The CCP came to power with a reformist programme that promised much. Fairbank described the situation: “After 1949 public sentiment in the cities was one of euphoria, … Here was a conquering army which was strictly self-disciplined, polite and helpful, at the opposite pole from the looting and raping of warlord troops and departing Nationalists.” Women’s liberation is a good example of progress made under the regime and the limits imposed. The new marriage law made wives equal to husbands: “All marriages are to be based on the free consent of men and women.” It was a new day for women, divorce which had been all but impossible under the old regime was now available. Polygamy, the sale of women into prostitution, and the killing of female babies were all banned with severe punishment for those who broke these laws.[35] The liberation of more than 200 million Chinese women from the yoke of feudal custom represented an historical 1,000 year jump in the course of a single year.
On 18 February 1946, Liberation Daily had opened a discussion to prepare for the launch of a revised Party policy for women. Given the difficulties of holding such a wide-ranging discussion with the poor communications that existed within Communist-controlled areas (telephones were almost unknown, it took a day to travel twenty miles and a letter carried by the Post Office Bureau could take a month to travel a couple of hundred miles)[36], it is little short of a farce that two weeks later on 3 March 1946, the Liberation Daily could conclude the discussion and list eighteen points that had been agreed. These were codified in an editorial in the Liberation Daily of 8 March 1946; not surprisingly it was reported that women supported CCP policy that the demands of the peasants be limited to reducing rents and interest rates but not land seizures. Nor is it surprising that equal rights for women came well down the list, the top demands called for “a peaceful solution to China’s post-war problems” and committed women to working with other groups to solve them.[37] Women, it appeared, fully endorsed Party policy.
The Party next launched a woman’s Political Consultative Conference. This was an effort to mobilise women throughout China behind Party policy on the grounds that reduced rents and interest rates would allow women greater participation in mass struggles. Women were mobilised behind slogans proclaiming political freedom and equal rights for women, but peace, (bourgeois) democracy and national unity were the proclaimed goals for the women’s organisations. In Liberation Daily, the dominant theme of all articles regarding women was building a (bourgeois) democratic China.[38]
By the end of 1946, civil war was the order of the day and the CCP was using language similar to that of the late 1930s urging women to join the war effort. There was no doubt about what the role of women was to be. On 8 November, 1946, Liberation Daily urged women to expand their movement in response to the war crisis and listed their responsibilities: improve textile production to guarantee each family had clothing; give moral support to men away fighting; encourage husbands and sons to join the army; and promote healthy habits. A week later an editorial added: women should undertake agricultural work in the fields to replace those men who enlisted. The CCP clearly saw women’s liberation as an important but subsidiary goal.
Nevertheless, the New Democracy represented a major step forward for women. Article 6 of the Common Programme stated:
The People’s Republic of China shall abolish the feudal system which holds women in bondage. Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in political, economic, cultural, educational and social life. Freedom of marriage for men and women shall be put into effect.
The All-China Women’s Federation was established on 24 March 1949 as China’s first country-wide women’s organisation with a watching brief to protect the interests of women and promote gender equality within the prescribed goal of building a democratic China.
However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and while enormous gains were made, a Stalinist bureaucracy will always put its own interests first. Just as in Jiangxi and Yenan, the CCP would bow to the pressure of the male peasants and actively restrict the democratic rights of Chinese women. CCP cadres almost without exception saw women’s right to work, to own land and property as sufficient conditions for women’s liberation. Too often however, the latter condition was not enacted. For example, under the new laws a wife inherited the land of a husband, but all too frequently the local village association (invariably under CCP leadership) seize the land on the grounds that women are unable to tend their own fields, and re-allocate it to one of her dead husband’s male relatives, leaving the wife to cope as best she can.[39] In 2011, some 80% of rural land was exclusively in a man’s name, and the proportion is increasing.
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Fairbank, J. – The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 – Harper Perennial, 1987, p279.
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Belden, J. China Shakes the World, Gollancz, 1951, p109.
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Stranahan-Jackal, P. Changes in Policy for Yenan Women, 1935-1947: Modern China, 1981, 7(1) 83-112.
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Ibid.
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Sargeson, S. Why Women Own Less, China Perspectives [Online], 2012/4)