China

Issue focusing on climate change: Contains an analysis of rising carbon dioxide emissions, articles on the role of China and Russia, forest fires in Indonesia, flood prevention plans in low lying Asian cities, and the climate diplomacy of small island states.

This book provides a study of the genesis, growth, gains, and dilemmas of women's movements in countries throughout the world. Its focus is on Brazil, China, India, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, USA, as well as more generally covering Europe and Latina America. The authors argue that women's movements have engaged in complex negotiations with national and international forces, and challenge widely held assumptions about the Western origins and character of local feminisms. They locate women's movements within their context by exploring their relationships with the state, civil society, and other social movements.

The author notes that forced labour is a sensitive and rarely publicized topic, although it has existed in China for decades, for example in construction work.  It sometimes surfaces, as in the 2007 scandal about children, the elderly and adults with disabilities who were kidnapped in Zhanxi province, often with the collusion of local authorities, and forced to work in brick kilns.  Later similar stories in other provinces came to light.  The article also covers other forms of exploitation, such as students forced to work cheaply as interns in order to graduate - a practice that received global attention in 2012 in relation to electronic supply chains.  The author notes the role of local NGOs and sometimes the local media in exposing abuses.  

See also: Bengsten, Peter, 'Hidden in Plain Sight: Forced Labour Constructing  China', openDemocracy, (16 Feb, 2018), https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/hidden-in-plain-sight-forced-labour-constructing-china/

Review of the reasons behind the choice by the Chinese publishing company People’s Cultural Publishing House to translate Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s book with the title ‘The Rights of Women’ rather than ‘We Should All Be Feminists’. Critics argue that the problem with the word ‘feminist’ lies in its organising for the cause, while the word ‘right’ reproduces the contemporary governmental discourse that emphasizes the rights conceded and the rule of law imposed from above, thus reproducing a patriarchal scheme on the portrayal of the book.

This book was published soon after December 1997, when over 120 states (excluding the USA, Russia, China, India and  Pakistan) signed the Ottawa Convention to ban production, stockpiling and use of anti-personnel mines. It provides a wide ranging survey of both the global campaign and the diplomatic moves culminating in  the 'Ottawa process', which, under Canadian government leadership, resulted in the treaty.  There are contributions from leading campaigners, diplomats and academics.

Critical assessment of today's 'military industrial complex' and also the role of drones in the US wars in Afghanistan and in targeting 'terrorists'.  Cockburn documents the technological failings of drones, often unable to distinguish targeted individuals from others nearby, and the 'trigger-happy' attitudes of some soldiers using them.  Both led to numerous mistaken deaths.

See also: Frew, Joanna, 'Drone Wars: the next generation', Peace News , 2618-2619, June-July 2018, p. 4.

Frew summarizes a new report, issued by Drone Wars UK, on development and use of armed drones by a 'second generation' of nine states (including  China, Iran and Turkey) and several non-state actors developing and using armed drones.  (The first group was the US, UK and Israel.)  The report also estimates that a further 11 states would soon be deploying drones, and that China was increasing export of them.  Frew stresses the urgent need for international controls, and queries whether existing controls on exports (already being undermined in the US) were adequate.                                                           

This is Doolin’s translation of a Beijing Student Union pamphlet, together with his own introduction.

Elfstrom analyzes data from 2003-2012 on strikes and other worker protests, and concludes that the state has responded both with greater repression (illustrated by higher spending on the People's Armed Police) and greater responsiveness (illustrated by pro-worker or split decisions in mediation, arbitration and court judgements).  The article concludes by analyzing the implications of changes in policy since the accession of  Xi Jinping.

See also: Elfstrom, Manfred, 'A Tale of Two Deltas: Labour Politics in Jiangsu and Guangdong', British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.57 no.2 (2019), pp.247-74. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12467

Discusses how, despite having a well-educated female workforce, the high level of employment in China is imbued with patriarchal gender norms.

In this book the journalist Mei Fong explains the context of the one child policy introduced in 1978 to control China’s growing population,and enforced through sterilization, abortion and fines.   The policy was modified in January 2016, when couples were allowed to have two children.

See also: Fong, Mei, ‘Sterilization, abortion, fines: How China brutally enforced its 1-child policy’, New York Post, 3 January 2016.

https://nypost.com/2016/01/03/how-chinas-pregnancy-police-brutally-enfor...

The author’s research spans the period 1998 -2012 to chart the impact of the economic reforms on rural women drawn into urban areas, often employed in domestic service or in hotels and office cleaning. She notes how this migration of cheap and flexible labour from the countryside has underpinned high levels of urban consumption, and both helped to empower the women migrants and to perpetuate gendered forms of difference and inequality.

See also: Chang, Leslie T., Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, New York, Penguin Random House, 2009, pp. 448 (pb).

Chang, who was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal inside China, revealed the lives of migrant women working on assembly lines in an industrial city, primarily by focusing on the experiences of two young women for three years.  Her book which won awards in the USA, threw light on a previously unknown area, and illustrated the very mixed impact of the economic reforms and migration from the countryside on women’s opportunities.

Compares the evolution of the role of women in the Japanese and Chinese society from the 19^th Century to today.

Analyzes conflicts over land in terms of its role as territory (leading to inter-state claims or wars), its status as property, and ways in which its use is regulated. The book examines the attempts of NGOs to protect property rights and environments in the Global South and the land grabs by corporations and governments, drawing on wide range of examples, including China and Honduras.

This book discusses the popular myth that women have fared well as a result of post-socialist China's economic reforms and breakneck growth. It lays out the structural discrimination against women in China and speaks of the broader problems within China's economy, politics, and development.

See also ‘Talking policy: Leta Hong Fincher on feminism in China’, World Policy, 2 June 2017, https://worldpolicy.org/2017/06/02/talking-policy-leta-hong-fincher-on-feminism-in-china/ where Leta Hong discusses her book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China and the development of feminism in china from the post-socialist era up to these days.

Describing China’s feminist activists in relation to their political and historical circumstances, the author elucidates the development of China’s feminist movement and discusses China’s history from a feminist perspective.

By demolishing the myth that feminism originated in the West, Kumari Jayawardena presents feminism as it originated in the Third World, erupting from the specific struggles of women fighting against colonial power, for education or the vote, for safety, and against poverty and inequality. Gives particular attention to Afghanistan, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Vietnam.

To look at a brief extract of the book see also https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4018-feminism-and-nationalism-in-the-third-world

Explains how Chinese women understand their identities and feminism in the new media age and how, as Jiang argues, they present and shape ideas about feminism and gender issues in the current socio-political context.

Discusses protest through letters, petitions, law suits and sometimes demonstrations and sabotage, against pollution, soil erosion, contaminated water, etc.

Focused particularly on the controversy over the major Narmada River dam projects, but also provides comparative perspective by considering dam projects in Brazil, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Lesotho, where the World Bank and other lenders were persuaded to withdraw funding.

Secret Party papers leaked to the west provide details of the meetings, negotiations and communications between the top leaders about how to deal with the protests, and the triumph of the hardliners over Zhao Ziyang, General Secretary of the Party, who wished to be conciliatory. Western scholars generally accepted the papers as authentic.

Reports on the shutting down by the government on the occasion of International Women’s Day of Feminist Voices account, a micro-blogging platform in China similar to Twitter, which is predominantly used for causes related to sexual harassment and gender discrimination in a way that attempts to bypass censorship.

It explores the development of feminism in different historical periods: during the New Socialist China (1949-1965); feminism in the Cultural Revolution (1966- 1999); and feminism in contemporary China (2000-2017).

See also https://www.theblueandgoldsmu.com/single-post/2017/10/26/Holding-up-half-the-sky-Feminism-in-China

Collection of documents from participants in demonstrations.

Compares ‘unsuccessful’ and ‘successful’ movements against Socialist regimes (Tiananmen and East Germany 1989), against military regimes (Panama and Chile in the 1980s) and against personal dictators (Kenyan opposition to Moi and the Philippines struggle against Marcos). Draws some fairly brief general conclusions.

After experiencing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, Chinese-ink painter Iri Maruki and oil painter Toshi Maruki began their collaboration on the Hiroshima Panels in 1950. During the Allied occupation of Japan when reporting on the atomic bombing was strictly prohibited, the panels made known the hidden nuclear sufferings through a nationwide tour. In 1953, the panels began a ten-year tour of about 20 countries, mainly in East Asia and Europe, and disseminated the Hiroshima stories in the age of the US-Soviet arms race. The Marukis embarked on a new direction in the 1970s, with their emphasis on complex realities of war in which the victim/perpetrator dichotomy was not clear-cut, and explored other forms of violence such as pollution and discrimination.

The spread of contemporary roller derby presents an opportunity to examine the ways sport can act as a form of feminist intervention. This article draws on a qualitative case study of a roller derby league in China, made up predominantly of expatriate workers, to explore some of the possibilities roller derby presents in activating global forms of feminist participatory action.

Analyses reactions to government reforms, including both covert and open resistance. Distinguishes between intellectual dissidents and popular rebellion. See especially ‘Rights and resistance: The changing context of the dissident movement’ (pp. 20-38); ‘Pathways of labour insurgency’ (pp. 41-61); and ‘Environmental protest in rural China’ (pp. 143-59) which includes reference to direct action against a factory polluting water. Second edition has added chapters on Falun Gong, Christianity and land struggles.

This article studies post-2000 Chinese feminist activism from a generational perspective. It operationalises three notions of generation - 1) generation as an age cohort; 2) generation as a historical cohort; and 3) "political generation" - to shed light on the question of generation and generational change in post-socialist Chinese feminism. The study shows how the younger generation of women have come to the forefront of feminist protest in China and how the historical conditions they live in have shaped their feminist outlook. In parallel, it examines how a "political generation" emerges when feminists of different ages are drawn together by a shared political awakening and collaborate across age.

Covers period from February 2019, when proposals for extradition to China were made by Hong Kong's Security Bureau, to May 28 2020, when China's parliament endorsed the decision to impose national security legislation on Hong Kong.

Includes material on 1976-79 and 1986-87.

Covers campaigns in Argentina, Chicago (USA), France, Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, South Korea and China.

Reports on how more than 20 other Chinese feminists who live in the United States and belong to the Chinese Feminism Collective, a nongovernmental organization supporting feminists that face sustained political pressure in China, carry on with their activities in support of women in China such as Global Leaders’ Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in collaboration with the UN; photography exhibition  ‘Aboveground: 40 Moments of Transformation’, art performance ‘Our Vaginas, Ourselves’ and others.

See also https://nuvoices.com/2018/11/18/100-attend-nuvoices-nyc-launch-and-discussion-on-chinese-feminism/ for a more recent discussion on Chinese contemporary feminism at a New York City conference.

Discusses the new theoretical strand within Chinese feminism that has been forming since 2010 up to 2018, which, for lack of a programmatic label, the author calls “socialist feminism.”

Wei, a prominent advocate of ‘the fifth modernization’ – democracy, was arrested and jailed in 1979.

Wright's survey of protest covers the whole of the post-Mao period, examining the range of different types of protest by farmers, workers and urban homeowners, as well as environmentalists, dissidents, and ethnic minorities. She notes that popular protest has often achieved some positive response, though protesters also often suffer. The book includes consideration of Xi Jinping's more repressive policy and suggests this could lead to much greater tensions that might threaten regime stability.  Wright also covers protest in Hong Kong in the rather different political context there.

See also:

Wright, Teresa, (ed.) (2019), Handbook of Protest and Resistance in China, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishers, pp. 480.

Survey of various forms of protest in China since 1989 by a range of social groups (for example urban, rural, workers, religious minorities and ethnic minorities), with 29 chapters by experts in the field. The book begins with two overviews of the prospects for regime survival, and the whole gamut of social unrest. It includes sections on environmental protest, information and communication technologies, and also on Hong Kong. 

Wu, a university teacher of English educated in the US, returned to China in 1951. This is a personal account of his experiences. The Hundred Flowers campaign is covered pp. 47-72.

The author draws on a data set of 1,418 protests in China to argue that the  state does allow a limited space for protest and that most protesters operate within these limits.  Therefore 'contention' in China is a non-zero sum game, as opposed to the extremes of revolt and repression often studied in the past.

The author examines the context surrounding the #MeToo movement in China, how hashtags were used to circumvent censorship, and the role that Chinese diasporic communities played in the process. The results demonstrate the practice of disguised collective action, and the choices made by different actors in attempting to circumvent censorship.