Women and the State in China after the Xianzi Verdict
A month after the event, my Chinese feminist friends have yet to recover from the frustration caused by Xianzi’s loss in the first judgement on her sexual harassment lawsuit which has drawn much attention in the last three years. After experiencing the severe online and offline crackdown surrounding this case, feminists bitterly felt the verdict that the authorities are negative about women’s rights claims. This is certainly not the first time, but since the start of this year there has been a deep sense that women’s movements are being further targeted in China. So why is this happening and where will it go from here?
As the government is increasingly forceful about shutting down the pluralism of society, the civic voices of women are inevitably becoming the next target of suppression, even though advocates of women’s rights have never meant to overthrow the current rule. This is especially true in regard to the massive proliferation of women’s rights awareness in China since the #MeToo movement began in 2018. But if we go deeper, there are causes deeply rooted in China’s political and economic model that have led to the conflict between the state and women as well as its intensification.
The awakening of Chinese women’s awareness of rights is actually a by-product of the national modernization project that the Chinese government has vigorously promoted over the past four decades. As the state expands higher education for the purpose of obtaining a higher quality labor force for economic development, more women have obtained the opportunity to go to college, resulting in the achievement of a roughly equal gender ratio in universities years ago. Well-educated, living in the city, working and living independently, and exposed to profound information and knowledge, this is the normal life of many Chinese young women today, although far from all of them. It is in this modernity that women’s unprecedented eagerness for gender equality is cultivated.
However, women’s quest for gender equality is paradoxically unwelcome by the state. Women’s unpaid labor in the family is essential to make up for the lack of public welfare; in the workplace, women’s low wages and lack of protection contribute to the cost competitive advantage that many Chinese companies rely on. Various studies have demonstrated that Chinese women contribute significantly to GDP while suffering from severe gender discrimination and excessive amounts of domestic unpaid work; however, they do not point out that gender inequality is not a deficiency of its early development stage but an integral part of China’s economic model. It is for this key reason that it is so difficult for the state to have the will to fix the situation. In addition, the state has always imposed on women the responsibility to fulfill their traditional gender responsibilities within the family and thus consolidate stability for the state. In essence, gender inequality has become a problem between women and the state mainly because of the state's overwhelming intention to control women.
Social media has fostered broad and active online communities of women, which share both empathy and anger and allow many otherwise naive people to experience firsthand how the topic of women’s rights is censored. Time and again, sensational incidents of gender violence such as Xianzi’s case, the Wu Yifan rape case, and the Alibaba sexual assault case, have stirred up widespread and intense debate, leading more women to join in speaking out for equal rights, regardless of the outcome of the cases themselves. With women no longer easily convinced to give up their claims regarding gender discrimination and gender violence, and the state unwilling to concede on the basis of interest and power considerations, a confrontational stalemate is forming.
Women are, of course, very vulnerable to the state apparatus, with their only strength lying in their sheer numbers. In the #MeToo movement, on many occasions people have broken through online censorship through spontaneous mass mobilization; they posted the same message from the victim over and over again until everyone knew about it despite the constant deletion. So as long as there is anger to serve as a mobilizing force, women’s voices can make an impact, even though strategic advocacy campaigns are less likely to be organized and online feminist groups continue to be disbanded.
In my opinion, besides persecuting women activists to deter more people, penetrating the society with nationalism and strengthening authoritarianism are the most effective strategies for dismantling women’s resistance. With women are being incited to point their anger and fear toward imaginary “foreign hostile forces” and encouraged to share a sense pride in embracing “the Great China”, I do not know if such a strategy will ultimately disperse the pressure on the state created by women’s rights claims, but it may succeed in creating divisions among women. On the side of women’s rights, having been part of and witness to this unprecedented struggle, keeping it going as long as possible is itself meaningful, though there may not be a promised bright future.