Urbanizing Woman and Her Sisters: The Ethics of Gender in Chinese Television Dramas
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Theatre Research International Vol. 24 No. 3 pp. 268-275
Urbanizing Woman and Her Sisters:
The Ethics of Gender in Chinese
Television Dramas
HAIPING YAN
In the autumn of 1997 the World Bank issued social category and material presence of human
'China 2020', a seven-volume report on the key lives who constitute half the world's popula-
issues and challenges that 'China must face over tion—holds no serious attention in this compre-
the next two decades'.1 The opening passage hensive mapping of the changing landscape of
reads: Chinese culture and society, then, is a question
in the light of which the World Bank's design for
China is in the throes of two transitions: from a China's 'further modernization' appears pecu-
command economy to a market-based one and liarly limited. Such a limited design of modern-
from a rural, agricultural society to an urban,
industrial one. So far, both transitions have been
ity, aggressively permeating the discourses of
spectacularly successful. China is the fastest grow- the Chinese public culture over the past two
ing economy in the world, with per capita incomes decades, has been constantly troubled by the
more than quadrupling since 1978, achieving in limit-challenging performances of Chinese
two generations what took other countries centu- women, both in their daily lives and their
ries.2 much contested cultural representations. The
performative narrations by and/or about
After this epochal defining passage about women in a process of being structurally 're-
'achievements', though, the narrative takes a formed' are critical sites for tracing various
sharp turn and presents a long list of 'chal- entanglements of contradictory desires, move-
lenges': employment insecurity, growing ments of women's conflicting experiences, and
inequality, stubborn poverty, rising costs of competing forms of a nation caught in the
food self-sufficiency, mounting environmental throes of modernizing drives of a global propor-
pressures, and periods of macro-economic tion. In this analysis of several Chinese televi-
instability. China must meet these challenges sion dramas popular in the 1990s, I intend to
to sustain its development by furthering reforms delineate aspects of such conflicting experi-
in three related areas: 'the spread of market ences, contradictory desires, and competing
forces must be encouraged; the government forms, as well as their significations.
must begin serving markets; and integration
with the world economy must be deepened'.3
The 1997 World Bank report maps out the fluid
conditions of contemporary China with a blue-
print for its reconfiguration in the twenty-first I. Rural women in urbanization: the
century. gender of a modernizing ethics
Among the issues that remain outside the One of the major features that many of the
focus of this blueprint for a future China is, popular television dramas of the 1990s have
most conspicuously, 'the Woman Question'. shared is a narrative that moves across multiple
How could it be that 'the woman'—as a vital locations of human geography with unprece-
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300019131Urbanizing Woman and Her Sisters 269
dented scope, recasting the established bound- ticularly, the rural women. This is a social
aries between the urban and rural, the metropolis validation that designates a formative ethical
and the provinces, the national and the inter- system which is emerging in the public dis-
national, while sustaining such a multidimen- courses in China.
sional mobility with certain unifying ethical Such a system of ethics is spatialized by a
impulses. Braving Shanghai, a seventeen-epi- dramatic display of a variety of human lives
sode television drama written by two play- across the boundaries between the urban and
wrights, Zhang Xian and Fu Xin, brings such a the rural. Often privileging the rural as a site of
multidimensional spatiality with a unifying material scarcity but ethical imagination in rela-
ethic into a visually colourful dramatization.4 tion to the urban affluence, the boundary-cross-
The story is simple: as the Chinese reform, ing multiplicity of the space and its meanings
which began in the late 1970s, develops into the enacted in this drama conveys in effect a simple
1990s, young and middle-aged men and women proposition: a desirable urbanization should be
from the rural areas are flooding into large urban combined with an ethical system which shapes
centres such as Shanghai, searching for ways of and sustains mutually beneficial partnerships
improving their standards of living. Such an rather than contradictions between the urban
'urbanization' is invested with an explicit hope and the rural, the metropolitan and the provin-
for individual betterment, the process of which, cial, the developed and the developing, capital
as dramatized, presents opportunities for brave, and labour, and male and female. A recent review
talented, and hard-working men and women of this drama series that calls for a social cam-
from the rural areas to cross various established paign to 'learn from those hard- working rural
boundaries (economic, legal, and psycho-cul- people in Shanghai who have contributed so
tural), and become successful business owners much to the city' is another narrative instance
in the metropolis. of such ethical formation and articulation.5
Embodying such an ideal of entrepreneurship, In some ways, this ethic of harmonious com-
the leading character, Mr He Wenchang, goes petition and human unity appears to be another
through a long struggle and succeeds in estab- version of traditional Confucian values about
lishing his prosperous company. Paralleling this good and evil, right and wrong, in 'human rela-
business struggle is his emotional battle to win tions', through which China's dynastic cultural
a beautiful rural woman, Xiaowan, from her history and its moral teachings find possible
privileged but class-biased and male-chauvinist reincarnations. It appears to be a persisting
urban lover. As Mr He is shown to be honest and impulse of the value-system of 'New China'
fair with others when he achieves economic that insists upon the dependency of individual
success and, more importantly, plans to extend interests on the collective well-being, through
his business to his home-village, an abandoned which China's twentieth-century history of so-
and emotionally traumatized Xiaowan recog- cialist movements and their moral teachings
nizes his genuine love for her, leaves her urban reinvent themselves.6 In the eyes of an audience
lover, and accepts his offer to join him in whose lives have become increasingly market-
developing their rural home-villages with their defined and market-driven, however, such a
hard-earned urban capital. Mr He's success in system of ethics appears peculiarly idealistic, if
transplanting himself into urban centres and not manipulatively delusive. When the eco-
joining the rank of metropolitan capital owners nomic gaps between the 'haves' and 'have-nots'
is hence validated not only through his business in Chinese society are widening, when materi-
achievement but also thanks to his emotional alist drives begin to dominate the social en-
victory in his competition with the privileged vironment and deconstruct its human fabric,
urbanites. Such an emotional validation, signif- and conflicts between the workers and their
ied through his relationship with Xiaowan, managers are taking place everywhere, Mr He
turns Mr He's economic enterprise of individual and Xiaowan, capable of simultaneously win-
empowerment into a social and symbolic enter- ning the business battles with human dignity,
prise for collective urbanization which promises realizing their personal happiness with roman-
happiness to the underprivileged including, par- tic love, and transcending the profit-centred
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logic of the market with ethical standards, temporary China, however, is the gendered fea-
appear alluringly sublime and desperately desir- tures of such coding: the mode of its formation
able.7 and expression is constituted with gendered
The key element that makes this story emo- imageries and their embodied materiality. As
tionally effective is the resonance that Xiaowan those gender-specific imageries are rendered
stirs in the public sentiments. Caught in a into signifiers for modernist ideology, their irre-
traumatic process of being urbanized while ducible materiality doubles such rendering with
maintaining her innocence, diligence, and love, possibilities of differential signification.
Xiaowan defines the ethical system dramatized Intended to be a trope for transcendental
in the series with a gender-specific textuality. human unity in a conflict-ridden process oi
As a figure of the rural woman, she is evoked as urbanizing, Xiaowan's signifying function has
an embodiment of desires and measurements for to be enacted with her material embodiment
urbanization where the journey of Braving whose specific economic, social, cultural, and
Shanghai gains its moving and motivating historical content cannot simply be exhausted
forces and its symbolic legitimation. Compared by her intended abstract function, but, in effect,
to earlier images of women in Chinese perform- constantly works through it. The figure of the
ing arts, such a figure and its signification rural women, while serving as a tropological
designates several structural shifts in the cat- ideology of modernist drives, also carries a
egorizations of 'women' in contemporary material existence into her assigned discursive
Chinese context: first, it is a site where the function and renders herself into a gendered
Marxist principles that defined 'women' into troping of particular complexity.
economic classes are displaced into categories One may argue that such a gendered troping of
that emphasize their gendered identity in their a Third-World nation desiring for a unity with
structural relocation from the rural to the urban. itself (which is masculine in its impulse) and
Second, such gendered relocation is shown to be with the world at large (which is patriarchal in
inflected with the emotional tensions between its structure) through modernizing motions
the rural and the urban, replacing the class empties the form and content of women's strug-
alliance much advocated in pre-reform era gles for empowerment and liberation.8 Much
between women workers and peasant women scholarly writing on constructions of women
in a 'socialist state'. Third, registering and har- in contemporary China have articulated as
monizing conflictual social forces through its much. 9 However, such a gendered troping of a
representational function, such a figure of the much desired ethics is much more than a dis-
rural women in urbanization provides gender- cursive variant of the all-powerful 'masculine'
specific explanations, legitimations, and subli- and 'patriarchal' ideology, and it registers one of
mations of the conflict-ridden modernizing the compelling conditions of modern Chinese
activities in contemporary China. It is she who society created by the Chinese women's revolu-
ultimately resolves the urban-rural tensions by tion of the twentieth century and its political,
validating the underprivileged rural people who sociocultural, and institutional legacy.
build their urban lives with true human love Reflected in the author's careful choice to
and hard-working ethics. She embodies the locate an explanatory, legitimizing, and subli-
ethics of material urbanization. mating ethics in figures of women and in the
Such figures of ethics that can conjure up a economically most vulnerable sector of women,
transcendental unity among conflictual social is the relentlessly observing gaze of Chinese
activities, one may argue, registers nothing very women with their century-long history of lit-
new in modern history: it is a literary image or erary movements and social revolutions for
narrative trope of the desires shared by many gender equality, participatory citizenship, eco-
cultural critics throughout the history of nomic democracy, and cultural emancipation.10
modernity for an ethical coding to explain, The fact that figures of women are most often
regulate, alleviate, or legitimate the human evoked in contemporary Chinese performing
'throes' of modernization—a form of modernist culture as signifying processes in which
ideology. What is specific in the case of con- modernist conflicts between the rural and the
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300019131Urbanizing Woman and Her Sisters 271
urban, capital and labour, male and female are ings. Its heavily invested presence in the cultural
somehow transcended, testifies dialectically to currencies of a country that has seventy per cent
contemporary Chinese women's ineradicable of its population in the rural areas even though
presence in China's modernizing motions and urban industrial production constitutes seventy
their effect, however mediated, on the changing per cent of its national economic output, indic-
relations of forces in such motions. ates its function to express boundary-crossing
In Braving Shanghai's consciously invested desires and struggles for women-friendly urban-
'women-friendly' rhetoric of modernity, one ization as much as its power to delimit the
sees how cultural explanations of the reform differential contents of such desires and strug-
and its redefinition of social relations cannot gles. The limiting effect of such a delimitation
skirt but are constantly checked upon by 'the can be partially seen in the fact that women who
Woman Question'. The historicity and materi- have acquired higher education, aspiring women
ality of this large question is one of the key professionals and women managers have fea-
forces that drive much of the present formations tured in a larger percentage of the television
of a unifying ethics in China, and fundamentally repertoire with great appeal to the public. l x
conditions all the anxious searches for such In the light of such a privileged display of
ethics that saturate the public discourses of upwardly mobile 'urban' women, another influ-
this rapidly changing country. Any legitimizing ential television drama produced in Shanghai
system of ethics, to put it simply, has to gain its and broadcast nationwide in 1996 deserves crit-
own legitimation granted through the material ical attention. Written by Bai Zhi, this eight-
and symbolic measurements of 'women's happi- episode television drama entitled Sisters is
ness'. The gendered ethical coding that Braving about redundant women workers in Shanghai.
Shanghai enacts for contemporary Chinese As has long been the case, the public and state-
capitalism and capitalist subjectivity in the owned factories in China have been struggling
making can also be read as their socially condi- with their internal organizational problems as
tioned and discursively intrinsic critiques. The much as their external structural disadvantages
project of modernizing can be great news for since the mid-1980s.12 Burdened by their his-
China only if it is defined and sustained by a torically developed structural ineffectiveness,
women-friendly value system, only if it offers pressured by mounting competition from pri-
rural women economic and emotional oppor- vate enterprises encouraged by the state policies
tunities to urban happiness. One may identify since the mid-80s, and pushed by the systemic
such an urban-aspiring female figure of ethics as arrival of transnational capital in China since
a form of modernist ideology, or one may view it 1993, those public and state-owned factories
as the 'utopian impulse' that critics like Fredric reached crisis point in 1996. According to offi-
Jameson take as their point of engagement with cial records, currently there are twelve million
the dialectic logic of cultural production in workers who have lost their jobs as their fac-
modern capitalism. One may also recognize— tories go bankrupt, and sixty-five per cent of
in and through its gender, class, and location-in- them are women. This downward process affect-
transition specific complex—the material con- ing urban working women and men shows no
ditions created and lived by Chinese women sign of subsiding. Based on the experience of
that both engage and contest such modernist women workers from Shanghai Number Two
ideology, and that both historicize and sub- Silk Textile Factory during such a process of
stantiate such Utopian impulses. losing their factory, their jobs, and their indi-
vidual and collective identity, Sisters shows
how the factory team leaders reorganize the
women workers and themselves in fighting for
II. 'Urban[izing] Woman' and her others: alternative ways of re-making their lives and
the ethics of gender projects their identities under rapidly changing social
and economic conditions.
'Urban[izing] woman' with her embodied ethics,
therefore, designates a multidimensional project The complexity of such a reorganization is
in contemporary China that refuses linear read- dramatized mainly through the struggles of
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three women team leaders. In the opening also appear to be regulatory processes in which
scene, Dingke, the party secretary, and Guan the workers in need of 'help' are coached by
Linlin and Xu Hong, two leading members of their 'helpers' into accepting the loss of their
the administration of the factory, are con- state-guaranteed benefits, their new temporary
fronted by a group of deeply distressed workers status, and discrimination. As an essay on the
who have just learnt that the factory is to be drama series sharply puts it: 'Working so hard to
closed. Being rendered jobless like all other re-educate their old-fashioned, laid off workers,
workers, these women team leaders announce Dingke and her colleagues have produced the
with tears in their eyes that they will not best and cheapest and most respectful employ-
abandon their responsibilities for 'the working ees for the Chinese16and foreign employers of
unit until everyone from modern enterprises.' Such a critique gains its
this unit is relocated
into a new position'.14 While workers and their particular historical weight when one considers
families continue to view Ding, Guan, and Xu the fact that, as millions of rural women and
as their team leaders and the municipal govern- men flood into urban centres since the mid-80s,
ment recognizes that they are still important a large proportion of the Chinese industrial
voices thanks to their long established institu- working class across the country has been
tional influence and their popular support, gradually replaced by this massive army of
these women have in effect turned into indi- migrant labour that takes up jobs with neither
viduals who must improvise during this pro- historical memories nor institutional claims of
cess of social transformation and act upon their urban workers, who had enjoyed state-guaran-
own chosen values. As they continue to per- teed benefits such as medical care, housing,
form their 'duties' without their previous insti-education, and job security. In the largely
tutional status, they find themselves making hidden but structurally significant relations
strenuous efforts in reshaping the bonds between women like Xiaowan in Braving
between women workers beyond the estab- Shanghai and women workers in Sisters lies
lished but now receding social networks, con- one of the most complex and challenging
testing the public discourses of the reform with issues for the contemporary Chinese social,
critical awareness about their effects on work- political, and ethical theories.
ing women, and struggling to negotiate with an The ambivalence and contradictions in the
owner's economic environment on behalf of ethical consciousness and actions of these
the laid off workers. Insisting on the public women team leaders in Sisters testify to the
rhetorics of a government that still pledges its double feature of their ethical impulses that
allegiance to workers' and women's interests, may be defined as both problematic and signific-
they enact essentially a drama of individual ant. While their problematic dimensions gener-
ethics that takes the values of 'mutual help' ate critiques, their significance invites further
among members of a society as the organizing historically informed analyses. As students and
principle of human economic and social rela- scholars of the Chinese women's movement in
tions. 'Without such mutual help and what it the twentieth century know, the term 'sisters'
means', the author of the drama asserts, 'our [xiao jiemei) evokes, in the Chinese sociocul-
reform will lose its initial vision and final 15
goal,
tural memory, one of the organizing forms that
namely, the happiness of all our citizens.' the radical women in the 1920s and the 1930s
Such an ethics embodied by individual used to improve the working conditions of
actions, as the drama series shows, is consti- women workers in Japanese and British owned
tuted with profound historical ambivalence. textile factories in Shanghai; the rituals of the
While sharing the structural displacements of 'sworn-sisters' among co-workers were very
other workers, the team leaders appear to serve powerful in those organized protesting,
17
negotiat-
the displaced working women as much as the ing, and contesting activities. A translation of
forces that displace them. Their efforts to help such a vital organizing form in the Chinese
the laid off workers, while being made with women's revolution into a post-revolutionary
time and energy that could have been spent on China, the conceptual and social resonance
pursuing their own interests and opportunities, and importance of the 'sisters' can hardly be
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300019131Urbanizing Woman and Her Sisters 273
jveremphasized, so are the structural differ- political cliche' of the Chinese revolution,
ences between the 'sisters' of the 1930s and of uttered by a woman who has been structurally
:he 1990s. The former consciously stood as the 'reformed' from a leading member of a state-
appositional forces to the governing body pol- owned factory into one of the twelve million
tic, while the latter have considerable—albeit unemployed workers, articulates in effect ex-
ncreasingly diminished—presence in the insti- tremely complex needs for women to reconsti-
:utional traditions and public discourses that, tute and reorganize themselves at every level of
snce sufficiently mobilized, could grant or deny their lives, designates certain new historical
:he legitimacy of new or old government pol- imperatives for literary writings and social
Lcies. Such a presence is much evidenced in praxis by and for Chinese working women in
numerous writings on women's lives published their century-long history of struggle for inde-
in various journals and newspapers;18 it is cer- pendence, equality, and emancipation. Guan's
tainly evidenced in the anxious efforts currently articulation of such needs and imperatives,
made by the Chinese reform policy makers to moreover, conveys a firm conviction which, in
mobilize the entire society to create job oppor- its core, is feminist and ethical: the compelling
tunities for the laid off workers', 19 asserting principles of any human organization and the
repeatedly that the equality between women normative rules of any human conduct, Guan is
and men is a fundamental policy of the Chinese asserting, will be measured by their effects on
state.20 the lives of the working women. It is upon the
It is in the light of this increasingly eclipsed massive lives of working women that any social
and yet persisting collective presence that the ruling depends for its political and cultural
enactment of the individual ethics in Sisters, legitimation. The figure of the 'upwardly
ambivalent and contradictory, could be further mobile urban woman' that Dingke's husband
understood. It is in the light of the historical expects his wife to turn into is fundamentally
materiality and significance of such presence flawed if it requires Dingke to abandon her
that a remark by Guan Linlin deserves careful historically developed and personally upheld
attention. In episode five, Dingke's husband, ethics that insists upon the mutually constitu-
the star Chief Executive Officer of a joint- tive connections between the advancement of
venture corporation, threatens to leave her the individuals and the well-being of all citi-
because she insists upon staying with her zens. The current social and discursive con-
former fellow-workers to fight their way into structions of the 'Urban Woman' ideal, Guan
a market that has displaced and disqualified maintains, are deeply unethical if they margin-
them, rather than leaving her fellow-workers alize the many and privilege the few. The much
and accepting a well-paid job in another joint- invested upwardly mobile 'Urban Woman' is
venture company arranged by him. Upon learn- hereby questioned and contested by her socially
ing of this crisis between Dingke and her hus- produced, individually lived, and ethically
band, Guan walks into the man's elaborately articulated Others. Rather than taking the
decorated headquarters, forces him out of his figure of the urbanizing female as the privileged
office, and announces that, on behalf of all the site for ethical resources as Braving Shanghai
workers, she wants to let him know that his does, Sisters registers the problematic dis-
decision to leave Dingke is wrong and he courses of the upwardly mobile 'Urban (and
should reconsider such a 'wrong decision'. urbanizing) Woman' and the presence of her
When the angry husband dismisses her by Others. As the former takes the female
saying that 'your factory is no longer there, gender—with a specific class and a specific
how can you still have team leaders "on historical location in structural transforma-
behalf of" anything?' Guan answers: 'Where tion—as a site for generating a much desired
the working women are, where our organizing ethics of Chinese modernity, the latter shows
team is and always will be. This has been the the multiple forces at work in Chinese society
tradition of our revolution. You, more than that constitute the ethical contentions in the
anyone else, certainly understand this?' 21 process of 'reforming' the female gender and
reorganizing the relations of forces within and
This seemingly simple reiteration of an 'old
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around the Woman Question. The forms and 11. The highest rated drama broadcast by the Chinese
contents of the 'Urban[izing] Woman' and her Central Television Station in the first three months of 1998
for instance, was an eight-episode series entitled Womei
Others in transitional contentions dramatized Bankers. See 'Listing of Ratings on CCTV programs', Tele
in Braving Shanghai and Sisters, as in many vision Studies (Beijing: the Chinese Central Televisior
other cases in contemporary Chinese perform- Station), April 1998, p. 64.
ing culture, intimates an unfolding chapter of 12. For some empirically informative and analytically
the gender politics and women's struggles in sustained discussions on this topic, see, for instance, Maur
ice Meisner, Deng Xiaoping Era (New York: Hall & Wanj
Chinese history. The profound complexity and Publishers, 1997).
creativity of this new and yet-to-be explored 13. Liu Yida, 'Looking into the "Lay-off" Situation'
chapter, one would believe, can neither be Beijing Evening News, 21 February 1998, p. 4.
ignored nor erased by any human projects— 14. Bai Zhi, Sisters, produced by Shanghai Yongle Tele
planned by the World Bank or any other power vision and Film Cooperation, broadcast in 1996.
institutions—that intend to shape and reshape 15. From an interview with Bai Zhi, Shanghai, Decembei
12, 1997.
the human landscape of the modern world.22 16. Liu Qinli, 'Why Must They Help You?', Jingji cankac
wenzhai (China Economic Reference), 26 April 1998.
17. Emily Honig's Sisters and Strangers: Women in the
Notes Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 (Stanford University
1. The World Bank, China 2020 (Washington: World Press, 1986) offers valuable information and insights or
Bank Publications, 1997]. this subject. Also see Bobby Sui, Women of China
2. Ibid. (London: Zed Press, 1982), particularly pp. 151-171.
3. Ibid. 18. There are numerous women's magazines presently
4. Zhang Xian & Fu Xin, Chuang Shanghai (Braving circulating in China with substantial readerships. Niizi
Shanghai], produced by Shanghai Television and Film Cor- yuekan (Women's Monthly) by Beijing Women's Federation,
poration, broadcast in November 1998. Niizi (Ms.) by Tianjing Women's Federation, Xiandai jiating
5. 'Shanghairen, nuli!' ('Shanghainese, Make Efforts!'), (Modern Family) by Shanghai Women's Federation, Niibac
Jiefang ribao (The Liberation Daily), Shanghai, 29 November (Women's Report) by Shenzhen Women's Federation, Niizi
1998. shijie (Women's World) and Funu shenhuo (Women's Lives|
6. The scholarly discussion of neo-Confucianism has by the Provincial Women's Federations in Hebei and Henan,
been one of the major cultural features of contemporary Niiyou (Women Friends) by Harebin Publishing House,
China particularly since the late 1980s. Li Zehou, the Zhongwai funu wenzhai (Chinese and Foreign Women's
leading philosopher during the reform era, has recently Digest) by the Women and Children Publishing House in
published New Interpretations of Confucius (Hong Kong: Neimengu, Nu'xing wenxue (Women's Literature) by Gaikan
Tiandi Tushu Publishing House, 1998), indicating the im- Publishing in Hebei, and Funu yanjiu (Women's Studies) by
portant degree of the differential efforts made in such a Beijing Women's Centre for Critical Theories, are among the
rediscovery of Confucius and his moral philosophy in China. most noted. Zhongguo fuyun (Chinese Women's Movement]
by All China Women's Federation, while consciously
7. In the city of Chendu of Sichuan Province, for
remaining in lines with the changing rhetorics of the chan-
instance, within the first ten days after the Chinese spring
ging policy-makers during the reform era, communicates
festival of 1994, there were seven incidents of workers'
significant information on women's individual and collect-
unrest caused by a management decision to prolong working
ive activities, struggles, and movements that are much more
hours and intensify their workload. See 'The Voice of
complex than the official rhetoric of the reform—contested
Women Workers', Chinese Women's Movement (Beijing:
and full of contradictions in itself—could contain.
All China Women's Federation!, April 1997, p. 31.
8. In the established discourses of 'three-world' theories, 19. See, for instance, Wenhui bao (Wenhui Daily), Shang-
China has often been defined as a member of the 'Second hai, January-June, 1998; Beijing ribao (Beijing Daily), Janu-
World'. I, however, respect the many scholars who place ary-June, 1998; Zhejiang ribao (Zhejiang Daily), January-
China among 'Third-World' nations in that it has shared June 1998.
much of the historical struggles of the 'Third-World' nations 20. For instance, the concerted actions taken in May 1997
in modern world history. by all provincial governors and other leading officials to
9. See, for instance, Tani Barlow, 'Theorizing Woman: publish their positional papers on the 'Woman Question',
Funu, Guojia, Jiating', in Angela Zito & Tani Barlow, eds., asserting that they all take the principle of gender equality as
Body, Subject, &) Power in China (Chicago: University of one of their guiding policies in administration, and they all
Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 253-89. believe that women's social, economic, and cultural eman-
10. See Elizabeth Crol, Feminism and Socialism in China cipation is an intrinsic part of China's modernization. See
(New York: Schocken Books, 1978), Bobby Sui, Women of The Special Issue on Enforcing the State Policy on the
China: Imperialism and Women's Resistance 1900-1949 Equality Between Men and Women, Chinese Women's
(London: Zed Press, 1982), and Chritina Gilmartin, Engen- Movement (Beijing, May 1997), pp. 2-25.
dering the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of 21. Bai Zhi, Sisters, typed manuscript, Book Two, p. 12.
California Press, 1995). 22. The ground for such a belief can be partially seen in
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the current debates about the crisis in global finance among December 1998). Triggered by the Asian economic crisis,
the World Bank (led by its chief economist, Joseph Stiglitz), such debates indicate a growing awareness across the world
the International Monetary Fund (led by its Managing about the structural problematics of what Fredric Jameson
Director, Michel Camdessus and the Asia-Pacific Director, calls 'late capitalism' of which the Woman Question has
Hubert Neiss), and the US Treasury (see, for instance, reports been a vital indicator,
in the New York Times and The Financial Times on 3
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883300019131You can also read
