Family, tradition and culture of motherhood. These are some of the values Beijing is proposing to women in today’s China, according to a speech by President Xi Jinping this week. “It is necessary,” Xi said on Monday, “to guide women to play a unique role in promoting the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation and establishing good family customs.” The message resonates loud and clear in a country that has been in recent times suffers from a birth problem and a rapid aging of the population.
“We must actively cultivate a new culture of marriage and motherhood,” said Xi, sitting at a table next to the new leadership of the All-China Women’s Federation, a Communist Party-linked organization. “Doing good work for women is related not only to their own development, but also to family and social harmony,” added the president of the Asian giant. The Chinese leadership’s proposal also includes guiding young people’s vision of “marriage, motherhood and family,” according to the transcript collected by state media.
The meeting took place immediately after the National Women’s Congress. The opening of this five-yearly event in the Great Hall of the People last week left paradoxical images: almost 1,800 delegates sat in the audience and in the gallery, but the core of the front row of the stage, reserved for the party’s leaders, was populated by men, with Xi at the center.
In China there are currently no women in the most important power organs of the Communist Party. At the last congress of this organization, which regulates China’s plans, in 2022, for the first time in 25 years, no woman was named among the 24 people who make up the Politburo, the second tier of the pyramid. Their absence from the seven members of the Standing Committee, the highest body in the hierarchy, was also no surprise: they were never part of the small core where important decisions are made. Only men over 60 sit in it, with President Xi, the oldest of them all, at the top.
The fight for equality still has a long way to go. “The Chinese concept of society and family is deeply sexist,” analyzes a European diplomatic source based in Beijing. “Women have the right to work and, in general, the same rights as men,” she clarifies, “but subject to their role in society, which is to be mothers.” For this reason, there is a real shortage of women high positions. “It would be incompatible with his family obligations.” In China, he continues, a woman who voluntarily chooses not to be a mother is not considered “trustworthy.” And he concludes: “To say that the European Union and China agree on gender issues would be a lie.”
In this country, feminism – and in general any civil society movement that challenges the system – is silenced, silenced and censored. Women who attempt to conduct awareness campaigns risk being arrested. And protest messages often disappear from social networks, which are constantly monitored. At the end of September, the trial took place against the Chinese journalist and activist of the MeToo movement Sophia Huang Xueqin and the labor activist Wang Jianbing (also a MeToo sympathizer), who were accused of “inciting subversion of state power”. Both were arrested in 2021 and face prison sentences of up to five years. Huang Xueqin had participated in several MeToo movement campaigns to provide support and assistance to survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
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“Harmonious Families”
“Only when families are harmonious, well-educated and have a decent family culture can children grow up healthy and society develop properly,” Xi Jinping emphasized in his speech on Monday, an act that Trivium China analysts described as real “bigmansplaining.” ” describe. Adding the prefix “big” to “mansplaining” – from “man” and “explaining” – an English term that refers to the situation in which a man explains something to a woman that she actually does already understands or knows.
The official statement from Xi’s previous meeting with the Women’s Federation in 2018 made no mention of “marriage” or “motherhood.” On the other hand, “equality” between men and women was mentioned up to six times, compared to just two mentions in this year’s official reading. In it, the President also calls for “promoting the improvement and application of measures to support birth rates, improve the quality of demographic development and actively combat the aging of the population.”
“Xi Jinping wants Chinese women to have more children,” summarize the aforementioned Trivium analysts in their latest newsletter. “No matter how much Xi demands,” they say, “the birth rate will continue to fall until politicians offer better paternity leave and more financial support for child care and education.”
“These statements do not seem to identify any tangible benefits for women or significant progress in promoting gender equality,” says Zhen, a Chinese woman in her 20s who confesses how, despite studying at one of the country’s top universities, she finds it so difficult to understand the “true meaning” of Xi’s speech.
“I have no idea what the ‘socialist path with Chinese characteristics’ means for women’s development,” she says. “From what I understand,” she adds, “the pressure on women to have children is potentially even greater, especially for those working in the Communist Party system, in state-owned enterprises and in government systems.” She is aware of that for the government “the solution to gender conflicts must be about making women conform rather than addressing real inequalities,” she adds. Additionally, the education system tends to “reinforce the idea that young women should be selfless and devoted rather than teaching young men to be better husbands and fathers.”
The decline in the birth rate and the aging of society have become a key concern for the Chinese government; is among the political priorities set at the last conclave of the Communist Party in 2022. The birth rate has fallen by more than half since 2016, the year after Beijing decided to end the harsh one-child policy introduced years ago to limit the population size. However, Beijing is now encouraging the birth of two or even three children. Numerous initiatives have been launched. But the government still hasn’t found the formula. This year, China suffered a population decline for the first time since the famines of the late 1950s and early 1960s, ceding its position as the world’s most populous nation to India. The marital ties have also broken.
The change is a response to several factors, including China’s own development and modernization, as has happened in other societies, which involves young people’s break with the most traditional values. But there are also monetary reasons: raising children is very expensive in China, and the current environment does not appear to be conducive to a reversal, as the economy is struggling and has not yet recovered after the end of pandemic restrictions. “Most families don’t have more children because it’s expensive,” summarizes the European source. “In fact, it takes two salaries to support the family.”
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