Over the past ten to fifteen years, feminism in China has been marked by three closely related characteristics. The first is the introduction of “Western” feminism with “gender” as the core of theory import. The second is the articulation of the “trouble” this import of Western theory has caused. Chinese feminist texts abound with terms such as trouble, difficulty, and clash, which are used to express worries about the consequences of this new orientation of feminism in China. They prove that the import of Western theory and the transition to “gender” as the basic category of analysis are not the logical and unquestionable developments some authors claim them to be. A third characteristic is the search for an identity for Chinese feminism in a global context. Chinese scholars, under the impact of Western theory, turn to spatial definitions of Chinese feminism vis-à-vis international feminism and adopt the notion of the “local” to define their place in the world. This essay highlights the “troubling” effects the import of “gender” has on feminist theory building in China and delineates the various and sometimes conflicting efforts Chinese feminists have made to restabilize feminist theory and identity. These include different translations and definitions of “gender,” diverging outlines of the history of Chinese feminism in a global context, various definitions of the “local,” differing visions of a regional “Asian” feminism, and more complex models that try to integrate conflicting perspectives. These responses demonstrate that contrary to its universalist claims, “gender” is a specific concept that finds support among particular groups of feminists only. This essay also tries to explain why Chinese feminists insist on the “local” as a site of theory building and identity formation even where they have acquired global horizons.

No abstract

No abstract

The article examines Chinese leftist intellectuals' visions of China's future as they were published in a special issue of Dongfang zazhi (Eastern Miscellany) in 1933. It places their texts in the international tradition of socialism and in particular the tensions between Marxism and "utopian socialism." Two variants of socialism can be identified in the Chinese texts: "Datong socialism," the moral vision of a society of freedom and equality, and Soviet socialism, the vision of an industrialized society with features and institutions as in the Soviet Union. Supporters of both variants identified with the "masses," but remained elitist in that they spoke on behalf of these masses and claimed an intellectual niche in the proletarian society of the future.

This article discusses the labor heroines of Yan’an and their cultural representation in the context of the early 1940s. It shows how the phenomenon of women’s labor heroism was formed during these years and it points out the rifts, contradictions and multiple understandings in the representation of labor heroines and their ideal role in the revolutionary process. In particular, this study highlights the co-existence of an instrumentalist and an idealist approach to women’s participation in production which is attributed to the double temporality in the Chinese Communist Party’s self-positioning at the time. The short-term necessities of the War of Resistance justified an instrumentalist approach which made labor heroines a “work force.” New Democracy, on the other hand, as a period of incipient socialism, opened the temporal horizon towards the future and moved revolutionary discourse from “memory” to “prophecy.” Writers embraced this creative space and imagined the social relations of a pacified, socialist society. Reportage as genre, labor heroines as subject and utopianism as orientation in time formed the basis for totally new conceptualizations of women’s liberation through work, restituting women’s agency and placing them in new sets of social relations.