Feminism and the Position of Women in China

In mmmmmm’s original question, they had said, “It seems so different from the west. In some ways more feminist, but in other ways much less.” I have sat in my living room for two days now, searching every corner of my brain, and I cannot think of even a single aspect in which China is more feminist than the west.

If you’re in any doubt that China might not be as sexist as the west, go read this blog post of mine and come back here. I don’t think I have to prove the deeply problematic sexism of a country where you can legally purchase a woman for 3000 bucks. Not to mention that newborn gender ratio is still at a good 115 to 100 for boys versus girls.

I think the much more interesting question is why? Why is China so incredibly sexist? And to answer this question, I think first, I need to give you an overall context of Chinese society, starting with a very quick and simplified modern Chinese history.

There is honestly a lot of…blame and resentment towards the CCP, whether on the western internet or the Chinese one, albeit a lot more subtly there. And honestly, personally speaking, I think that is kind of unfair. Did the CCP make a lot of mistakes back in the sixties and seventies? Oh, abso-fucking-lutely, yes. But that didn’t happen in a vacuum. China has been the sandbag of the world for a hundred years at that point. It’s been through the unbelievable tyranny of the late Qing government, it’s been through the Opium war, it’s been through the Eight-Nation Alliance, it’s been through the Sino-Japanese War, it’s been through the Federalist versus Communist civil war. The country that the CCP took over in 1951 can, at best, be generously describe as an absolute shitheap. And the people who had taken over weren’t political elites, weren’t necessarily well-educated, had never actually ran a country before, and they were attempting something entirely new, with no well thought-out constitution or legal code off of a predecessor that they could copy off of. To start under those circumstances and get to today, just a mere 70 years later, and be a borderline superpower, with major cities that absolutely rival major cities of America, is un-goddamn-believable.

In 70 years, they went through the economic and technological developments that takes normal nations centuries to go through. And that is necessarily going to bring with it some growing pains. A very big aspect of this is law. I’ve talked before about the gaping loopholes in Chinese laws, the weird blindspots that it has, and just some policies that are very short-sighted (including the infamous one child policy). Why? Well, laws that are suited to an agricultural society don’t work well in the context of an industrialised society. Laws suited to an industrial society doesn’t work well in the context of the information/computer age. In China, laws written in the early 90s are just as out of touch and out of context as old laws left over from the 1820s on American books. China is simply growing too fast for its laws to keep up.

The law professor that I watch talked about an infamous case where a company was in court for illegally dumping over 20,000 tonnes of industrial acid into the Yang Tze river. The company claimed, “You have no proof we dumped those industrial acids illegally!”. And the prosecutor said, “But we have evidence that you had barrels of acid, and then you didn’t have barrels of acid.” And the company said, “Yeah, but we could’ve disposed to them legally!” And the prosecutor said, “Ahahahaha, actually, there is no legal way to dispose of them period on the books lol. Whatever it is you did, by definition, it’s not legal, lol.” It became an interesting legal precedent in China because the fine that the company had to pay was specifically assigned by the judge to go towards drafting laws for what is the legal way to dispose of industrial acids.

Stuff like this happens in almost every area of the law all the time. And where there is no hint from the government or the law as to how to go about resolving something, society is going to inevitably fall back to connections and favours. For example, a while back, to try to resolve China’s massive problem with traffic crimes without overburdening the courts, they gave a point system to every driver’s license. You’d get your driver’s license, and it would come with twelve points. Various infractions like parking illegally, speeding, driving with no plates, etc would deduct a certain amount of points. If you lose all of your points, you lose your license. And traffic cops could deduct points without having to bother a judge.

And then people started buying and selling points. And nobody had thought to actually ban this. And getting a law passed or amended takes a long time. So by the time the next People’s Council met up and actually got around to concretely making buying and selling points to people who were getting dangerously low illegal, a completely mature market place has already sprung up that’s been operating for years. At that point, it becomes nigh impossible to actually shut it down. Too many people are involved, you simply can’t imprison half of your cops who had participated, and too many people’s income depended on it for them to give up overnight. That’s not even to mention how, because most of China’s laws are extremely new (made in the 90s), a lot of people are genuinely not aware of them (and Chinese search engines are so goddamn bad at their jobs holy shit).

So contrary to what a lot of westerners seem to think, the CCP is actually, honest-to-god, a very powerless sort of government. They’re dictatorial and totalitarian, don’t get me wrong. If they want to screw over one person in particular, they’re very, very good at that. But they are shockingly bad at enforcing societal-wide laws and changes. Not eating endangered animals has been both widely promoted and enforced to the best of the CCP’s ability for decades now, and it’s still relatively easy and simple to find a restaurant where you can eat the freshest of pangolins.

Even with all of its monitoring of its citizens, with its dozens of cameras on every street corner, the problem will always remain that everyone is a friend of a friend of a friend of somebody. And as a cop, you probably owed a lot of favours to a lot of people in order to have the job that you do. And if you turn around and fuck those people’s friends over for no particular reason, you can bet that nobody will ever help you again. And without favours, Chinese society simply cannot run—the laws are just not complete and well-designed enough. A lot of daily functions still happen on the basis of, “Well, nobody knows exactly how that works, but I’ll put a call to the right person and have them complete it for you, cause you know me, I’m a bro.”

Another aspect of Chinese society that it’s important to understand is the wealth gap. GDP per capita in China is not that high. It’s only ranked as somewhere above Malaysia and below Costa Rica. You wouldn’t know that, if you visited a city like Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen. They’re incredibly modern and cosmopolitan and prosperous—they honestly look better than LA or New York, in my opinion. And China still has a far, far greater amount of billionaires than Malaysia and Costa Rica put together. What does this mean? At the bottom of society, there is an unbelievably large population still living barely above the absolute poverty line. At the same time that there are cities of people streaming shows and making six figure a year on average and buying Louis Vuittons out of stock, there are people who have to walk six hours to haul buckets of water and the most expensive thing they own is a large cooking pot.

“I feel like we’re getting farther and farther away from feminism,” I hear you say, “What does this have to do with anything?” Well, I’ve said before that I think Chinese sexism is very much perpetuated by the government in order to avoid a lot of unmarried, poor men which is a major unstable factor in society. It’s not just my opinion. It is the opinion of most feminist bloggers I follow in China. It’s not just their opinion, it has literally been caught on secret recordings of important government personnel that that is exactly what they’re doing.

“Men who are poor and single have nothing to lose. A family gives them a weak spot, a yoke we can shackle them with. A family makes them fear jail, makes them willing to work, keeps them from revolting.” This is probably something that should be in the Dictator’s Handbook. In a society which relies on connections to get anything done, with possibly the worst wealth gap in the developed world, it’s not men’s fault that a lot of them would quickly come to the realisation that there is no hope for them. They have no future. It’s not rare to see comments on the Chinese internet that some people are born to be kings and some people are born to be slaves. They’re going to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, until they die of a heart attack at their desk. And for what? These people are dangerous ticking bombs to even a well-managed society, much less China where they constitute a terrifyingly large portion of the populace. If you’re going to be barely struggling to get by no matter how hard you work, what really prevents you from saying fuck it and robbing a bank? Either you succeed and you get money, or you fail and you get to eat for free from inside of a prison.

Or worse, what if those people woke up one day and realised they should get organised and overthrow the system that’s keeping them down?

Giving them a wife is giving them something to lose. Giving them a child is giving them hope. Maybe they’ll be on the bottom rung of society their whole life, but if they push their kid to study hard, and they happen to produce a genius, who knows? Maybe their kiddo can be successful in life. And you don’t want to screw that over by giving him a father with a criminal record, right?

The problem, of course, is that the gender ratio in China has been off for a very long time now. Inevitably, there are going to be a lot of men who will never find a wife. And inevitably, those men are going to be precisely the most unstable elements of society—the poorest, working the most menial of jobs, with the least hopes of ever getting promoted, with the least education. Under these circumstances, relying on market forces is not an option. Women would never willingly marry those people when they have perfectly good careers of their own.

So the first step, then, is to fuck women out of careers. Consistently, girls have to score much higher than boys in order to get into the same schools. With only 25% of the population being allowed to go university, a much, much large amount of girls are going to fail at the middle school and high school stage. At the same time, under the excuse of incentivising more children, governments continue to extend the require paid maternity leave. Companies are starting to realise how many female employees they have who get the job, and then immediately get pregnant and start cashing in on the paid maternity leave, making a wage and not actually doing any work, requiring the company to basically hire two people for the same job.

Unsurprisingly, then, most companies simply stop hiring women. I’ve covered a weibo post before, how, “If you’re single, they’re worried you’ll get married soon. If you’re married, they’re worried you’ll get pregnant soon. If you have one child, they’re worried you’ll go for two. If you have two, they’re worried you’re preparing for three.” And if you have three? Well, companies basically never hire people over 35, who have three kids’ worth of an employment gap on their resume. With how rapidly things are moving forward in China, it’s guaranteed that none of your experience is going to be relevant anymore, and you’ll be due for retirement in just 20 years. Why hire you when there are plenty of fresh college grads who are up to date in the field and can work another 40 years?

It forces women into domestic roles. And government laws are designed to keep her prisoner there.

There are a lot of posts on weibo warning people against becoming housewives, because you’re handing over all of your agency. No one wants to live a life where every dollar they want to spend, they have to ask for it from someone else. I asked once why that is. Does China not have joint bank accounts? I know plenty of families with only one breadwinner in America, and the other spouse doesn’t have to ask for permission to buy a coke, because they share the same bank account and the same bank card. And I found out that yeah, that’s apparently not a fucking thing in China. Banks do not even offer this service. I have no idea why not, except to make it harder for housewives to leave.

Something else China doesn’t have? Daycares for babies. Or rather, they exist, but they’re so rare that you can’t depend on one being available at all. There’s not a single place you can send a kiddo less than three-years-old in my entire hometown of 700,000 people. And taking care of a kiddo under three is very much a full-time job. And with everyone on average working 70+ hours a week, the second you’ve left work as a full-time mom, you’ve automatically lost your main form of socialisation.

And even more than western society, China has high expectations of mothers. This was something that got built up during the one-child policy days, when you’d have a household of six adults (parents and grandparents on both sides) revolving around a single child. Now that that policy is gone, the ridiculously high standard of parenting stayed. Asking around parents in China, most people co-sleep with their child until middle school. Because quote, “What if he kicks off his blankets and get a cold?” My brother didn’t learn how to eat by himself until he was eight-years-goddamn-old. He was spoon fed, first by a nanny, then by my sister. Quote my grandma, “But when he eats by himself, he doesn’t eat nearly as much!” People are apparently horrified that I just let my kids drink normal bottled water, because they carefully keep a cup of water at exactly 37 degrees Celsius, and if it cools down even a little, they heat it up again.

And when you have an eight-year-old sleeping in your bed, how are you going to have sex? You’re not. So it’s not unsurprising at all then, that cheating is very much the norm for men. My own mom said that it’s no use getting upset about it—it’s inevitable. So long as no bastards come into her life, she’s not going to make a big fuss about it. It’s an extremely common way to bond as a workplace, to go out with all your coworkers and bosses to “””karaoke”””.

And when you’re sick and tired of doing all the work, getting no thanks, getting blamed for spending money all the time even though everything’s rising in price, and having your husband cheat on you? Well, what are you going to do?

There are people who have been abducted and trafficked into the mountains of China and kept chained as a slave for decades. And then, because they’re a badass, they actually manage to find an opportunity to escape. And when they sue for divorce on the grounds of, ”I was literally kidnapped. I literally never consented, hello?” Those applications for divorce are rejected because that is not sufficient proof of “irreconcilable differences”. What hope do you have as a housewife?

Even if you’re lucky enough that your husband has found a younger, fresher mistress he’d actively like to leave you for, without any clue as to how much he’s earning or where it is, chances are, you will leave with absolutely nothing except years wasted of your life.

In America, child custody is determined by the least amount of disturbance to their life. If they were previously being cared for mostly by the mother with daddy working full time, then chances are, the mother will have most of the custody, and dad will pay child support. And the child’s life will be more or less the same as before the divorce. In China, child custody is determined by who is the most able to care for the child. If they were previously being cared for mostly by the stay-at-home mother with no income, well, she has no money. She obviously can’t provide for the child at all. So chances are, custody is going to go towards the full-time employed father.

In America, if you’re awarded full custody, and the dad just comes and takes the kid anyways, that is kidnapping. You can literally call the police, and more likely than not they’ll actually do something about it. In China, if you’re awarded full custody, and the dad just comes and takes the kid anyways, there is nothing you can do about it. The cops are going to be like, “But that is his dad though.” And in a couple of months, the dad can sue for full custody in court on the grounds of, “Well, I’ve basically had full custody for the last few months anyways.” And he’ll win.

In America, if you don’t pay child support, not only can courts just take it out of your bank account by force or garnish your wages, you could potentially even go to jail. In China, absolutely nothing will happen. In the support groups I’ve seen of single mothers, I cannot find even a single story where anyone has gotten consistent child support pay.

Child support pay is also very, very, very low in China. It’s not based on an actual percentage of the dad’s income. It’s based on the legal minimum necessary to keep a child alive. In general, it’s something like 200-300 RMB a month. In a country for a single can of formula goes for 225 RMB, you can figure for yourself how far that goes.

So women in abusive households, women with husbands that bring home all kinds of STDs, women with husbands mounting millions of dollars worth of gambling debts? They all have no way out. A single mother simply cannot survive in China’s environment. A father can dump his kid with his mother—it’s her societal duty to watch his kids. A single mother probably has a brother, and her mom will be busy watching his child.

It’s not surprising then, that there are so many abusive relationships in China. I don’t know the exact statistics, because even when abuse victims get brave enough to call the cops (which is already rare enough), the cops themselves will spend hours persuading her why she shouldn’t file charges.

For one, if she files charges and the man gets convicted, it’ll be her children that gets barred from having government jobs for the next three generations. Because their dad is a criminal. For another, she still won’t be able to get a divorce anyways, and he’s not going to get life for domestic violence. If you think he’s beating you now, what’s he going to do to you once he gets out of jail?

After all, too many people beat their wives—Chinese society would probably entirely collapse if they all went to jail. And the government has a vested interest in keeping exactly these people tied down with a family and a vague, ephemeral hope for the future, instead of making them an ex-con with nothing to lose.

Let’s talk about inheritance too.

Although the law is that daughter have just as much of a right as sons to inherit property, it’s still nonetheless true that, at least for middle class families, almost all of the time, all of the parents’ estate are going to go towards their son. Part of this is simply out of a practical consideration that men must absolutely have a house in order to get married. Women don’t. So if you’re the sort of standard middle class family with only one house, who are you going to leave it to? But the reason men must absolutely have a house in order to get married is because most women don’t have a house, and can’t count on their family’s support to get a house. And to have children, a house is somewhat necessary. Theoretically, this loop can be broken if, as a society, people start preparing houses for their daughters, and then men can marry in. In reality, that’s the sort of collective action problem that’ll probably never happen.

In fact, a commonly cited reason for wanting girls in China is because, “I don’t have to worry about a house for them, so I can take life easier, at a slower pace, not put so much stress on myself.”

And the law can emphasise daughter’s right all it wants, it can’t really tell people who they must leave their estate to. While growing up too, most of the educational resources and support are going to be invested in boys, because they’ve got a higher chance of making it to university, and a higher chance of being hired. If you can only afford one of your children to go to uni, is it going to be your son or your daughter, when chances are, your daughter will end up getting dragged into being a housewife at the end of the day anyways?

All of this forms a mire for women that’s worsening as the one child policy opens up. Now parents have more than one race horse to bet on. So the moment you’re born, less effort is put in your education, less preparation is made for your future, because you’ll probably just marry off and raise children full time anyways. Your parents work hard and save up in order to invest all of their money into their son, who needs assets like houses and cars and a city hukou in order to have a hope of having a spouse at all. They need to be around to watch his children, or else he’ll never find anyone willing to have children with him. And they’ll probably leave all of their estate to him, so he perhaps has the financial freedom to try for two.

But when they’re old and sick and need someone to take care of them full time, who are they going to ask? Their professionally successful son who’s got a job that pays decently and requires that he work 70+ hours a week? Or their daughter who’s a full-time housewife anyways, who’s children are grown up enough that they don’t need round the clock care, who doesn’t seen to have much going on with her life anyways? And so you’re saddled with caring for a sick, paralysed old person full time, probably paying half of the medical costs anyways, and still end up with nothing.

And the worst part is, this isn’t necessarily even because your parents don’t love you as a daughter. They’re simply doing what makes economical, practical sense.

I’m not saying that there aren’t just…genuinely evil sexist people in China. But I do think that most people are normal people. Their values and ideas are shaped by the society they’re born in. Their actions are normally affected by their society’s incentives. And China is a society that strongly incentivises you to not invest a single dollar in your daughter, and try to squeeze as much free labour out of her as you can. Because again, if women can have their own jobs and own their own houses, what are the chances they simply won’t get married if all the available left over men are deeply unpalatable?

It might be a little unbelievable to you, that a country can just sacrifice half its population to stabilise the other half. But I’ll remind you that sacrificing half the population to boost the other half is literally the entire strategy that China is built on. It is the source of that massive income gap. It is keeping a sufficiently large number of people poor enough to accept terrible, cheap sweat shop conditions that China is able to massively expand its manufacturing industry and outcompete everyone else on price. It’s on the back of the profits of that manufacturing industry that it’s been able to invest into everything else, from technology to real estate.

China doesn’t pass laws or enforce laws to protect women for the same reason they don’t pass or enforce laws to protect sweat shop workers. China is competitive on the international stage precisely because it is willing to look the other way while you make a sweat shop of people work unpaid overtime 80 hours a week while you pay them a quarter of minimum wage and don’t give health insurance or retirement benefits. China is competitive on the international stage because it’s willing to look the other way while you dump industrial waste right into the ocean.

And China needs to compete. It’s suffered for a century because it didn’t industrialise and didn’t catch up to the west. Because China was weak, it could do absolutely nothing when America gave immunity to all the perpetrators of Unit 731. Because China was weak, its priceless historical artefacts are still on display in The British Museum. Because China was weak, it lost swathes of territory that it’s held for millennia and now might never gain back.

The humiliation and pain of the end of the Qing government, of the Eight Nation Alliance, of the opium war, of WWI, of WWII are still engraved deep in the bones of China. I entirely understand why China does not feel like it can afford to slow down. Why China feels like it is surrounded by wolves on all sides, and the only way to fend them off is to keep growing as fast as it possibly can.

And when a society grows too fast, problems are inevitably going to arise.

That’s the most painful part of Chinese sexism. Is that when you look at the bigger picture, you find that nobody is at fault, really. It’s caused by the government—but they would say that that’s the only way to keep up China’s rate of growth. And if China slows down, if China weakens, there are plenty of people just waiting to take a bite in the wings. Employers aren’t at fault—only very few businessmen are actually heartless billionaires just trying to squeeze one more buck out of the hands of the middle class. Most businesses are small scale private operations which just can’t afford to pay someone for three years straight when they never show up to work. It’s not parents’ fault—they’re just trying to be provide the same chance to succeed in life to all of their kids.

I wish I could give you a happy ending, to say that oh yeah, China is sexist because of just one idiot over here, and if we make this one simple fix, it’ll all go away. But it really seems like every person involved has a good reason to be doing what they’re doing, and it’s women who end up holding the short end of the stick.

I guess, the only hope I can offer is that, well, if China ever got to the top of the world one day, so incredibly strong and prosperous that no other nation could possibly be a threat. Maybe then, they’ll feel enough of a sense of security to decide they no longer need to hold up the economy with human sacrifices?