Lecture 8: Gender and Communism in Maoist China

Confucianism

Kong Fuzi (Confucius) 551–478 BC

• How to be an ideal man

• Humanistic

• Relationships were strongly hierarchical

• The 5 Bonds of Relationship:1. Ruler – Ruled2. Father – Son3. Elder brother – Younger Brother4. Husband – Wife5. Friend – Friend

• In family, woman subordinate to father, then husband, then son.• Strong age hierarchies• Chinese family was patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal

Foot-binding• Upper and middle classes (only occasionally

peasant girls)• “Three inch golden lotus”• Necessary to make a good marriage• Highly eroticised• Several governments attempted to ban (late

Qing, Nationalists, and Communists)Comparison between an unbound and bound foot

A pair of shoes for bound feet

The bandages can never be removed or the foot begins to revert to its natural shape

The bones in the four small toes were broken and forced underneath the foot over a period of time

Girls in the late Qing Dynasty

Chastity arch in Zhejiang province erected to honour a guafu (chaste widow)

Gender and the Communist Revolution

• Qing Dynasty overthrown in 1911 by Guomindang (Nationalists) led by Dr Sun Yat-sen. Founded the Republic of China 1912.

• Followed by decades of warlordism as Nationlists struggled to keep control.

• On-off civil war between Nationalists and Communists 1927-1950.

• The Communists, led by Mao Zedong, took control of mainland China founded the People’s Republic of China 1949.

Early Communists during the May Fourth Movement (1915-1921) writing on ‘woman question’:

• Criticised Confucian morality code• Criticism of treatment of daughters and wives• Marriage is analogous to prostitution (Engels)• Need educated and economically

independent women• Modernisation dependent on improving

women’s lives

1920s-1940s:• Communist focus turned from workers’

revolution to peasant revolution• Implementation of guerrilla tactics against the

Guomindang• Change of policy - several initiatives shut

down• Women’s movement denounced as counter-

revolutionary and bourgeois

1st October 1949Chairman Mao declaring the People’s Republic of China

Mao Zedong (1893-1976)addressing the crowd

After the Communists Came to Power

• 1950 Marriage Law (“Divorce Law”)– Women could seek divorce– Prohibited polygamy, concubinage, and child

betrothal

• 1950 Land Reform Law– Eliminated landlord class– Land redistributed– Women had right to land

“The life of the peasants is good after Land Reform”, 1951

The First Five Year Plan 1953-57• Peasants encourages to form/join agricultural

collectives• Hukou (household registration system)

introduced in 1956• Attempts to enhance status and education of

rural women• Welfare state created for urban workers• Banishing of religious institutions, replaced with

political meetings and propaganda sessions

The Great Leap Forward 1958-61

• Political and economic campaign• Rapid development of agricultural and

industrial sectors should take place in parallel• Private ownership abolished• Peasants forced to join communes• Followed by a lengthy famine (CCP state 15

million died; scholars believe 20 to 45 million)

The People’s communes are good, 1958 (The Great Leap Forward)

Tractor girls – symbol of women’s equality and Chinese modernity

“When the dining hall is well-run, the production spirit will increase”, 1959

Conference poster for 50th anniversary of Great Chinese Famine. The famine ran parallel to the Great Leap Forward (1959-1961)

The Cultural Revolution 1965-76• Mao’s violent solution to tackle existing feudal and

patriarchal ideology• Creation of the Red Guards to punish bourgeois party

members and citizens (“struggle sessions”)• “Women hold up half the sky”• Mass destruction of cultural and religious artefacts,

bourgeois and foreign literature, paintings, and old buildings

• “Down to the countryside” movement• No formal education for a decade

Red Guards holding Mao’s Little Red Book

The 1964 revolutionary ballet Red Detachment of Women

Struggle sessions

“Educated youths must go down to the countryside to receive education from the poor and lower-middle

class peasants” 1969

“Hold high the great red banner of Mao Zedong Thought--thoroughly smash the rotting counter-revolutionary revisionist line in literature and art”. 1967