Qi
Wang
French Centre for Research
on Contemporary China
China Perspectives
NO. 3 (114)
August
2018
YOUNG FEMINIST ACTIVISTS IN PRESENT-
DAY CHINA
A NEW FEMINIST GENERATION?
ABSTRACT
This article studies post-2000 Chinese feminist activism from a generational perspective. It operationalises three notions of generation-generation as an age cohort, generation as a historical cohort, and "political generation"-to shed light on the question of generation and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The study shows how the younger generation of women have come to the forefront of feminist protest in China and how the historical conditions they live in have shaped their feminist outlook. In parallel, it examines how a "political generation" emerges when feminists of different ages are drawn together by a shared political awakening and collaborate across age.
KEYWORDS:
China
post-socialist Chinese feminism
political generation
generation
feminist activism
age cohort
historical cohort
In March 2015, right before the annual celebration of International Women’s Day, five young feminists known as
the Feminist Five (Wei Tingting, Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wang Man, and Zheng Churan) were arrested by the
Chinese police for planning to spread messages against sexual harassment in public transportation. Shocking as
it was, the news brought great international attention to this “increasingly vocal group of young activists”
(Mohanty 2016: ix; Wang 2015; Jacobs 2015; Hu 2016).
Subsequently, both the term “generation” and “wave” have made their way into the headlines of Anglophone media
coverage (Chen 2015; Volodzko 2015). Similar terms such as “young activists” and “younger generation” are
also regularly found in the emerging scholarship on the new feminist activism associated with these young
women (Liu et al. 2015; Wesoky 2017). In Chinese social media, these young women are often referred to as the
“new generation” (xin shengdai / xin yidai 新生代/新一代) or “Youth-Feminist-Action-Faction” (qingnian nüquan
xingdongpai 青年女权行动派).
With these words, both academia and the media are joined in heralding the rise of a new feminist generation in China.
These young women “entered the central stage of feminist protests” by voicing “their anger at the growing
sexism and gender inequality in China today” (Mohanty 2016: ix) through a series of performance art events
targeting sexual harassment in public transportation, domestic violence, gender discrimination in education
admissions, lack of female toilets in cities, and other forms of sexual abuse of women and school girls since
2010. Current studies of the new feminist activism have delineated these young women as action-oriented. They
use provocative performance art on the streets to speak directly to the public and arouse public attention
(Wei 2015; Jacobs 2016). They practice “media activism,” leveraging “various platforms of communication” in
the media and social media to spread their messages and “achieve their objectives” (Tan 2017: 175; Li and Li
2017). Moreover, they resort to individualised and “deinstitutionalised” tactics and loose networks instead
of formal organisations (Wei 2015; Yue 2015), and finally, in contrast to the “non-confrontational and
co-existence” approach of the earlier feminists who favour feminism as “female or feminine-ism” (nüxing
zhuyi 女性主义), these young activists prefer “women’s rights or power-ism” (nüquanzhuyi 女权主义) and are proud
of being “feminist for women’s rights/power” (nüquan zhuyizhe 女权主义者). (2) They have hence distinguished
themselves from feminists of the earlier reform period and mark a turning point in postsocialist Chinese
feminism. Calling them a “new generation” is an expression for such change.
This study joins the current scholarly and media interest in the new generation of feminist activism with more
focus on the concept of “generation.” The aim is to flesh out the “generation” tag that we often use to
describe the young feminist activists and to address the question of generation and generational change in
post-socialist feminism in China on more theoretically-conscious ground. Three notions of generation are chosen
for this purpose. The first is the notion of generation as an age cohort. It considers age as “one of the most
basic social categories of human existence and a primary factor in all societies for assigning roles and
granting prestige and power” (Braungart and Braungart 1986: 205) and theorises “the nature and significance of
biological age groupings for process of social change and continuity” (Pilcher 1994: 481). The second is the
notion of generation as a historical cohort. This notion views generation as “a historical construct that
transcends the biological chronology of life from birth to death” (Aboim and Vasconcelos 2012: 7)and
draws attention to the role of historical events and conditions in shaping people’s identity and political
consciousness. The third is the concept of “political generation,” which accentuates the “cultural and
political environment in a community context” and explores how people of diverse ages and backgrounds are drawn
together by “similar political awakening” (Reger 2014: 6).
Guided by these notions of generation, the article will focus on: the role of age in the new feminism; the
influence of historical experiences on feminist coming-of-age and identity formation; the process and
location of feminist fermentation and mobilisation. The aim is to shed light on the dimension of
generational differences but also cross-generational connection and continuity in post-socialist Chinese
feminism. The theoretical ground of this study is based on generation literature in social science and
feminist history that I have come across. The selection might be limited in scope, given the sheer size
of the international scholarship on generation and feminist generations. Empirical data about the young
feminist activists are mainly collected from various Internet sources in a “targeted” manner, whereby I
type certain key words, such as “Chinese feminism” (Zhongguo nüquan 中国女权) and
“youth-feminist-action-faction” (qingnian nüquan xingdong pai 青年女权行动派), retrieve different entries
from mixed sources within the last two or three years, and retain only those facts and information that
are relevant. In addition, I interviewed three individuals and communicated with one person from China.
The interviews took place in Denmark by using the hold-to-talk voice messaging function of the Chinese
social media WeChat. They include X, a key figure amongst the young feminist activists in Beijing; S, a
high-profile feminist scholar from Shanghai with profound knowledge of feminism and the new feminism in
China; W, a sociologist who has interviewed some of the young feminist activists and published an
article about them; and Li Sipan, a feminist journalist in Guangzhou.
THE NEW FEMINIST GENERATION AS AN AGE COHORT
In sociology and social science in general, the notion of generation connotes
a set of meanings, and age cohort is one of them. (6) An age cohort is
a group of people who have been born and grown up within the same or
relatively the same period. Based on the recognition that “the distinct ages
of life act as conditioning forces for human experiences” (Braungart and
Braungart 1986: 206), Western generation theories postulate that “those
born around the same period in time share a similarity in both life-cycle
development and historical experiences” (ibid.: 205-6). Age groups thus have
the potential to function as “agents of social change” (Kerzer 1983: 133)
and bear great significance for the study of “human behavior and politics.”
The “entrance of successive age groups into society shapes the course of
human development and sociopolitical change” (Braungart and Braungart
1986: 205-6).
Thus, to understand the young feminist activists as a new feminist generation,
the first step is to locate their age cohort and deliberate the role of
age in making them the way they are. In general, the young feminist activists
have emerged from the population segment that was born in the
1980s and 1990s. People in this age cohort are commonly referred to as
the post-1980s, post-1990s generation, ’80ers and ’90ers, or the millennial
generation (Zhao 2011; Rosen 2009; Sabet 2011; Yan 2013; Yi, Ribbens, and
Morgan 2010). Typically, these young women are in their late twenties or
early thirties. When the Feminist Five were arrested in 2015, for instance,Wang Man was 33 years old; Wei Tingting was 26; both Zheng Churan and
Li Tingting were 25, and Wu Rongrong had just turned 30. (7) Xiao Meili, the
women’s rights activist who completed a 2,000 km walk from Beijing to
Guangzhou in 2014 to raise public awareness of sexual abuse, was born in
1989, (8) whereas my informant X was born in 1988 and will be 30 this
year.
People of this generation possess some characteristics that are different
from those of their parents’ generation. As they have advanced toward
adulthood, Chinese society “has undergone an ethical shift from collectiveoriented
values to individual-oriented values” (Yan 2010: 2). The influence
of public forces on the family has weakened, and the individual has gained
“greater control (...) over her or his life” (ibid.: 1). Studies of individualisation
in China have shown how “the primacy of personal happiness and individual
realisation” has become “the ultimate goal in life” for post-1980s and post-
1990s youth (ibid.: 2). On the negative side, they are often described as
“selfish,” “uncooperative,” “anti-traditional,” and “rebellious,” but they have
also been associated with positive attributes such as “strong self-confidence,”
“diverse interests,” “strong need for self-improvement,” and “better
connection to the outside world” (Yi, Ribbens, and Morgan 2010: 605). These
generational characteristics explain, at least in part, why women of the new
generation would “reject the politics and methods of their predecessors”
and choose new modes of action that they feel “are more effective” and illuminative
to who they are (Hunt 2017: 108).
But age location also mirrors an age group’s social placement. Being in
their late twenties or early thirties, the young feminist activists are either
university students, fresh graduates, or individuals with diverse educational
and occupational backgrounds. They have not advanced high enough on
the social ladder to obtain an established status, and therefore lack “social
capital, social networks, and professional qualifications within the system”
(Li and Li 2017: 58). What they have, conversely, is their individual initiative,
strong sense of agency and social justice, and high degree of commitment
and creativity. This explains why the new feminist activism arises from the
outskirts of the state system and the state-sanctioned organisational channels
and why it mostly accentuates individuals and volunteers. In the absence
of governmental resources, news-making becomes the “major means
of mobilization” for the young feminist activists, while street-based performance
art and media/social media have proven to be two effective tools
for them to make news (ibid.).
Since age cohort is an aggregative category, one may wonder how large
this new feminist generation is. The question is easier to ask than to answer,
given that the activist groups participating in the street actions in 2012
were not strictly organised and that there are basically “no statistics about the number of feminists or the number of feminist activists in China.” (10)
Most of the protest performances were “executed by a small number of actual
participants,” sometimes “even a single individual” (Wei 2015: 294).
The “Occupy Men’s Room” event in 2012, for example, was carried out by
around 20 young women in Guangzhou and Wuhan respectively, 17 in Xi’an
(with nine boys), (11) and about 10 in Beijing and Chengdu respectively. (12)
However, the numbers would be much larger if including those who were
not at the scene of the protest but supported the campaign behind the
scenes. As the People’s Web (renmin wang 人民网) reports, female students
from 12 of China’s normal universities have sent letters to their university
authorities appealing for more female toilets (Zhou 2012).
THE NEW FEMINIST GENERATION AS A HISTORICAL COHORT
The notion of generation as a historical cohort stems from sociologist Karl
Mannheim, who saw generational location as “a key aspect of the existential
determination of knowledge” yielding “certain definite modes of behaviour,
feeling and thought” (Pilcher 1994: 483). A generation, in Mannheim’s thinking,
refers to “people within a delineated population who experience the
same significant event within a given period” (ibid.). Therefore, “members
of different political generation possess different perspectives” (Whittier
1997: 761). Ever since Mannheim, sociologists have “recognized the lifelong
influence that historical events shared by cohorts can have on beliefs about
the world and self” (Schnittker et al. 2003: 608). Likewise, Western feminism
studies also underscore how “the contentious course of political debates
about the meaning and substance of feminism” have had “different aggregate
effects on identification for those whose political coming-of-age has
occurred at different times” (ibid.).
The concept of “historical cohort” emphasises the historical experiences
that members of a cohort share with one another and the impact of these
experiences on the formation of their self-consciousness, identity, and
worldview. At this point, we can identify three historical conditions that
today’s young feminists have lived in and examine how these conditions
have influenced them. The first to mention is that they grew up during the
later reform period under the market economy and market-defined social
and cultural conditions. (13) By the time they reached their earlier adulthood,
China’s economic reforms had deepened, gender discrimination had become
widespread, and women’s conditions in general had deteriorated. (14) As Xiao
Meili, one of the young feminist activists, states (Volodzko 2015):
In China today, women face widespread discrimination at work; many
companies refuse to even hire women. Sexual harassment is commonplace.
Domestic violence is pervasive.
During this period, traditional gender ideology and male chauvinism have
also been on the rise (He 2001; Leung 2003; Zhang et al. 2014; Zurndorfer
2016). Rampant patriarchal views flood the mainstream media, with many
coming from the mouths of well-known male professors/experts (Shimei
Keyi 2014). A recent survey on “gender equality awareness” conducted by
theChina Women’s Journal amongst the students of 13 Chinese universities
shows that 65.1% of the surveyed female students identify themselves with
the idea of gender equality, whereas the same attitude was found amongst
only 35.0% of the male students. It also shows that 40.48% of the male
respondents would like to see women as full-time housewives, but only31.55% of them agree that the male should pay the bill for dinner during a
date. Commenting on the results of this survey, the message board administrator
of Baidu Post Bar concludes that the better educated men are, and
the higher their academic qualifications, the more likely they will lean on
traditional views of women and male chauvinist views.
At a personal level, many young activists have experienced gender discrimination
in one way or another at some point of their lives. In Xiao Meili’s
case, it is in the domain of love and intimate relations that she encountered
unfairness. A young university student majoring in design, she loves painting,
art, literature, travel, and pets. Like many young girls her age, she dreams
about romance and a Prince Charming in her life. She carefully preserves
her virginity, waiting for the moment of her “first time” to come. She did
date a male classmate once, but the relationship did not thrive. Later, a senior
fellow student showed an interest in her. The boy grew suspicious when
he found out that Xiao had dated someone before and the couple had spent
a night together. Though Xiao explained to him that nothing happened during
that night, the new boyfriend didn’t believe her: “You two were in the
same room for a whole night, and you want me to believe that you were
there just watching TV?” At that moment, a strong sense of unfairness
swept over Xiao. She was infuriated by men’s virgin complex, feeling treated
like a thing worth possessing only if her virginity is intact.
X, another young feminist, comes from a small town in central China. During
her childhood, she repeatedly witnessed how her father beat her mother
and bullied her with a rude and male chauvinist attitude. As a five-year old
child, she had already developed a strong sense of justice and would fight
back to protect her mother by slapping her father’s head with a fly-swatter
(Interview 3). Wu Rongrong, one of the Feminist Five, grew up in “an extremely
patriarchal environment where girls were considered worthless.”
Too many times, she witnessed “promising young girls” from her village
being “forced to abandon their studies and go to work to support their brothers’ education.” Wu’s own pursuit of education was also “hampered
not only by severe economic hardship but also by well-meaning people who
tried to dissuade” her from continuing her education. In her young adult
life, like all her female friends, Wu “encountered harassment when looking
for full-time work.” She was once lured to a suburb of Beijing by a man who
posed as an employer promising her a job. In the end, she managed to get
herself out, but the experience scared her and reminded her how vulnerable
a young woman can be (Wu 2016).
The second historical condition to mention is the one-child policy and its
wide social ramifications (Fong 2002, 2006; Tsui and Rich 2002; Arnold and
Liu 1986; Wang 2005; Hannum and Zhang 2009). The young feminist activists
represented by the Feminist Five belong to the one-child generation,
and most of them, but not all, were brought up as the only child in their
family (Sabet 2011; Wu 2015). Their parents have high expectations for
them and have invested colossal economic resources to secure them a
bright future. In her interview with eight young urban feminist activists, Wu
notes that five of them “graduated from top national universities and six of
them had never experienced any discriminative treatment or hindrances
from their parents” (Wu 2015: 37). Thus, one unintended consequence of
the one-child policy has been the improvement of education for urban girls
and the emergence of resource-strong “little empresses” besides “little emperors”
(Wang 2017).
Highly valued by their parents, these young women have grown up with
a high self-expectation and a firm confidence about their roles in society.
While rural girls such as Wu Rongrong must fight hard to get an education,
they all treasure their education and hope education will bring them a prosperous
future. Only when they entered society after graduation did they
begin to realise how their gender identity could be an obstacle to them.
This “shared negative experience of being discriminated against as a
woman” (Wu 2015: 37) forms a sharp contrast to the good education they
have obtained and the high self-confidence and self-expectations these
women have. This sharp contrast, in Professor Wang Zheng’s view, explains
why these young women were drawn to feminism and were animated to
act for change (Wang 2017). As well-educated and competent individuals,
they do not tolerate gender discrimination and are highly motivated to fight
back.
The third historical condition to mention is these young women’s detachment
from China’s socialist past and the legacy of state feminism.
During the socialist period, the Chinese state launched waves of campaigns
to “liberate” women and promote women’s socioeconomic and political
participation. This proactive and woman-friendly role of the state has, however,
diminished since the economic reforms began and became unrecognisable
for women of the new generation. On the contrary, they have
discovered many loopholes and oversights in government policies and
labour market praxis that either connive with or harbour discrimination
against women and other socially disadvantaged groups. Moreover, the
Chinese government has since the new millennium turned to revitalising
Confucian family values and promoting traditional gender norms (Fincher
2016). In concert with the state, the All-China Women’s Federation (WF),
for example, instigated a national campaign to urge single professional
women over 27 to get married. Those who remained unmarried were
mobbed as undesirable “leftovers” (Fincher 2014, 2016). The conservative
turn of the state (and the state institution of women, WF) has evoked a
strong disappointment among women of the new generation and pushed
them to resist (Fincher 2016).
These historical conditions are fundamentally different from those under
which feminists of the older generation have lived. They therefore served as
formative moments for women of the new generation and have prepared the
soil for a new and different feminist political outlook to grow. Taking these
conditions into consideration helps illuminate why these young women have
little tolerance for gender discrimination and social injustice; why they react
spontaneously to gender discriminative actions and language; why they have
replaced the soft version of feminism (nüxing zhuyi 女性主义) with the hard
one (nüquan zhuyi 女权主义); and why they do not see the state as a friend
and have developed a more “oppositional” and “confrontational” profile.
THE NOTION OF "POLITICAL GENERATION": FEMINIST MOBILISATION AND COLLABORATION ACROSS AGE
A political generation is “constructed socially rather than temporally.” It
“forms, not after an arbitrary number of years, but in response to significant
changes in the environment and corresponding changes in individuals’
‘transformative experiences’” (Whittier 1997: 762; Schuman and Scott
1988). Originally coined by sociologist Karl Mannheim, the notion of “political
generation” has been further developed lately. In a study of women’s
movements from 1969 to 1992 in Columbus, Ohio, Whittier defines political
generation “as being comprised of individuals (of varying ages) who join a
social movement during a given wave of protest” (Whittier 1997: 762). In
a recent study of feminism in the twenty-first century United States (Cullen
and Fisher 2014), Jo Reger puts forward the term “similar political awakening”
and postulates that a political generation “is a group of people who
share a similar political awakening brought about by societal changes”
(Reger 2014: 6). This definition is apt for “understanding patterns of continuity
and change across generations of feminist mobilisation,” as it emphasises
“similar political awakening” rather than age (Cullen and Fisher 2014:
285). Political generations are thus “a product of experience, ideology and
identities forged by the time activists are living” and hence are “not monolithic”
(ibid.: 285-286). The idea of political generation “resists the sequential
notion that younger generations replace the older ones” and argues that
“feminist generations overlap, creating both cooperation and dissention in
the movement” (ibid.: 286).
To follow this line of thinking, I examine the process of becoming feminists
and feminist fermentation to discover how feminists of the new generation
get inspiration from the older generation while making a difference. In the
first place, the first step towards feminism varies from individual to individual;
some of them simply “bumped into” feminism by chance. Zheng Churan,
for instance, accidentally found a book on anti-domestic violence in
China in the university library. The book analyses domestic violence in China
from a gender perspective and awoke Zheng’s interest in gender and feminism
(Lee 2016). Li Tingting once participated in a sexual education session
offered by an NGO while she was studying at the university. The session introduced
the concept of gender to her for the first time and she was drawn
to it immediately. (17) Wei Tingting read news about the feminist theatre play
The Vagina Monologues from a newspaper she found at a local optician’s
shop. Curious, she searched for more information and ultimately organiseda performance of the play at her own university (Zhang, Xiao, and Jiang
2014). Xiao Meili came to know an NGO in Beijing through a movie advertisement.
She then began to attend lectures there regularly and discovered
a “secret” —gender perspective—and met people with whom she felt a connection.
(18) Following these anecdotes, I tracked down two ongoing processes
and a few feminist environments that have prepared the ground for
the new feminism and have sown the seeds of feminist activism amongst
women of the new generation.
THE TWO ONGOING PROCESSES
One is the availability of various gender studies courses at universities, including
feminist and gender studies literature and textbooks, and gender
training programs under the auspices of NGOs. The Shanghai-based feminist
scholar I interviewed confirms that some young feminist activists attended
gender studies classes taught by her and her colleagues, and some young
women attending the classes did become feminist activists. (19) A prominent
example of this ongoing gender training process can be found in a diaspora
organisation called Chinese Society of Women’s Studies (CSWS) (Haiwai
zhonghua funüxue xuehui 海外中华妇女学学会) with Professor Wang Zheng
of the University of Michigan as the frontrunner. In an interview with the
web editor of ChinaChange.org, Wang Zheng narrates how in 2002 she
began to collaborate
(…) with the China Women’s College and the Chinese University of
Hong Kong for a three-year training program [in gender and women’s
studies]. China Women’s College has become the first university in
China with a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies. After I took a
teaching position at the University of Michigan, I still went back to
China every year [to continue the training program]. Furthermore, I
set up a base at Fudan University, the University of Michigan–Fudan
University Institute for Gender Studies, and taught during summer
vacations. Several feminist activists attended my class last year (not
the ones who were arrested), so they are directly our students. I am
also well acquainted with one of the Five; she had been to my class
as well.
In a blog article written by a feminist journalist based in Guangzhou, these
training classes are given the nickname “Whampoa Military Academy,” referring
to the Whampoa Military Academy in the Republican period where
many KMT and CCP members were trained to became top political/military
leaders of both parties.
The other ongoing process is the spread of The Vagina Monologues, an
episodic feminist play written by American feminist playwright Eve Ensler. (22)
Brought to China by feminist professor Ai Xiaoming of Sun Yat-sen University
in 2003, the play has been adapted into different versions and performed
in many Chinese cities by either university student groups or
NGOs. (23) The universities on the list include Fudan University, Peking University,
Central China Normal University, Wuhan University, Xiamen University,
and Capital Normal University. (24) Many of the young women who later
became the backbone of the new feminist activism were educated in these
universities. Professor Rong Weiyi of the Chinese People’s Security University
names the spread of The Vagina Monologues as “a wind vane” for Chinese
feminism, especially in terms of combating gender-based violence. (25) In Ai
Xiaoming’s view, the Chinese versions of The Vagina Monologues are not simply a copy or transplantation of the original. Rather, they constitute a
new theatrical creation that is both based on and speaks to Chinese
women’s experiences. The Chinese versions of The Vagina Monologues break
cultural taboos, candidly disclose widespread praxis of gender discrimination
and inequality in Chinese society, and spotlight media bias in issues of gender,
sex, and sexuality. And it is through the stage narrative and performance
that the voice of women and other disadvantaged groups have come to be
expressed and heard.
The feminist enlightening effect of The Vagina Monologues cannot be underestimated.
At an internal meeting of a student organisation called Zhihe
Society at Fudan University in 2017, earlier presidents and board members
gathered to share their personal experiences in acting in The Vagina Monologues.
Lin Mu, who worked with backstage lightning for The Vagina Monologues
performance in 2006, recalled how he felt when watching the show
for the first time. “It was really, really shocking.” (27) Luo Shengmen, one of the
four main actresses in the 2007 Vagina Monologues show at Fudan, describes:
[the acting process] helped me to form my self-identity. I became
certain about my being a lesbian and accepted myself the way I am.
been part of the performances for years. For her, the best part about acting
in The Vagina Monologues is that (ibid.):
(…) after sessions and sessions of discussion and critical reflection,
we finally reach the point where we dare to accept our own experiences
and share new points of view with one another. I have obtained
various new perspectives.
Deannie, once president of the organisation, screenwriter and actress in
the 2009 Vagina Monologues, and director of the 2012 Vagina Monologues,
recalls how she felt when she read the script for the first time:
It struck me like thunder! I had a lot of questions and confusion in
my life. Suddenly, I saw the light and my self-oppression was gone.
Another previous president of the organisation and participant in the 2012
Vagina Monologues tells:
[the acting experience] made feminism sprout in me. I did not have
a clear self-identity before. Most of the time I viewed homosexuality
through my ‘straight’ lens, lacking a nuanced understanding of gender,
and my mind was seriously stereotyped.
Damao became a member of the organisation in 2012 and has performed
The Vagina Monologues for four years. For her, acting in the show made her
mature, enabling her to speak up and openly express her feminist point of
views (ibid.).
In Beijing, a volunteer activist group consisting of 10 permanent members
called Bcome “was (…) behind the performance of The Vagina Monologues
by BFSU students.” (28) Being set up in September 2012, the group put on
the first show in January 2013 and has since given 10 performances in Beijing
and Tianjin and received fervent audience responses. (29) The name of
the group itself is highly symbolic. On the one hand, Bcome is a homophone
for “become,” implying to become yourself and who you want to be. On
the other hand, B is also a homophone for the vulgar Chinese slang for
vagina (bi 屄), so Bcome also announces the arrival of the vagina and
women’s orgasm.
[The show organisers] translated the play from the English script,
took parts from past Mandarin versions, and created original scenes
through a series of workshops they ran last year. At each workshop,
they voted on the topic they wanted to stage, noted down their own
experiences, and gave key words to the scriptwriters.
As Ai Ke, one of the organisers, explains, “We wanted to localise the play
as much as possible, so we added issues like virginity obsession and anxiety”
(ibid.). In an interview with Lei Ma, Ai Ke explicitly states that:
We are an action-oriented group. Acting in The Vagina Monologues
is a form of social movement. We hope to change society through
activities like this.
Furthermore, Ai Ke adds (ibid.):
The play is new, fresh, and attention-grabbing. It’s not just a play, it’s
a tool for spreading feminism and a means of public education.
X, a central figure amongst the young feminist activists, confirms in my
interview that some of her friends do become gender sensitive and feminist-
minded through performing The Vagina Monologues.
GEOGRAPHICALLY LOCATED FEMINIST ENVIORNMENTS
Apart from these two ongoing processes, a few geographically located
feminist environments were found to have functioned as an incubator
of feminist fermentation and cradled the young feminist activists for
years. One is the Beijing-based Media Monitor for Women Network, “the first action-oriented group focused on media and gender in mainland
China.” (32) Since it was established in 1996, the network has carried out
a series of activities to deal with a variety of issues, including domestic
violence. (33) Around 2009 and 2010, the network entered social media
by launching its Sina microblogging account, Genderinchina (nüquan
zhisheng 女权之声). Featuring “feminist viewpoints, civic vision, and action
orientation,” it soon became the most active feminist blog account
that both mobilises and supports online feminist voices. In July 2011, a
civil activity centre called “Yiyuan Commune” (Yiyuan gongshe 一元公社)
was set up under the auspices of the Media Monitor Network. The Commune
organises lectures, seminars, training, and reading sessions. In doing
so, it has attracted a group of young potential feminists and become a
source of inspiration and training ground for them. Many of the performance
art activities that unfolded in 2012 were either directly initiated
or supported by the Network. The organisation maintains close ties with
the young feminists and provides them with communication, training,
and moral support. In the view of feminist blogger Zhang Hongping, it is
through the activities under the auspices of the “Yiyuan Commune” that
many young female students have found the entrance to feminism and
became actively involved in feminist activism. (34) For X, the young feminist
I interviewed, that was how she embarked on the journey to feminism.
Behind Genderinchina there is an extraordinary and charismatic individual
named Lü Pin. Born in 1972, Lü graduated from Shandong University
in 1994 with a master’s degree in Chinese. She then joined the
national newspaper for women China Women’s Journal (Zhongguo
funübao 中国妇女报) as a journalist. She participated in the UN’s Fourth
World Women’s Conference in Beijing in 1995, the event that triggered
a strong wave of NGO organising in China throughout the 1990s. In
2004, Lü resigned from her job at the China Women’s Journal to become
a freelancer. She founded the electronic newspaper Women’s Voice in
2009, which in 2011 was changed into Genderinchina on the Xinlang microblog.
Within a few years, she turned Genderinchina into the most influential
online platform for feminist articulation in China. From concrete
ideas to general moral support, Lü firmly stands behind young feminist
activists in Beijing and played a vital role in waves of feminist protest
through performance art in and around 2012. Because of this, the Chinese
government regarded her as the “invisible hand” behind the young feminist
“troublemakers,” and she had to flee China after the arrest of theFeminist Five in 2015. (36) In the view of feminist blogger Zhang Hongping,
the turn to action in feminism, manifested through street performances,
spells a fundamental change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. Such
change would not have been possible without hard-core feminists such
as Lü Pin and her years of tenacious engagement in gender and feminist
issues.
Another feminist environment that has nurtured the new feminist activism
is found in Guangzhou, with the Sex/Gender Education Forum at Sun
Yat-Sen University headed by Professor Ai Xiaoming and the Women Awakening
Network serving as twin platforms. Born in 1953, Ai came to teach
Chinese literature at Sun Yat-Sen University in 1994 and soon distinguished
herself as a “filmmaker, literature professor, feminist and rights activist”
(Zeng 2017: 184). In the words of Milwertz, Ai “is an avid supporter of struggles
to claim the rights of the oppressed, discriminated and marginalized.”
She is also “an outspoken critic of injustice,” using “documentary films as a
central medium in her work” (Milwertz 2010: 31). In 2010, Ai was awarded
France’s Simone de Beauvoir Prize for her steadfast activism and remarkable
commitment to women’s rights. (38) For years, Ai Xiaoming has organised
lectures on sex and sexuality, trained her students to engage in feminist literature
critique, and involved them in social activities.
In 2003, Ai introduced the American stage play The Vagina Monologues
to China and organised the first performance of this play in Chinese. (40) The
theatre performance proved to be an eye-opening experience for the student
actors/actresses. In the same year, Ai Xiaoming vigorously involved
herself and her students in two cases: one was the Sun Zhigang case, in
which a young university student was detained by the police for not carrying
identification papers and eventually died in police custody; and the other
was the Huang Jing case, where a young woman died in bed with her
boyfriend, probably due to rape. While sending protest letters to the authorities,
and appealing for thorough investigation and fair trial, Ai Xiaoming
also posted critical comments on Weblog and encouraged her students to
make their own investigations of the cases. (41) Through these and many
other endeavours, Ai developed a feminist pedagogy and ushered many students
onto the path of feminist activism. One of her Masters and Ph.D. students,
Ke, became a feminist under the influence of Ai Xiaoming. In her
subsequent career as a university professor, Ke has passed her passion for
feminism on to her students as Ai Xiaoming did in her time. In an article in
Nanfeng Chuang 南风窗 in 2013, Ke was described as a mentor and cardinal
supporter of young feminists such as Zheng Churan and her peers.
The feminist media network Women Awakening Network, established in
2004, was joined by a dozen journalists in Guangdong and is run by a
younger but dynamic feminist journalist Li Sipan. (43) Over the years, the network
has functioned as a feminist hotbed in Guangzhou and has carried out
various forms of attention-grabbing activities to advocate gender equality
and women’s rights. In facing the marginalisation of women’s rights issues
and the stigmatisation of female images in the conventional media, the
network propagates gender sensitivity and critical journalism by launching
media report workshops, public lectures, and media salons. (44) The network
has also been a major feminist watchdog in the social media with its outspoken
feminist voices. As a formidable blog writer and debater, Li Sipan
has kicked off several rounds of hot public debate on issues related to, for
instance, sexual harassment legislation and gender discrimination in higher
education enrolment. (45) A recent spectacular action of the network was
the “massive online discussion on the meaning of International Women’s
Day” in March 2016. Li Sipan’s blog post, calling for a feminist resistance of the “capitalist consumerist co-optation” of the International Women’s Day
celebration in China, set in motion a massive public debate about feminism/
feminist resistance and received more than 100 million visits (Wang
2017: 177).
The two ongoing processes and the feminist environments in Beijing and
Guangzhou are a testimony to the key role that feminists of the earlier generation
have played in feminist socialisation and mobilisation among
women of the younger generation. They developed various women’s and
gender study courses/training programmes and introduced the American
feminist theatre play The Vagina Monologues into China. This “spiritual heritage”
provided “nutrients” for the younger generation and ignited the spark
of feminism in them. Within the feminist environments in Beijing and
Guangzhou, feminism was passed on from the older generation to the
younger generation. While functioning as a training ground for young
women to become critically-minded, socially engaged citizens and animated
feminist, these environments also provided a common ground for
feminists of varied ages to engage in feminist struggles across age and generational
boundaries.
The connection and collaboration between the younger and older generation
of feminists in brewing the new feminism warrants a generational perspective
that is not strictly locked in age. In a sense, the feminist
environments in Beijing and Guangzhou are two lively examples of political
generation where feminists of different ages have come to work side by
side. What binds them together is not biological age but rather a shared political
awakening and feminist convictions. Thus, while recognising the role
of young women in waging the new waves of feminist protest in China, we
must bear in mind the notion of political generation and develop a perspective
that can both “explain feminist movements in terms of differently aged
(…)” and “take account of cross-generational feminist activism” (Cullen and
Fisher 2014: 290).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
This article studies the new feminist activism in post-2000 China from a
generational perspective. It operationalises three notions of generation and
explores how these concepts help us to shed light on the question of generation
and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The first notion of generation as an age cohort highlights the relevance of biological
age in identity formation/role assignment and the role of age groups in social
change. As the study shows, the young women involved in the new feminist
activism are in their late twenties or early thirties and belong to the
post-1980s and post-1990s generation. This age “location” renders them a
set of generational characteristics and a social placement that is different
from feminists of the older generation, which in turn illuminates why
women of the new generation “reject the politics and methods of their predecessors”
and develop their own modes of action (Hunt 2017: 108).
The second notion of generation as a historical cohort sees generation as
a historical construct and emphasises the impact of historical experiences
on the formation of identity and political outlook of the cohort members.
Feminist activism, in light of this view, should be “driven by more than just
age” (Cullen and Fisher 2014: 284). At this point, this study identifies three
historical conditions that young women of the new generation share: 1) their
coming-of-age under the full-fledged market economy with deepened gender
inequality and discrimination; 2) belonging to the one-child generation
with better education and greater parental affection, material comfort, and
self-expectations; 3) the historical “distance” between them and China’s socialist/
state feminism past. These conditions have served as formative moments
for women of the younger generation and have fostered a new and
different feminist political outlook among them. They have little tolerance
for gender inequality; they react spontaneously to gender discrimination;
they prefer the hard version of feminism (nüquan zhuyi 女权主义) to the
soft one (nüxing zhuyi 女性主义); they do not see the state as a friend and
have developed a more “oppositional” and “confrontational” profile.
The third notion of generation as a “political generation” emphasises the
role of “similar political awakening” in binding feminists together. While the
notion of “age cohort” and “historical cohort” is apt for grasping generational
differences, the notion of “political generation” fits better to shed
light on feminist collaboration across age. In tracing the footsteps that
women of the new generation have taken to become feminist activists, the
study has identified two ongoing processes and a few feminist environments
where feminist fermentation and mobilisation have taken place. Through
these processes and within these feminist communities, feminists of different
ages have thrown themselves together and worked side by side with
one another to raise feminist voices and wage feminist protests. What binds
them together is not biological age but rather a shared political awakening
and feminist beliefs. From this perspective, the new feminism in post-2000
China constitutes vivid testimony to “political generation” across age
boundaries. Thinking of feminism in terms of “political generation” allows
us to move away from age-determinism, to appreciate feminist collaboration
across age, and to uncover cross-generational connection and continuity
amidst generational change.