Thread by @LetaHong

Glad to guest host this week’s ⁦@politico⁩ China newsletter: “Feminists thwarting China’s population goals” politico.com/newsletters/po…

At least 20 Chinese feminist activists have had their Weibo accounts deleted in recent weeks after a wave of online, misogynistic attacks by nationalist trolls.

The coordinated deletion of social media accounts is the latest example of a growing conflict between the Chinese government’s crackdown on feminist activism and the emergence of a broader, feminist awakening that is beginning to transform young women in cities across China.

The outcome of this conflict between the patriarchal, authoritarian state and ordinary women who are increasingly pushing back against pressure to marry and have babies could have far-reaching consequences.

Most observers expect China’s new census to show a sharp decline in the birth rate in 2020, despite the government’s much-heralded easing of its decades-long “one-child policy” in 2016.

In addition to plummeting birth rates, China must grapple with a drastically aging population and a shrinking labor force — all of which are closely linked to the country’s decelerating economic growth, labor productivity growth & the political legitimacy of the Communist Party.

China also has one of the world’s most skewed sex-ratio imbalances, with roughly 30 million more men than women in 2019.

It is no wonder that China’s all-male rulers feel threatened by young feminist activists, who are calling for the total emancipation of women.

The Party-state’s ongoing crackdown on feminist activists is particularly ironic, given the central importance of gender equality during the Communist revolution and the early Mao era, following the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.

But in the 1990s, gender inequality deepened as China accelerated economic reforms, dismantling the Party-mandated system of equal employment for women and men.

In 1990, 73 percent of Chinese women 15 and older were in the workforce; by 2019, that figure had plunged to below 61 percent, according to the World Bank.

As I write in my book, LEFTOVER WOMEN, China’s propaganda apparatus began a crass campaign in 2007 to stigmatize single, professional women in their late 20s, mocking them as “leftover” women (sheng nü) to push them into marrying and having babies for the good of the nation.

Since then, the government’s pronatalist, pro-marriage propaganda aimed at Han Chinese women has only become more intense, as policymakers continue to view women primarily as reproductive tools to realize the nation’s development goals.

Most of China’s persecuted feminist activists come from the exact demographic that the government is targeting in its pro-natalist propaganda: university-educated, Han women in their 20s and early 30s.

The eugenic undertones of China’s population-planning goals are unmistakable. Even as officials urge Han women to marry and get pregnant in order to “upgrade population quality,” they are carrying out a campaign to slash births among Uyghur and other Turkic women in Xinjiang.

Meanwhile, China’s misogynistic harassment campaigns online have begun to extend beyond the country’s borders to target female critics abroad.

It is impossible to predict whether China’s feminist movement will be able to survive this latest wave of attacks.

China’s all-male rulers see gendered oppression as crucial for the future of their dictatorship, but feminism—which demands that women control their own bodies and reproduction — is in direct conflict with the eugenic, pronatalist, population-planning goals of the Chinese state.

As China’s demographic challenges become more acute and the battle for Communist Party survival more fraught in coming years, the crackdown on feminism is likely to intensify.

But some of the most prominent Chinese feminists refuse to be silenced. The founding editor-in-chief of Feminist Voices, Lü Pin — now based in New York — wrote a defiant essay in Chinese for Medium after her account was deleted.

“With the help of my friends, my voice will be able to penetrate the blockade and reach those who need to hear it,” @pinerpiner wrote. “This is not the last war.”

Read the full essay here: politico.com/newsletters/po…

With links to pieces by @suilee @shenlulushen @Chao_Deng @CarlMinzner @pinerpiner @violazhouyi @CDT @FeministChina @adrianzenz @wiczipedia and more

If you’d like to read more, check out my book, Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, now out in paperback:

https://twitter.com/letahong/status/1385947325227577346?s=21

https://t.co/XQ24zVzhQQ

Also citing a piece by @catecadell on Uyghur women abroad

And check out this wonderful, multi-media feature on Chinese feminist activists h/t @FeministChina wainao.me/wainao-reads/p…