Escape from the country: the gender politics of Chinese women in pursuit of transnational romance

Abstract

This study focuses on two marginalized groups in Chinese society: 27-years old (or older) 'left-over' (never-married) women and divorced women. Both these kinds of women are subject to discrimination and ridicule by the mass media and even their own families. This essay argues that despite the economic prosperity China has enjoyed over the last thirty years, gender relations in the country are rooted in a patriarchal discourse that reveals a hybridity of old and new ideals-family responsibility and individual self-fulfillment-in which the pursuit of love and marital commitment cannot be divorced from larger social-cultural-economic structures that endorse intergenerational responsibility and obligation, as well as promote gender inequality in the home and workplace. For these two groups of ostracized women, romance with foreign men may seem an alternative to the constraints of this structural framework. Drawing from a pool of evidence, published interviews, media reports, and printed ethnographic studies, this study analyzes the predicaments of leftover and divorced women, the interactions between these women and foreign men, and what their experiences with these men say about gender and racial differences in relation to gender inequality. Introduction: gender inequality and marriage China's compressed modernity, from a socialist collective to a neoliberal consumer economy in which a 'new moral-sexual-economic order' has emerged, muddles how the ideals of marriage, gender roles, and personal fulfillment fit into this changing scenario (Sun and Wei 2017). Historically, espousal of the values of love and intimacy did not get much of a chance in twentieth-century China when the country became enmeshed into the two great discourses of liberation and revolution that ultimately prioritized a couple's ideological commitment to the Communist Party (Pan 2015, 280). Beginning with the reforms of the 1980s, China's rapid economic rise from third-world status to global superpower fueled new ways

Dealing with an aging China—Delaying retirement or the second-child policy?

“…Our study has three theoretical contributions. (1) We construct a research framework that can quantitatively analyze the economic effects of population policies by combining OLG and CGE models with labor rate as an intermediate variable. (2) Our study expands the research perspective to assess the economic effects of delayed retirement policy by distinguishing the gender differences.…”

“…Compared to the aging problem of other countries, China's aging issue holds its own special characteristics for following two reasons: (1) China's birth rate has declined steadily ever since the implementation of one-child Policy in 1980s; moreover, a large difference is observed in the population of different age groups. Chinese families have always favored sons over daughters [1], leading to a severe imbalance between men and women of the same age group [2]. (2) Chinese government implemented second-child policy in 2016; however, we still do not know whether this policy can effectively solve China's aging problem.…”

“A question of bank notes, cars, and houses!” Matchmaking and the Moral Economy of Love in Urban China

“…11 of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417521000499 accused of stealing the potential husbands of better-off women (see Zurndorfer 2018). This point is forwarded matter-of-factly in discussions between parents participating in marriage corners, marking it as an obvious justification for the attendance by so many parents of daughters.…”

“…This emphasis on age is especially burdensome for women, who are seen as child-bearers and whose health and reproductive capacity as they age may be questioned by prospective families 6 . Some consider unmarried women over thirty less desirable spouses due to worries that they will not be able to bear a child (see Hong Finscher 2014; Zurndorfer 2018).…”

“…They are said to use marriage as an unabashed means to climb the social ladder illegitimately, to attain an ideal life without effort. In the Chinese press, as in everyday discourse, one grasps the stigmatization of younger women from lower social backgrounds, who are accused of stealing the potential husbands of better-off women (see Zurndorfer 2018). This point is forwarded matter-of-factly in discussions between parents participating in marriage corners, marking it as an obvious justification for the attendance by so many parents of daughters.…”