Dilemmas of inside agitators: Chinese state feminists in 1957

China Quarterly

Volumn , Issue 188, 2006, Pages 913-932

  Zheng, Wang ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FEMINISM; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; POLITICAL PARTICIPATION; WOMENS ORGANIZATION;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST;

EID: 33847324842     PISSN: 03057410     EISSN: 14682648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S030574100600049X     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. For feminist critique of the Chinese Communist Party's gender policies, see Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)
2. Phyllis Andors, The Unfinished Liberation of Chinese Women, 1949-1980 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983)
3. Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983)
4. Sonia Kruks, Rayana Rapp and Marilyn B. Young (eds.), Promissary Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989)
5. and Christina K. Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).
6. The figure appears in Deng Yingchao's report to the second ACWF national congress in 1953.
7. See "Sinianlai zhongguo funü yundong de jiben zongjie he jinhou renwu" ("A summary of the Chinese women's movement in the past four years and future task"), in Chinese Women Cadres School (ed.), Zhongguo funü yundong wenxian ziliao huibian (An Anthology of Source Material on the Chinese Women's Movement) (Beijing: Chinese Women's Press, 1988), Vol. 2, p. 171. The two-volume anthology is classified as an internal document, which is not for public circulation.
8. For a discussion of the early institutional development of the ACWF, see Wang Zheng "State feminism? Gender and socialist state formation in Maoist China," Feminist Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (2005), pp. 519-551.
9. For a study of the ACWF in the post-Mao era, see Ellen Judd, The Chinese Women's Movement between State and Market (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).
10. Luo Qiong and Duan Yongqiang, Luo Qiong fangtan lu (Interviews with Luo Qiong) (Beijing: Chinese Women Press, 2000), p. 126. Mao's original phrase san maniang was changed by women officials into san piping (third, criticize) in their public talks, perhaps because of the apparent gender offensiveness of the original.
11. See Deng Yingchao, "Zai dangde lingdao xia, tuanjie he fahui guangda funü quanzhong de liliang" "(Under the Party's leadership, unite and utilize the power of women masses"),
12. and Cai chang, "Jiji peiyang he tiba gengduo genghao de nüganbu" ("Actively train and promote more and better women cadres"), in An Anthology, Vol. 2, pp. 262-68.
13. Delia Davin, Woman-Work: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 65-68.
14. See Zhang Naihua, "The All China Women's Federation, Chinese women and the women's movement: 1984-1993," PhD dissertation, Michigan State University.
15. See Elizabeth Perry, "Shanghai's strike wave of 1957," The China Quarterly, No. 137 (1994), pp. 1-27
16. Jackie Sheehan, Chinese Workers: A New History (London & New York: Routledge, 1998)
17. and Merle Goldman, Literary Dissent in Communist China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).
18. "Luo Qiong tongzhi chuanda zhongyang shujichu, zhongyang zhengzhiju fuze tongzhi duiyu funü gongzuo jiao zhongyao zhishi de jilu zhengli" ("Notes of Luo Qiong's conveying the important directives on women-work by the leading comrades of the Secretariat and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee"). C31-1-169, Shanghai Municipal Archives.
19. Luo Qiong and Duan Yongqiang, Interviews with Luo Qiong, p. 148.
20. Ibid. p. 144.
21. "Zhang Yun tongzhi chuanda Cai dajie he Deng dajie de zhishi" ("Comrade Zhang Yun conveys instructions from Sister Cai and Sister Deng"), ACWF archives.
22. See All-China Women's Federation, Huainian Zhang Yun dajie (Remembering Sister Zhang Yun) (Beijing: Chinese Women's Press, 1996).
23. See Wang Zheng, "State feminism?"
24. Luo Qiong and Duan Yongqiang, Interviews with Luo Qiong, p. 145.
25. Ibid.
26. "Notes of Luo Qiong's conveying the important directives on women-work by leading comrades of the Secretariat and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee."
27. Ibid.
28. "Shanghai minzhu fulian 1953 nian xiabannian gongzuo zongjie" ("Shanghai Democratic Women's Federation's review of work in the second half of 1953"), 1954, C31-1-75.
29. Luo Qiong and Duan Yongqiang, Interviews with Luo Qiong, p. 145.
30. "Qinjian jianguo, qinjian chijia, wei jianshe shehuizhuyi er fendou" ("Diligenly and thriftily build the country, diligently and thriftily manage the family, striving for socialist construction"), in Chinese Women Cadres School, An Anthology of Source Material on the Chinese Women's Movement, Vol. 2, p. 316.
31. "Notes of Luo Qiong's conveying the important directives on women-work by leading comrades of the Secretariat and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee.
32. "Zhongguo nongcun de shehuizhuyi gaochao de xuyan" ("Preface to 'The high tide of socialism in rural China'") September and December 1955, in Mao Zedong xuanji (Selected Works of Mao Zedong), Vol. 5 (Beijing: People Press, 1955), p. 249.
33. "Nongye hezuohua de yichang bianlun he dangqian de jieji douzheng" ("A debate on agricultural collectivization and current class struggles"), 11 October 1955, in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, p. 213.
34. "Yijiuwuqi nian xiaji de xingshi" ("The situation in summer 1957"), July 1957, in ibid p. 459.
35. Luo Qiong and Duan Yongqiang, Interviews with Luo Qiong, p. 146.
36. Mao Zedong, "Duizhongyang guanyu yijiuwuqi nian kaizhan zengchan jieyue yundong de zhishi gao de piyu ("Comment on the directive draft on the Party Central launching the campaign of increasing production and practicing economy in 1957"), in Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao (Mao Zedong's Papers Since the Founding of the PRC) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 1990), Vol. 6, pp. 302-303.
37. Renmin ribao (People's Daily), 26 March 1957, p. 6.
38. "Comrade Zhang Yun conveys instructions from Sister Cai and Sister Deng."
39. "Zai shengshi zhizhiqu dangwei shuji huiyi shang de jianghua" ("Talk on the conference of provincial Party Committee secretaries"), January 1957, in Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 5, p. 335.
40. "See Song Qingling, "Funü yao jianjue guohao shehuizhuyi zhe yiguan" ("Women should resolutely pass the test of socialism"), in Chinese Women Cadres School, An Anthology of Source Material on the Chinese Women's Movement, Vol. 2, p. 308.
41. Luo Qiong and Duan Yongqiang, Interviews with Luo Qiong, pp. 149-150.
42. Dong Bian, "Zai quanguo funü gongzuo huiyi shangde fayan" ("Talk on the national conference on women-work"), in Chinese Women Cadres School, An Anthology of Source Material on the Chinese Women's Movement, Vol. 2, p. 364.
43. In her recent article Kimberley Ens Manning gives an account of the disbanding of local women's federations in 1958.
44. See "The gendered politics of woman-work: Rethinking radicalism in the Great Leap Forward," Modern China, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2006), pp. 1-36.
45. Sheehan, Chinese Workers: A New History, p. 79.
46. The similar contrasting pattern between the ACWF and the ACFTU reemerged in the 1989 democracy movement. The ACFTU openly supported students' demonstration but the ACWF remained silent until after the crack-down when it was among the earliest to issue a statement condemning the democracy movement.
47. On informal relations among the Chinese elite and their influence on historical processes, see Jin Qiu, The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).