In this research I examine the relationship between mass media and social change by studying women's magazine fiction in China before and after its implementation of the Four Modernizations Policies in the late 1970s. The study focuses on the relationship between representations of women and the shifting ideological landscape from a feminist perspective. The findings reveal an important irony: As China moves towards relative political openness and economic modernization, old stereotypes of women as homemakers and caregivers increasingly reemerge in the media content. I argue that such representations of women have to be interpreted contextually. The image of the public-minded model worker in the 1960s masks the repression of personal aspirations in the name of the collective; the image of the family-oriented homemaker, mother, or nurturer from the late 1970s onward, is a dialectic response to the reemphasis of personal desires.In considering the relationship between mass media and social reality, pertinent questions include whether media are molders of social structure or reflections of it, and whether media are agents of social change or reinforcers of the status quo (Rosengren, 1981). I explore these questions using portrayals of women in Chinese magazine fiction as an index. The research draws on the theoretical perspective of ideological hegemony to see how changes in the representation of women are specifically related to ideological changes in China. In addition, this research contributes to the literature on feminist studies and women's representation in mass media. There are many feminist studies in Western industrial countries on the relationship between media representations of women and social reality, but little information has been gathered about the interactive role of media and women in the political climate of contemporary China (Gallagher,