Li Sipan, "Chinese Liberals on Women's Rights"

Li Sipan 李思磐, “Why Don’t Mainland Chinese Liberals Support Women’s Rights?”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
This essay by the journalist and feminist activist Li Sipan offers a valuable critical perspective on the world of China’s establishment intellectuals, particularly China’s liberal establishment intellectuals.  As is well known, China’s intellectual world is largely a man’s world.  Women’s voices exist, but are easily drowned out by the masculine majority, which, as Li explains in her text, pay scant attention to gender issues or feminist concerns.  A reader unsympathetic to Li’s views and who encounters her concerns for the first time in reading her essay might argue that her evidence is thin, that she cites only a handful of “macho” liberal intellectuals (and that Qiu Feng is more a New Confucian than a liberal).  But if her evidence is “thin,” it is because most Chinese liberals (and the same is true for the New Left and New Confucians) simply ignore the issue completely.  The only mention of feminism in the thirty-odd texts currently available on our website is Ge Zhaoguang’s liberal critique of the anti-feminist tendencies of Mainland New Confucians (see also Jiang Qing’s odious anti-feminist diatribe, which confirms Ge’s critique).  Thoughtful Chinese liberals like Xu Jilin, Qin Hui, and Liu Qing may well have sensible things to say about gender issues and feminist concerns, but they have not said them in the hundreds of pages of their work that I have read over the past few years.
 
Part of this silence, Li Sipan explains, comes from the heritage of classical liberalism and its emphasis on abstractions like the free and autonomous individual, which are easily captured by libertarian narratives that ignore social forces.  Another piece of the puzzle is the ideological moment surrounding China’s experience of reform and opening, the notion—widely shared among China’s liberals—that the greatest danger facing China at present is a return to the leftist excesses of the Mao period and the Cultural Revolution.  The point of market reforms, liberals argue, is to liberate individual minds and productive capacities from the abuses of state control.  By demanding substantive justice and equality, feminists strengthen the hand of the very state against which liberals are fighting.  As Li points out, however, Chinese women have paid a high price for this “liberation:” 
 
Women make up the biggest part of the unemployment problem created by the reform of state enterprises, while young, unmarried women without rights protection make up 70% of the work force in the coastal industrial zone.  In this process, labor has been regendered (agriculture and villages are sustained by married and left-behind women; many gendered positions have been created in assembly line production, commerce, and service industries).
 
In other words, the return of patriarchy has accompanied the rise of market forces, something that seems not to have troubled Chinese liberals in the slightest.
 
Whatever one thinks of Li’s arguments, a change of perspective is always salutary, and the question of what kind of freedom Chinese liberals are defending is clearly worthy of reflection.  To my mind, Li strengthens her case by offering an equally nuanced criticism of Chinese feminism, which, for reasons of political reality, “must be embedded in state policy and official ideology.”  Thus her final argument is that feminists and liberals must make common cause.

My thanks to Qian Yongxiang 錢永祥, editor of the wonderful Taiwan journal Reflection 思想, for suggesting this text.

Translation
 
 
In November of 2012, a Shanghai media critic published an editorial in the Southern Metropolis Daily 南方都市报 concerning the European Union’s Judicial Commissioner Viviane Reding’s proposal that women occupy a certain percentage of non-executive director positions in European listed companies.[2]  Three-fourths of the editorial was devoted to different legislative proposals, the views of the parties concerned, and the context of proposed policy, and the author only revealed his own standpoint at the end of the text:  “In my personal view, this appears to lean in the direction of negative law.  To my mind, individual freedom is the most important of all rights.  Only when new morality or new values have been chosen by society are they worth pursuing, and only then will they be truly effective.”  Although the proposal and the ensuing vote were themselves part of the process of social choice, the author suggests that gender equality cannot be the result of a spontaneous social choice.
 
When this editorial appeared on the web, its title was “Sorry, We Don’t Need Government-Appointed Women Board Members 对不起！我们不需要政府指派的女董事” (legal regulations having become “government appointments”); and the text went on to argue that “in reality…laws concerning this question (the promotion of gender equality) can become ever more complex, to the point of robbing people of much of their freedom.” 
 
I use this example to shine a light on the relationship between Chinese liberalism and feminism because this critical framework of “using freedom to oppose equality,” of equating demands for equal (rights) with the expansion of government (power), is not an isolated case.  Since the 1990s, many liberal intellectuals participating in discussions in print media and online have used “freedom” to oppose equality and anti-discrimination proposals, and have refused to promote social welfare.
 
In all fairness, the author of this particular text is a male media writer who has expressed himself with a certain decency on gender issues.  I have seen much worse cases.  In 2005, when the editorial section of a very famous city newspaper began a “social commentary 时评” series spearheaded by writers with a social-science background, and which became the favored platform of liberal intellectuals, two of their pieces touched on gender issues.  One argued that raising the entry-level grade requirements for women and lowering them for men for Beijing University’s non-English foreign-language programs was not gender discrimination, and included many remarks surprising to those sensitive to issues of equality, such as “if all our diplomats are women, will they be representing China or the country of women?” and “the only reason women have higher marks is because they are good at memorization.”  The other, written in an almost “humorous” tone, criticized the inclusion of the first law against sexual harassment within the Women’s Rights Protection Act as “nonsense.”[3]  Last summer, the Southern Metropolitan Daily published Qiu Feng’s 秋风[4] essay on the “Shanghai Number Two Subway Line Incident,” entitled “Etiquette Takes Precedent over Rights,”[5] which in fact supported the subway’s demand that the women “respect themselves” [by dressing appropriately] so as to avoid being harassed.[6]  Southern Weekend 南方週末 later recommended this essay on their website.
 
Criticizing Chinese liberalism from the perspective of the “fast food” media culture is perhaps unfair to liberal scholars.  Yet the emergence of political liberalism in China in the 1990s was closely linked to reforms in the media industry.  In the 1990s, market reforms of the official news left many media outlets without financial support, and encouraged them to turn to the market.  As a result, some media had no choice but to change from the “voice of the Party” to servants of the masses, and liberal intellectuals capitalized on newly emerging market-based media like Nanfang Baoye 南方报业, Caijing 财经, and Caixin 财新 and others seeking to develop a platform of “news professionalism” to spread their ideas, at the same time helping these media to grow by cultivating a supportive body of talent with expertise in social questions, which in turn provided the ideological basis supporting “news professionalism.”  Protection of private rights, individual freedom, and the rule of law, as well as ideas of government accountability and “going after the system” all became the central framework for news and criticism. 
 
In this sense, there is no doubt that the basic principles of liberalism constitute the ideological foundation for China’s new media model.  For this reason, the liberal principles of Mainland liberal scholars, as well as their internal biases, have surely had a deep influence on the deviations displayed by the media.
 
Deviations are perhaps the basic nature of mass media.  Because the style of writing in mass media is by its nature incapable of careful reasoning, perhaps it inevitably winds up simplifying academic thought, or even reducing it to tags and slogans.  At the same time, focus on celebrities may well unduly inflate the views of certain intellectuals.  For this reason, the task of pointing out the biases of Mainland Liberalism through study of media performance is difficult, and inevitably flawed.  Mainland Liberalism is much richer than the flat image conveyed by the mass media.  For example, Qin Hui 秦晖 (b. 1953)[7] consistently reminds liberals to pay attention to issues of social equality, while Zhang Qianfan 张千帆 (b. 1964)[8] and other constitutional scholars have participated in anti-gender discrimination activities.  Cui Weiping 崔卫平 (b. 1956)[9] has an even broader humanistic vision, and alone among liberals appearing in the media has a great deal to say about the links between China’s native gender culture and hierarchical system.
 
In any case, Mainland Chinese liberalism has made manifest its tendencies, tendencies that are even clearer in the mass media, whose influence is much greater.  I often wonder:  Why do Mainland liberals believe that human rights should have priority over women’s rights, and even dismiss the need for women’s rights?  Why do they downplay the value of equality (in economic and social terms) and believe that freedom and equality are in conflict, rather than seeking after both (the usual argument is that equality harms freedom, and is “taking the road toward slavery”)?  Why can Mainland Chinese liberals not understand issues concerning gender rights, but instead often wind up opposing gender equality?
 
I will attempt to answer these questions on the basis of the following points:  the original tensions between Western liberal theory and feminist theory survived intact in the process of its “adoption”[10] by Chinese intellectuals; in the rapid historical changes occurring in the present stage of Chinese post-socialism, the male intellectual elite in China has benefitted greatly, yet lacks sensitivity concerning its own social position and reflection on gendered power; connected to this, in a particular political-economic environment, Mainland Chinese liberals cling to a certain class identity and elite mindset, intentionally avoiding issues of social and economic equality, to the point of seeing these issues as part of a failed socialist experiment or as a proposal from the antagonistic left-wing camp.  For these reasons, issues of equality, especially class and gender issues, have been ignored by Chinese liberalism.  At the same time, the development of Chinese feminism has had its own problems—for example, cooperation with the state has had priority over accountability, which has meant that feminism, like other social movements, universally developed in non-political directions and lacked theoretical dialogue with other currents of thought.  All of these have led to a divergence between liberalism and feminism.

“Human Rights” and “Women’s Rights”

Many of us who do gender research or who are engaged in the feminist movement have had the similar experience of being asked—more than once—by liberals, most of whom are scholars or media types:  “Human rights is enough, why talk about women’s rights?”  “Without human rights, how can there be women’s rights?  Achievement of women’s rights can only occur after human rights are secure.”  “Women’s rights in China have already gone too far.”
 
These are two things wrong with the questions they raise.  First, there is a bias in Chinese liberals’ understanding of human rights, which they view solely in terms of abstractions and principles, most often the “homogenous” rights required by democratic politics.  They do not see human rights as guarantees of the capability to undertake various social functions allowing individuals to overcome social oppression and discrimination.[11]  And in fact, because each individual’s innate conditions and [her relationship to] the social structure is unique, guarantees provided by human rights will mean different things in relation to different people and different situations.  Second, and perhaps worse, is that in the mind of many people, the image conveyed by “human” remains linked to classical liberal assumptions concerning propertied men. Women's rights are seen as private and "special" issues that are not in the public domain (as Catherine MacKinnon likes to say, “women” is not yet the name of a way of being human[12]), they are not important at the present moment, and at best are an issue for the “second stage” after political democracy has been realized.  I’ll address the idea that women’s rights have “gone too far” further on.
 
The tension between feminism and liberalism is not a uniquely Chinese phenomenon.  How can liberal theory on the one hand be used to defend gender equality, and on the other to oppose feminism?  Feminist political philosophers have offered many criticisms concerning basic theoretical concepts and methodologies.
 
Despite many complex internal debates, the basic principles of liberalism are: rationality and the self-interested individual; autonomous individuals and individualism; individual freedom and protections of private rights; equality and social justice.  Many of feminism’s demands are inseparable from liberalism’s two core values:  individual autonomy and equality.  In addition, the basic institutional design of liberalism, throughout history, has greatly increased gender equality (in terms of basic rights, political participation, and equal employment opportunities).  In this sense, liberalism and feminism are not at odds; indeed, many feminist scholars believe that the basic principles of liberalism are extremely important to feminism, or in other words that liberalism and feminism both employ certain basic principles, especially that the existence of individual equality and freedom requires liberation from the fetters of hierarchy imposed by social life.[13] 
 
At the same time, feminists unanimously point out that there remain many inadequacies in liberal theory, and in their debates with liberal thinkers, hope to help to improve and deepen liberalism’s ideological system.
 
First, liberalism sharply divides social life into the two spheres of public and private, the former including politics and the market, and the latter private relationships and families; the former is a male-dominated field, while the latter is the “school” where individuals are socialized and gendered, where women are oppressed by patriarchy, and where the gender division of work in the family directly affects women’s “ability” to participate in social work. At the current moment, liberalism has no intention of challenging inequality in the private sphere, which is in fact a way of making peace with the gender hierarchy; consequently the oppression women face, and their subservient position, are excluded from consideration in the political arena.[14]  The exclusion of women’s rights and justice created by this binary opposition is precisely what feminism wants to oppose.  Second wave feminism’s insistence that “the individual is political” and its focus on “gender politics” are the result of concentrated feminist reflection on the logic of liberalism’s public/private divide.
 
In addition, classical liberalism’s assumptions concerning rationality and self-interest in fact ignore how difficult it is for human behavior to break free from the social structure.  Lisa Schwartzmann argues that liberal abstractions obscure the power, wealth and inequality created by particular social structures; liberal individualism tends to see the individual as independent and autonomous in his choices, instead of as a member of groups that exist in relations of domination and oppression.[15]  Susan Okin finds that such abstract assumptions cannot explain the true situation of those confronted with real gender segregation.  The socialization processes and role expectations of a gendered system that favors men over women often make women less inclined to advocate for their fair share, as they prefer to give priority to the needs of family members, even to the point changing their entire life course because of family commitments.[16]
 
In addition, MacKinnon has pointed out that the effect of rights [discourse] is more about maintaining the existing power structure than winning equality for oppressed vulnerable groups.  “People who have power over others often call this power ‘rights.’”[17]  Social change and policy readjustments often erode such important “rights,” in the typical rhetoric of vested-interest groups.
 
Even if these discussions are those of non-Chinese scholars, they still more or less explain the distance between Chinese liberalism and feminism.  The stark division between public and private realms readily explains why many feminist issues such as domestic violence or marital rape rarely receive the attention of liberal intellectuals (for one example, recently the gender scholar Fang Gang 方刚[18] called on male Weibo stars to join in the campaign for a law against domestic violence, and none did); similarly, gender inequality is seen as a reasonable difference, notions of “difference” and “pluralism” being used as excuses for inequality of opportunity.  In addition, concerning the issue of opposition to the one child policy, spear-headed by male scholars on the Web, their insistence is solely on the need to protect the private rights of the family from state violence, and to return reproductive rights to the family (and not to women), and say nothing about women who have been forced by patriarchal families to undergo many pregnancies in the hopes of having a son.  They also directly import anti-abortion rhetoric from the United States, hoping to interfere with women’s freedom of choice in the name of the rights of the fetus.  Liberal discourse ignores the fact that power relations still exist between “free people” who are equal solely in political terms, and consequently, sexual harassment and sexual assault issues in the workplace have not been discussed as a rights issue, because from a liberal perspective, in the absence of violent coercion, people possess free will, which means that women who suffer in this way have “brought it on themselves.”  

Male Intellectuals:  Smug Recipients of Gender Benefits

Justice stops at opaque places like homes and workplaces, where the “private realm” and “enterprise self-management” serve as pretexts for the suppression of women’s rights.  We might agree with Martha Nussbaum that this is not a problem of liberalism per se, but rather the result of some liberal thinkers not having pushed liberal ideas far enough.  In fact, they have not been “individualistic” enough on these questions. Instead, they regard the integration and harmony of some groups or institutions as higher than the rights of certain individuals, and do not ask how each individual’s rights are realized.  For example, with regard to the family, liberal thinkers have not pushed their questions very far, and Nussbaum infers that perhaps they are concerned with male autonomy and freedom, hoping to preserve adequate space for men in this realm.[19]
 
Hence, outside of academic considerations, male intellectuals’ general lack of self-reflection on the question of male elite gender privilege may well be the main reason explaining liberalism’s distance from and opposition to feminism.  Still it must be emphasized that, on the Chinese mainland, the coldness toward feminism, the misunderstanding of and lack of interest in the true history of the liberation of Chinese women, is a feature shared by the New Left, the Liberals and the cultural conservatives in today’s China.
 
China’s market reforms, especially since the 1990s, if evaluated in terms of their influence of social gender, have been a revival of capitalist patriarchal control.  In the process of the development of the market economy, the state has dismantled the social welfare sector (such as cafeterias, nursery schools and kindergartens formerly operated by work units, while those found in enterprises and government agencies have continued to operate) so as to avoid the inefficiencies of a “work unit-run society,” the influence of which has been particularly disadvantageous for women.  Women make up the biggest part of the unemployment problem created by the reform of state enterprises, while young, unmarried women without rights protection make up 70% of the work force in the coastal industrial zone.  In this process, labor has been regendered (agriculture and villages are sustained by married and left-behind women; many gendered positions have been created in assembly line production, commerce, and service industries); at the same time, the consumerist discourse required by the market has flourished, becoming a powerful vehicle singing the praises of women's traditional role in the family and traditional body images, and a powerful disciplining force.[20]
 
The market has truly restored legitimacy to individual rights and private life, but at the same time, the public nature of the women’s question in the context of state feminism (which was viewed as part of class liberation) has been returned to the private realm in the wake of reform and opening.  Women workers in the cities are laid off.  Women in the villages lose their land.  Women’s participation in politics is insufficient.  Workplace discrimination, the loss of labor rights and sexual harassment are increasingly serious.  Measures to curb sexual abuse by acquaintances and domestic violence are ineffective.  For women, all of these problems are individual, but are also structural problems that require political solutions.
 
But these political questions are nowhere to be seen in the discussions on public issues by most male intellectuals; they are more likely to argue that Chinese feminism has “gone too far,” in other words that feminist concerns are premature or have placed themselves above the concerns of men.  Although a part of China’s intellectual class did indeed suffer political attacks, beginning in the 1990s, following the state’s marketization of the educational, health and welfare systems, the 1980s “brain drain” was rapidly transformed into a China Dream that recast the fate of the intellectuals.  Intellectuals profited much more than the working class from the reforms.  In a society where gender discrimination is still serious, and where women are relatively deprived, male intellectuals became beneficiaries of regendered labor conditions and private spheres.
 
Of course, the process of regendering labor relations and the private sphere was not completely natural.  Even as they criticized everything else about the old system, male intellectuals held their tongues regarding the gender system in which they reaped the benefits; in fact, they thought that the gender bonuses were too skimpy, and they blamed this on the women’s liberation of the socialist period, arguing that this liberation was part of the failed socialist experiment, and should be thoroughly rejected.  In 1994, China’s most well-known journal of academic sociology, Sociology Research 社会学研究, published an article entitled "Sociological Reflection on Gender Equality 男女平等的社会学反思" by the sociologist Zheng Yefu 郑也夫 (b. 1950).[21]  Zheng argued that the liberation of women in China had been an example of a "strong political force exercised by the state to help the weak and suppress the strong, disrupting and destroying the normal division of labor between the strong and the weak in the family, to the point that the weak erroneously came to believe that they were no longer weak, and the strong lost their self-confidence."  He further argued that gender equality was something that sacrificed efficiency in pursuit of fairness, and that equal wages for equal work for men and women was “an absurd egalitarian principle.”  “The government-led liberation of Chinese women led China to ‘lose’ real men, as well as real Chinese women,” creating “unparalleled chaos” in China.[22]
 
What is worth noting is that when Zheng Yefu asserted that "equality is a right, not a result," and that society’s attitude toward women should be one of “no obstacles to success or to failure 上不封顶，下不保底,” in other words that women’s achievements should be neither obstructed nor supported, this meant that the system could not guarantee substantive equality.  This is in fact the consensus of Chinese liberal thought, just as Liu Junning 刘军宁 (b. 1961)[23] said:  “Liberalism sympathizes with the ideal of equality, but at the same time is wary of it.  Liberalism believes in the equality of rights, not the equality of outcomes.”[24]  And in the great debate kicked off by Zheng Yefu’s article, another sociologist, Sun Liping 孫立平 (b. 1955).[25] argued that he least costly solution to China’s employment problems at the time was to let working women go home.  At that time, "efficiency and fairness" was a hot topic in discussing economic reforms.  Sacrificing fairness for women to achieve “social efficiency” under conditions of market reform was a typical proposal by male intellectuals.
 
Arguments about this kind of “freedom” are a backlash against and a reversal of the practice that aimed to shrink class and gender hierarchies during the period of public ownership.  The old system may have lacked the efficiency of capital, but the return of “efficiency” had no hesitation about sacrificing what women—the other—had achieved in terms of professional space and social position (which represented both equality and freedom to women).  Here, liberalism became a public opinion weapon used to “increase the bonuses” of those using the weapon, and functioned to enlarge the gender hierarchy during the period of market reforms.
 
There is no indication that male intellectuals concerned with institutional issues have progressed considerably in terms of gender issues since 1994.  If we carefully sort through the articles of major liberal intellectuals, there are no almost articles about women's rights and gender justice, but there are many misunderstandings about women's liberation and gender rights.  From scattered remarks here and there, we can basically understand male intellectuals’ attitudes to gender issues.  For instance, Gan Yang 甘阳 (b. 1952)[26] once dismissed gender, race, gay and queer theory as “trivialities 鸡毛蒜皮.”  Qiu Feng argued that transgender issues are Western issues (although there truly exists a transgender community in China, which is fairly active in civil society).[27]  The liberal columnist Xu Zhiyuan 许知远 (b. 1976)[28] once described Chinese women's liberation in the following terms: "In the second half of the last century...Hard-edged feminists desperately squeezed the fragrant juice from women’s bodies, making them brave and dry.  They mistakenly took masculine behavior and tendencies as signs of strength.”  In addition, when Xu was a mentor in a youth camp, he made it clear that he did not like feminism's critique of patriarchal culture because he did not appreciate the so-called "victim’s mentality."  This clearly traces its origins to an aversion to the history of Chinese women's movement.  This history has led to a large number of women obtaining equal access to educational and employment opportunities, becoming a social force that challenges the monopoly power of male elites in many fields, and thus has become one of the sources of anxiety for contemporary male elites.[29]
 
I have only seen two articles by male liberal intellectuals devoted exclusively to gender issues.  One was by Mo Luo 摩罗 (b. 1961),[30] who has recently turned into a statist or a nationalist, but who in 2007 published a long essay in Southern Weekend that criticized the Chinese women’s liberation movement for having harmed women’s “maternal nature…” Nor was Mo the only one.  Qiu Feng also wrote a newspaper piece discussing parental leave, in which he stressed that “the key here is to break through modern superstitions.  Women’s first role is not as a laborer, but as a woman, a mother.”  The understanding that these male intellectuals have of women’s social roles is essentialist; outside of “protecting motherhood,” they are completely insensitive to the discrimination faced by Chinese women, and ignore the equal rights and opportunities they should share with men.  More than a century ago, John Stuart Mill argued that blaming all the bonds of slavery and domination, including gender inequality, on "nature" and "human nature" is a common excuse for vested interests to defend their privileges.[31]  Sadly, classical theorists’ concerns about gender equality have not been taken seriously by Chinese liberals.   Qiu Feng and Mo Luo, who hope to confine women’s groups to their essential family role, have in fact abandoned liberalism, and the even greater number of Mainland liberal scholars, who either say not a word about gender issues, or, like the objects of John Stuart Mill’s criticism, naturalize the inequities brought about by gender inequality.  This seems to confirm an old saying often shared in feminist circles: "The attitude towards gender issues is a test of whether a person is a true liberal.”

“Liberalism with Chinese Characteristics”

Chinese liberalism has adopted wholesale liberalism’s blindness to difference, as discussed above.  However, as I already mentioned, feminism and liberalism also have a certain affinity. Liberal political practice has historically broadened the rights of women and other vulnerable groups. As Okin has argued, liberalism’s rejection of hierarchy and its emphasis on individual freedom and equality are extremely important to feminism.[32]  Okin in addition stresses that John Rawls’s theory of justice also provides conceptual tools for feminism’s critique of liberalism, among which the notion of “original position.”  In sum, future developments in liberalism would be wise to consider the feminist critique, or to incorporate feminist values and methodologies, in the process of a pluralizing correction, a correction of which Rawls’s Justice as Fairness is a product.
 
Ronald Dworkin and Rawls stand out as the two liberal theorists who “overlap” the most with feminists, or who at least have a basis for dialogue.  However, because of their emphasis on substantive equality, these two are basically excluded from the mainstream of Chinese liberalism (as seen in the mass media).  Although there are many divisions within Chinese liberalism, and Qin Hui has attempted to bring right and left together in a new consensus, liberal concepts as conveyed in the new market media and on the web still focus on libertarianism.
 
I feel that Qiu Feng’s description of Chinese political liberalism and economic liberalism’s being two sides of the same coin is true, at least for the 1990s.[33]  Political and economic liberalism both worship individual freedom, the free market and the rule of law, which is the reason that political liberalism could be freely discussed to a certain extent in the 1990s.  The slogan “socialism with Chinese characteristics” suggests that there are dangers on both the left and the right, but the important thing is to oppose the left.  For this reason, when liberals reflect in the media on utopia or on the Cultural Revolution or the French Revolution, there is a certain amount of space for free speech.  When “liberalism with Chinese characteristics” is depicted as arising out concerns over the Cultural Revolution, egalitarianism and totalitarianism, the adoption of Western theories will inevitably focus on individual freedoms and warnings about Leviathan, and equality and social welfare will be treated as products of a failed socialist experiment, to be avoided at all costs.
 
For example, Ren Jiantao 任剑涛 (b. 1962)[34] argues that we should not adopt the New [Rawlsian] liberalism simply because it emphasizes social justice, accords equal weight to freedom and equality, more easily applies to China’s political reality, or aligns more closely with the moral stance of China’s intellectuals [in comparison with classical liberalism].[35]  Instead, he follows the “historical-logical order” of the West in which freedom preceded justice, and concludes that China too must defer considerations of the value of justice until individual rights have basic institutional guarantees in the form of a liberal democratic constitution.  This is one explanation of why “women’s rights can be achieved only after the realization of human rights” (on this point, these liberals are of a piece with men’s rights communists, who insist that “first comes class liberation, followed by women’s liberation,” a classic statement from the men’s rights Communist Party).  And Liu Junning’s American-style conservatism is all the more familiar.  He recently roundly condemned Zhou Baosong’s 周保松 (b. 1969)[36] praise for Rawls’s theory of justice and his critique of how the market damages freedom, saying that this was not “real” liberalism.  I have heard other Chinese liberals in the media say that Rawls “is not a liberal but a socialist” (in some liberal circles in China, socialism seems to have taken on a kind of stigma, or an option that must be excluded from the social and political blueprint).
 
In the debates at the end of the 1990s between liberalism and the new “Left,”[37] the basic characteristics of liberalism as depicted by their enemies became ever more obvious, and liberalism became “liberalism with Chinese characteristics.”  Even today, some liberals still believe that equality and social welfare are “leftist” prerogatives.[38]  They believe that a pure “free market” with limitless capacity for asset allocation truly exists and are extremely wary of demands for social justice, fearing that they are harbingers for the return of communism or totalitarianism, failing to understand that under the Chinese-style market economy, created by the authoritarian state, and lacking both independence and sufficient social regulation, social justice is not only meaningful for each individual, but is also the foundation for the country to move smoothly toward democratization.
 
In addition, liberalism in Mainland China is shot through with elitism, and in recent debates, both Liu Junning and Ren Jiantao repeatedly stressed the role of elites in politics and economics.  For instance, Liu Junning has argued that “the feasibility of liberalism relies wholly on an integration of the intellectual elite and the commercial elite.  This integration must grow out of the internal needs of both sets of elites, thus forming an unbreakable relationship.”  What leads Liu to dismay is that “in today’s China this relationship is far from consolidated.  Today’s entrepreneurs first think about their relationship with the government, then about the security of their property, after which they worry about how to continue their honeymoon with the government.”[39]
 
Perhaps this is the chilling effect of the history of intellectuals’ having been absorbed and persecuted [by the state] since 1949; Chinese liberals cling to class identity even if they are disappointed by entrepreneurs’ eagerness to form alliances with power, having assumed that the emerging bourgeoisie must become a key force in social change.  In fact, research in comparative politics has proven that this is not a universal historical law (as argued in Dietrich Rueschemeyer’s Capitalist Development and Democracy); the capitalist and landlord classes usually support authoritarian rule, and sometimes oppose democratization, while the development and mobilization of coalitions of the dominated classes is what encourages democratization.  It would appear that in terms of their views on political change, Mainland Chinese liberals are willing to discard the more penetrating analysis of modern liberalism concerning modern society so as to maintain the purity of theory and the unity of logic.  They are returning to the old workshop of democracy solely in the hopes of building a Western-style democratic country of the basis of “pure ancient craftsmanship.”
 
Since they pin their hopes for social change on the cooperation and interaction between elites, we can understand why liberal intellectuals think about current issues solely from the perspective of political freedom, while ignoring the multiple causes of the difficulties faced by non-male elites—class, gender, ethnicity, and cultural identity—and also neglect the comprehensive means and plural social forces needed to solve the problems.
 
A blueprint for social change based in the guidance and control of the political and economic elite, a liberal democracy unconcerned with justice, a limited state that spurns social welfare…Is this a vision that will appeal to anyone outside of China’s bourgeoisie?  This blueprint is exclusionary for relatively weak groups; for those with feminist ideals, it is hardly an ideal solution.  Women’s inferior position in the gender hierarchy means that they have difficulty competing against men in their same class position, and they will never obtain equal opportunities from the “pure free market.”  Women assume most of the (unpaid) labor for human reproduction, which necessarily means that they have greater demands in terms of social welfare.  Moreover, feminism believes that patriarchal oppression is implemented and rationalized through different oppressive forces, such as the overlap of political, class, ethnic, and gender oppression. A reform plan that refuses to question the hierarchy or the class interests of conservatism is not seeking the liberation of all, but instead reserving a place for privilege.  Whether as a social movement or in terms of theoretical research, feminism stresses individual consciousness, agency, and empowerment, or in other words, feminism emphasizes the broad political participation of each citizen. In this sense, exclusivist elite democracy is simply not democratic.
 
People often say that those acting in the field of citizen rights activism are practicing the idea of liberalism.  Liberal scholars’ efforts in mass communication have indeed enlightened the public, and actors in the field of citizen rights hold an overlapping consensus with liberals, in that both want accountable government, a public space not subject to state control and where social forces can develop, and a functioning legal system.  That said, the theoretical contexts supporting these rights protection practices are quite diverse.   The Marxist ideological resources involved in the workers, peasants, and feminist movements, the anti-capitalist and anti-globalization overtones of the fair trade, community cooperative, and environmental protection movements all go beyond the mainland liberal intellectuals’ framework of discussion, and the ideas and styles of these movements emphasize citizen participation rather than elite governance.  Contemporary Chinese liberal scholars should perhaps examine citizen behavior, seek out existing sources of genuine social change, and fashion an indigenous political theory on the basis of such practices.

“Feminism with Chinese Characteristics”

The resurgence of non-state Chinese feminism is directly related to the 1995 World Women’s Conference and the NGO Forum in Beijing.  In response to the NGO Forum, the state created or permitted the functioning of a number of non-state women’s organizations, and the same conference also brought about the emergence of contemporary Chinese NGOs. The World Women’s Association’s rankings and exchange opportunities have promoted the spread of transnational feminist theory in China.  The International Foundation, funded chiefly by the Ford Foundation, provides funding for setting up gender studies programs in Chinese universities.  In addition, both the All-China Women’s Federation networks and the new women’s NGOs are influenced by international funds and transnational feminist theories.
 
The fourth World Women’s Conference was a turning point in the attitude of the Chinese government toward the international human rights framework and NGO international participation.  Chinese officials found that the NGO Forum did not lead to the international community’s criticism of China on human rights issues, but instead served as a platform from which to contest Western hegemony.  Therefore, the development of feminism and NGOs is a strategy-based approach elaborated by the state and the international community.[40]  Since then, Chinese NGOs have mainly used the framework of international law to gradually expand their space for activities.  In the field of feminist action, they mainly use the United Nations review mechanism of the “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,” signed by China in 1980, to cooperate with the official Women’s Federation system and promote women’s rights in different fields.
 
The “Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination” demands substantive equality, and requires the state to assume responsibility for eliminating discrimination.   Calls for state responsibility for the elimination of discrimination, as well as various actions plans having to do with equality and human rights, come basically from the arguments of contemporary overseas liberals and feminists.  In other words, the ideological resources of contemporary feminist activities are largely based on contemporary liberalism, although this is not acknowledged or taken seriously by Chinese liberals.  This is a paradox worthy of our attention, and it also reveals the gap between Chinese liberalism and foreign liberalism. Regrettably, even in Charter 08, there is no clause clearly calling on the state to assume the responsibility to end discrimination.
 
Furthermore, in addition to its intellectual engagement with liberalism, China’s feminism is also involved in many spheres of activity, including policy advocacy and legislative lobbying, as well as various economic empowerment and community involvement projects for grassroots women, innovative reforms in the realms of media and culture, and independent development of transgender movements.  This diverse ecology has led to the co-existence of different strains of feminist theory—socialist feminism, Third World feminism, and lesbian feminism[41]—at the same time in China.  In other words, this means that feminist projects and concepts produced outside of China in different times and places now coexist in China, where their different points of emphasis are emulated and localized.  This “composite human rights” package for which feminists struggle, which includes political, economic and cultural rights, hardly intersects with the arguments of Mainland Chinese liberalism.
 
The Chinese Communist Party is the first political party in Chinese history to issue an inner-Party resolution on women's liberation, and gender equality is one of the bases of political legitimacy of the CCP.  Given the government’s commitment to promoting human rights and eliminating discrimination on the international scene (how this is working is another matter), Chinese feminist actions seek first to cooperate with the government and second to hold it accountable (or one might say cooperation has replaced calls for accountability, with the exception of a series of calls for accountability and mass advocacy actions launched last year by a number of  “Young Feminist Actors”).  This is the strategy under the current political structure:  “top down 在朝” political strength is better placed than “bottom up 在野” activities to protect gender equality.  On the one hand, high-level, national policies and legislative advocacy projects must be embedded in state policy and official ideology; this is largely the work of the Women’s Federation, because outside of the Women’s Federation and the state-controlled higher education system, there are very few feminists.  On the other hand, feminists outside the system are under the control of the government in their grassroots communities, and still rely on the women's federation's organizational system to carry out various grassroots women's economic empowerment, community political participation and legal rights protection projects.
 
For this reason, the Chinese feminist movement does its utmost to avoid politicization.  Feminist scholars within the establishment seek any improvement that they can, and seek safety and collaboration with the government even as they assess and critique the resources of the existing system.  The main means of pursuing women’s rights within the system is to "improve the awareness of leading cadres."  Establishment feminist scholars cannot propose institutional arrangements at odds with the existing system, nor does the feminist movement have its own systemic theory or institutional arguments.  For these reasons, dialogue with other trends of political thought from the lofty perch of political philosophy is quite rare.  Naturally, this kind of “embedded activism” which involves both cooperation and tension with the government is a common feature found in social movements in contemporary China.[42]
 
Feminism itself and its complex relationship with the state, its gender equality policies and its legislative advocacy projects all are overly involved with the state and lack sufficient mass mobilization.  This why feminism is misunderstood by society at large and by liberal groups.
 
Chinese feminism currently faces a difficult choice:  it can choose to cooperate with the state, which means that feminism will have the guarantees that come with the framework of international law.  But since feminism has no effective way to hold the government accountable, is not allowed to mobilize the grassroots, and can act merely as an assistant as the state responds to the demands of international society, feminist actions remain stalled at the level of “projects.”  In such a situation, there is no way to press the Women’s Federation or the state system to mainstream questions of gender, the efficiency of the feminist movement is not great, and there are few institutional guarantees.  The other choice is to demand political reform and use the opportunities provided by political freedom and the legal system to realize the feminist agenda.  However, this is not the choice of the current Chinese women's movement: policy and legal advocates hope to create mutual trust with the government; some feminist scholars with socialist tendencies and those involved in third world activities have doubts about Western hegemony; grassroots NGOs only want to secure a space to survive. The mainstream liberal discourse in China is all but forgotten by those who are at a disadvantage in terms of class, gender and ethnicity.
 
Institutional problems are difficult to avoid.  It is hard for non-state feminist actions to change a government that lacks social responsiveness or the Women’s Federation.  Even the Women's Federation system still has to develop the idea of granting agency to women and instead sees them as “objects to be helped,” and the way the Federation works winds up strengthening patriarchal notions.  The absence of the rule of law and basic political freedom also puts feminism under constraints; countless incidents bear witness to this.  For example, Ma Xiaoduo’s 马小朵 (b. 1966)[43] mobile women’s community service agency in the suburbs of Beijing had to stop working before and after the Olympics.  Another example is Professor Ai Xiaoming 艾晓明 (b. 1953),[44] who entered Taishi village 太石村 in the Guangzhou suburbs out of concern for the political participation of female villagers, but became another historical witness to the arrests, violence, intimidation and expulsion that marked this village’s movement for self-government.  Yet another is the women’s rights lawyer who intervened in the case of the petitioner Li Ruirui 李蕊蕊 (b. 1988), who was raped in an illegal detention center, bringing about a crisis in the legitimacy of the legal aid organization.[45]  The stories of these feminist activists illustrate that once they cross the line from "helping" they can be suspected of "stirring up trouble 添乱."  When they encounter sensitive issues such as selling infected blood, barbaric enforcement of the one-child policy, or issues related to grassroots democracy or petitioners, claims to women’s rights lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the government. If the principle of gender equality is to apply across the boards, then it is impossible to ignore the issue of national democratization.
 
A century ago, as the Chinese people (Chinese men) worried that they were becoming a conquered people 亡国奴 and agonized between moments of self-pity and desires for self-improvement, they took the West as their teacher, and strongly condemned traditional patriarchal culture.  Feminism was accepted as part of Western advanced culture, which was in turn to become part of China’s modernity.  Gender equality was part of the consensus in terms of “nation-building” (at least on paper) for the generation of politicians and thinkers in the years between the Revolution of 1911 and the May Fourth movement.  Feminists also actively participated in various national discussions, proposing different political programs such as anarchism, liberalism, and socialism.
 
Yet today, while the international framework and arguments supporting the non-state feminist movement, as well as feminism’s tendency to limit its activities to policy and legal advocacy, trace their roots to liberal feminism, feminism has almost never received the support of liberals from within China.  Instead, liberal groups hoping for political progress and reform have excluded gender questions from those of “nation-building,” and without reason support the current order, even going so far as to support the restoration of patriarchy.  If this situation continues, it means that Chinese liberals are proposing to suspend the equal rights of half of the population. What kind of liberalism does this mean for China? Conversely, what kind of political discourse should feminism develop to criticize the deficiencies of "liberalism with Chinese characteristics"?
 
The current Chinese context requires more dialogue and debate between feminism, feminist social movements, and liberalism.  Liberals do not have a monopoly on notions of rights, equality and freedom or on visions of constitutional rule.  If Chinese liberals cling to their patriarchal, heterosexual, and pro-capitalist class positions, they may well lose partners with considerable talent for activism.  More importantly, they may lose the opportunity to imagine a Chinese society that is more rational, diverse, and rich.


Notes
 
[1] Translator’s note: 李思磐, “中国大陆自由主义者为何不支持女权主义?” originally published in the Taiwanese journal Reflection 思想, vol. 23, May 2013, and is available online at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/64632.html .  Li Sipan is the penname of Li Jun 李军, who, at the time of the publication of her essay was a doctoral candidate in sociology at Xiamen University.  She has since graduated and works as a journalist for the Southern Metropolis Daily 南方都市报, and is the Head of Women Awakening Network (新媒体女性), a feminist communication NGO based in Guangzhou.
 
[2] Chen Jibing 陈季冰,”Can EU Regulations on the Percentage of Women Directors Work? 欧盟规定公司女性董事比例行得通吗？ ” 南方都市报, November 10, 2012, p. AA32.
 
[3] See Yan Lieshan, 鄢烈山, “In Defense of Beijing University’s Recruitment Practices:  This Isn’t Gender Discrimination 为北大招生辩护：这不是性别歧视,” 南方都市报, September 1, 2005; Da Shi 大詩, “Funny Legislation for ‘Sexual Harassment 无厘头的「性骚扰」立法,” 南方都市报, September 3, 2005.
 
[4] Translator’s note:  Qiu Feng 秋风 is the penname of Yao Zhongqiu 姚中秋, a professor of philosophy at Shandong University and a prominent Mainland New Confucian who was originally known for his liberal tendencies.
 
[5] “礼俗优先于权利,” available online at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/54877.html .
 
[6] The official Weibo account of the Shanghai Number Two Subway Live published photographs of women riding the subway dressed in revealing clothing, and “respectfully advised” the women to show “self-respect” so as to avoid sexual harassment.  This provoked a wave of public anger on the part of feminist groups throughout the country, as well as online protests.
 
[7] Translator’s note:  Qin Hui was professor of history at Tsinghua University (now retired), and is one of China’s best-known liberals.
 
[8] Translator’s note:  Zhang Qianfan is a professor of constitutional law at Peking University’s Law School, and a prominent advocate for constitutional reform in China.
 
[9] Translator’s note:  Cui Weiping is professor at the Beijing Film Institute and a leading cultural critic in China.
 
[10] Translator’s note:  Li uses the term nalai zhuyi 拿来主义 which might be translated as “appropriatism.” The term was originally coined by the writer Lu Xun in 1934 in opposition to the “give-away-ism” (送去主义) which Lu thought characterized China’s dealings with the world, and especially Japan. 
 
[11] See Martha C. Nussbaum, “Human Rights and Human Capabilities,” Harvard Human Rights Journal, Spring 2007, Vol. 20, p. 21.
 
[12] Translator’s note:  See Catherine Anne MacKinnon, Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2006): pp. 41-43; also available online at https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2011/03/are-women-human/ .
 
[13] Carole Pateman, “Feminist critiques of the public/private dichotomy,” In Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), p. 118.
 
[14] See Carole Pateman, “Feminist critiques of the public/private dichotomy,” op.cit.; and Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989),  p. 111.
 
[15] Lisa H. Schwartzman, Challenging Liberalism: Feminism as Political Critique (University Park, PA.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), p. 15.
 
[16] See Okin, p. 32
 
[17] Cited in Schwartzman, p. 15
 
[18] Translator’s note:  Fang Gang is a professor of gender studies at China Forestry University 中国林业大学 and a prolific author on questions of sex and gender.
 
[19] Martha C. Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 65.
 
[20] A similar thing occurred in the United States after World War II.  See Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.
 
[21] Translator’s note:  Zheng Yefu was professor of sociology (now retired) at Peking University.
 
[22] Zheng Yefu, “A Sociological Reflection on Male-Female Equality 男女平等的社会学思考,” 社会学研究, 1994.2.
 
[23] Translator’s note:  Liu Junning is a professor of political science at the Institute of Chinese Culture attached to the Ministry of Culture, and is one of China’s best-known liberals.
 
[24] Liu Junning 刘军宁, “The Ideal of Equality, the Reality of Elites 平等的理想，精英的现实.” Available online at http://blog.boxun.com/hero/ liujn/51_1.shtml.
 
[25] Translator’s note:  Sun Liping is professor of sociology at Tsinghua University and is one of China’s most famous public intellectuals.
 
[26] Gan Yang is Professor and Dean at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou, and holds concurrent positions at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Chongqing University in Chongqing.  His ideology has changed over the years, but at present he is most frequently identified as a member of the New Left.
 
[27] Song Shaopeng 宋少鵬, “The Challenge to Chinese Feminism of the Culturally Nationalist Confucian Revival 文化民族主义的儒学复兴对中国女性主义的挑战.”  Draft supplied by the author.
 
[28] Translator’s note:  Xu Zhiyuan is a well-known journalist and media personality in China.
 
[29] While the percentage of women studying physics in American universities rose from 9% in 1978 to 21% in 1999, the percentage of women studying physics in Chinese universities declined.  Wu Ling’an 吳令安, a researcher at the Physics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered that the average percentage of women in the Peking University physics department was 12.7%in the 1950s, 20.2% in the 1960s, and reached 39.5% at the end of the 1970s, but after 1980s, the percentage began to decline from 15.9% to its present 9%.  The percentage of women in the physics department at Nanjing University similarly declined from 37% in the 1970s to 8% today.  See Yang Jianxiang 杨健翔, “Why Does Physics No Longer Attract Women? 物理学为何不再吸引女性？”  Available online at http://www.people.com.cn/BIG5/kejiao/42/155/ 20020204/662079.html.
 
[30] Translator’s note:  Mo Luo is the penname of Wan Songsheng 万松生, a Chinese writer and cultural commentator.
 
[31] Mary Wollstonecraft, (Wang Zhen 王蓁 and Wang Xi 汪溪, trans.), A Vindication of the Rights of Women 女权辩护；妇女的屈从地位.  (Taibei:  Taiwan Commercial Press, 1996), p. 265.
 
[32] Susan Moller Okin, “Justice and Gender: An Unfinished Debate,” Fordham Law Review, Vol. 72, Issue 5, 2004.
 
[33] See Yao Zhongqiu, “Liberalism’s Declining Fortunes over the Past Twenty Years 中国自由主义二十年的颓势,” 二十一世纪双月刊, 2011: 8.
 
[34] Translator’s note:  Ren Jiantao is professor of political science at Tsinghua University.
 
[35] Ren Jiantao, “Between Classical Liberalism and New Liberalism:  How to Position Contemporary Chinese Liberalism,” available online at http://www.aisixiang.com/data/7137.html .  Ren’s discussion of “new liberalism” refers to the egalitarian liberalism of thinkers like Rawls and Dworkin, which is also called “left liberalism.”  This should not be confused with “neoliberalism.”  In fact, this kind of “new liberalism” that emphasizes equality has long existed, for example in the political thought championed in the second half of the nineteenth century by people like T. H. Green, which stressed social rights and social issues and attacked various ills of unfettered capitalism, thus laying the foundation of the twentieth-century welfare state.  Today’s New Left loves to criticize neoliberalism, but knows nothing about new liberalism, perhaps because they ignore the historical development of liberalism.
 
[36] Translator’s note:  Zhou Baosong is professor of political philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
 
[37] I agree with the view that China’s New Left is closer to statism than to left liberalism.
 
[38] Yet as [liberal scholars] Xu Youyu (b. 1947) and Zhu Xueqin (b. 1952) have noted frequently, liberals were first to point out the problem of socialism.  See Xu Youyu, “My Experience of the ‘Liberal—New Left Debate:   Reflections, Feelings, and My Mental Journey 我亲历的「自由主义—新左派」之争——回顾、感想与心路历程,” 天涯 2012.5.
 
[39] Rong Jian 荣剑, “The ‘Third Wave’ of Chinese Liberalism:  Thought Meeting Four 中国自由主义『第三波』——思想聚会之四,” available online at http://www.21ccom.net/articles/sxwh/shsc/article_2012111571062.html .
 
[40] See Wang Zheng, “Historical Turning Point for the Women’s Movement in China,” SIGNS, Autumn 1996.  The article describes the change in attitude of the Chinese government toward NGOs before and after the World Women's Association meeting. The anti-American imperialism leanings of the World Women's Association at the NGO forum reduced the Chinese government's hesitations about “nongovernmental organizations.”
 
[41] Broadly speaking, socialist feminism refers to the school of feminist thought that has argued, since the early nineteenth century, that women’s liberation can only be realized through comprehensive social reform, including the social, political, and economic structures.  Third World feminism took shape during the 1970s, and Third World feminism’s critique of the dual hegemony of patriarchy and First World feminism is based on the belief that gender oppression is integrated with other forms of oppression such as class, race, and nation-state.  Lesbian feminism was created in the 1970s and 1980s.  This form of feminism criticizes the blindness of mainstream feminist theory to heterosexual hegemony, and believes that heterosexual hegemony is an important support for patriarchy. Lesbian feminism has a tendency to separate from mainstream feminist movements and gay movements.
 
[42] See Peter Ho and Richards Edmonds, China’s Embedded Activism: Opportunities and Constraints of a Social Movement (Routledge, 2008).
 
[43] Translator’s note:  Ma Xiaoduo was a leading member of United Heart Home of Hope 同心希望家园文化发展中心, a citizen organization dedicated to the achievement of general equality.
 
[44] Translator’s note:  Ai Xiaoming is a scholar and documentary filmmaker deeply concerned with women’s issues.  The author’s reference here is to her film Taishi Village (2005).
 
[45] Translator’s note:  The (male) lawyer referred to by the author is Zhang Jing 张荆, and the organization is the Women’s Legal Research and Service Center at the Peking University Faculty of Law 北大法学院妇女法律研究与服务中心.