuai Wang, ‘China is targeting “sissy men” in its crackdown on big tech”, Scroll.in, 13 September 2021, online at: https://scroll.in/article/1005195/china-is-targeting-sissy-men-in-its-crackdown-on-big-tech

[65] Ed Pulford, ‘How the Russian president became China’s ultimate self-help muse’, The Calvert Journal, 17 May 2021, online at: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/12775/putins-chinese-literary-cult-self-help-books-ideal-russian-man

[66] Lilia Yamakawa, ‘Flower men of Korea’, Japan Sociology, 30 January 2014, online at: https://japansociology.com/2014/01/30/flower-men-of-korea/

[67] Helen Davidson, ‘Chinese uproar as state TV host calls gold-medal winner a “manly woman”’, The Guardian, 6 August 2021, online at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/06/chinese-uproar-as-state-tv-host-calls-gold-medal-winner-a-manly-woman?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This essay will appear in the China Story Yearbook: Contradictions, forthcoming from ANU Press in April 2022.

The post (Wo)men’s voices, rights, and the vision of the state appeared first on The China Story.

Australia has a rich history of Chinese immigration, including during the ‘Gold Rush’, later from Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora and, since the early 1990s, from the PRC. Chinese migrants are an important part of Australia’s contemporary social fabric and their contribution to the economy is also well documented.

The bulk of Chinese temporary and permanent immigration in recent decades has been from the PRC, that is, mainland China. Much less has been written about the behaviour of these migrants after their arrival in Australia, including their attitudes to marriage, cohabitation and divorce.

Detailed data from the ABS sheds light on the cohabitation, marriage and divorce behaviours of PRC migrants in contemporary Australia. The ABS usefully provides separate data for people born in mainland China, Hong Kong and other Asian jurisdictions, unlike the use of broad ethnic classifications such as ‘Asian’ and ‘Chinese’ in British, Canadian and US statistics. These data have been collected since the mid-1990s and cover the high-level characteristics of women and men registering marriages and divorces in Australia by country of birth.

In our recent research, we analyse these data to answer many interesting questions, including: who are PRC migrants actually marrying? Do they tend to marry other migrants or people born in Australia? Do they replicate patterns of marriage and divorce that are seen in mainland China?

Marriages

We find that the majority of marriages registered in Australia involving PRC-born people are intra-cultural rather than inter-cultural in nature — that is, they are marriages between two people born in mainland China. For example, of the more than 6,400 marriage registrations in Australia in 2017 that involved a spouse born in mainland China, 60 per cent were between two people born in mainland China, up from a low of 46 per cent in 2001. While this finding may come as a surprise to some, in fact it confirms a general principle of classic assimilation theory — namely, that new migrant groups are unlikely to enter into inter-cultural marriages with members of migrant-receiving communities, unless a small migrant population restricts the potential for intra-ethnic marriage. This restriction clearly doesn’t bind for PRC-born migrants in Australia.

More surprising is the finding that, counter to any presumption that ethnic migrant groups bring their propensities for marital behaviour with them, PRC-born couples in Australia create and dissolve marital relationships very differently from their counterparts on the Chinese mainland. The estimated crude marriage rate (the number of people getting married in a given population in a given year) for PRC-born couples in Australia was 18 per 1,000 women and 16 per 1,000 men in 2017. This is roughly double the crude marriage rate in mainland China (7.2 per 1,000 people in 2018) and more than four times the crude marriage rate for couples married in Australia (4.6 in 2017), which implies that PRC migrants are more likely to marry than other segments of the Australian community and their compatriots in mainland China.

Cohabitation

Unlike in China and in Asia more generally, where couples seldom cohabit prior to marriage, most PRC-born people registering marriages in Australia do so following a period of cohabitation. In fact, the cohabitation rate is slightly higher than that recorded for the broader Australian population. In 2005, around 72 per cent of PRC-born people registering a marriage in Australia had cohabited with their partner prior to marriage (compared with 76 per cent for all marriages). By 2017, 83 per cent of PRC-born people had previously cohabited (compared with 81 per cent for all marriages). This contrasts with low rates of pre-marital cohabitation in mainland China (8 per cent for males and 6 per cent for females).

How can such differences be explained? The higher tendency for PRC-born couples in Australia to cohabit may reflect the greater scope for independent living, combined with a relative absence of cultural and familial pressures to avoid cohabitation. By contrast, the higher tendency to marry could reflect efforts to escape social isolation and alienation in an adopted community. It could also reflect greater access to like-minded young people with a shared experience of living abroad. Administrative incentives, too, such as immigration policies that encourage people to formalise relationships through marriage when applying for permanent residency, may also play a role.

Marital stability

An intriguing insight from the data is that a shared country-of-origin is no guarantee of marital stability. Compared to couples involving at least one Australian-born person, couples involving two PRC-born people tend to separate and divorce sooner after marriage. Couples with at least one Australian-born person stay together for an average of more than nine years after marriage, compared to less than four years for PRC-born couples. This contrasts with suggestions that cultural compatibility and ‘Chinese’ marriage values make such marriages less susceptible to divorce. A range of hypotheses can be given to explain this finding. For example, the social pressure (from friends and other family members) for couples to remain married may be absent in the isolation of a foreign country. Couples may also form relationships that are less durable than they otherwise would be due to a limited choice of marriage partners. Alternatively, the stresses of living abroad could lead to marital conflict. Further research is needed to understand why this is the case.

In short, marriages between PRC-born migrants to Australia are intra-cultural rather than inter-cultural, and behaviour around cohabitation, marriage and divorce differs notably from that observed in mainland China. These differences indicate that intra-ethnic marriages between new migrant groups do not predictably reproduce and reinforce the norms and behaviours associated with their ‘homeland’. More generally, a range of factors, from changing opportunities for professional labour migration and behavioural responses to cultural isolation to country-specific immigration policies, can modify and shape family formation behaviour in unexpected ways.

The post PRC Migrants in Australia: Marriage and Divorce appeared first on The China Story.