Women and sex in China - Flora Chan

Chinese women have long been subjugated to the authority of men throughout history. Traditionally under the bondage of Confucian ideology women were deprived of the right to participate in political, social and economic activities. At home, it was men who played the dominating role. Women had to bear all the burden of the housework relegated to a position of subservience. Marriages were arbitrarily arranged by parents and women were bought and sold as commodities.

Although women have been hailed as being capable of "holding up half the sky" in present day China, the fact is much of the past repression remains. Despite limited changes, the women in China have never achieved real equality and emancipation in any real sense. An anatomy of the position of Chinese women in its political, economic and social dimension will have to eliminate the kind of discrimination that still exists and find a revolutionary approach to the question. We will have to find what this means and how it will be achieved.

Women in politics

It is clearly stipulated in the constitution of China that women "have the right to elect and to be treated on equal terms with men." However it is obvious that overall an overwhelming majority of the decision makers in the political echelons are men. In 1973, for example women only made up 20% of the delegates to the 10th National Party's Congress and made up only 12 members of the Party Central Committee. These figures are indicative of the cumulative inferiority of women when compared to the arenas where real political power is concentrated. This may partly be due to the fact that in general, the educated standards of women is lower than that of men (in Peking University, for example, 70% are male students). However, in general this only reinforces the traditional Chinese value that "women should not interfere in politics." However it has even been suggested that the fall Of Chiang ching may, to a certain extent, be due to the fact that as a woman, she is seen to be too politically ambitious and is therefore analogous to the notorious ancient woman empress – Wu Chok-tien and Empress Dowager, (a powerful and charismatic woman who unofficially but effectively controlled the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China for 47 years, from 1861 to her death in 1908. TN)

This is not to say, however, with Chiang Chin in the place of Hua Kua-feng or Deng Xiao-ping, or with more women active in the ruling echelon, the women in China would become more liberated. Rulers and bureaucrats, be they men or women are just as oppressed. Women's liberation does not, and should not; mean the creation of more women dictators or women bosses as we have already too many male ones already – but the abolition of all dictators and bosses. Indeed, as long as the hierarchical political set-up exists, there will never be any genuine liberation of women. This is exactly the case in China.

In China, where there is dictatorship of the Party, power is overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of bureaucrats who rule in the name of the people but in fact are concerned with first and foremost their entrenched authority and privileges, managing an authoritarian, repressive regime, where democracy is virtually non-existent, and any form of election merely a sham. The so-called delegates "the 21 elected" by the people are but appointees by the Party and are in no way representative of the peoples' interests, be they men or women.

As for the masses, women and men alike are equally (!) deprived of the basic political rights such as freedom of speech, of association, or press etc. In this sense in China both men and women have never really been able to achieve political emancipation and are still very much subjected to the enslavement by the State.

Economic Independence or Exploitation

There has always been a tendency for the Chinese regime to identify women's liberation as the liberation of women in the narrow confines of their homes and their participation in productive work. It is the deliberate policy of the Chinese government to encourage women to contribute themselves to the economic reconstruction of the country as the essential step to liberation. Indeed as a contrast to the past, there have been an increasingly large proportion of women in the work force. After 1949 so much so that this statistic has always been cited by the Chinese official press as evidence to show how "liberated" Chinese women are. While one must admit that economic reform is a necessity and very important part of women's struggle towards liberation, it is obvious that economics is not the sole concern. More importantly, one must carefully examine the nature of economic participation by women to ask if it really leads to them becoming autonomous individual human beings capable of running their own lives. In China, it is true to say that the participation of women in production has nothing to do at all with attaining economic liberation but simply means more efficient economic exploitation of women by the State.

In China, the seizure of power by the Chinese Communist Party has never led to the development of a really socialist society free from exploitation and oppression. In place of the individual capitalists of the past, there emerges anew bureaucratic class who seized control of the country's economic resources and means of production in the name of the people and are able to amass great fortunes for themselves. The people, women and men alike, deprived of the rights to participate in the running of the farm or factory to which they belong. All economic plans are formulated and handed down from above and the people are not allowed to utter a word of criticism. They have to work for long hours and are rewarded with only a small portion of what they have produced, the rest being expropriated by the State. Under such circumstances, both men and women are just as exploited but perhaps with the women, more so.

In certain parts of China, for instance, women still do not have equal pay for casual work. One big character poster put up by women recently has disclosed the fact that in Shunai Province, women are not paid the same as men because of their alleged physical inferiority. In some places where equal work for equal pay is put into practise, women however still earn less than men as they very often have to cut short their working hours (and hence women lose less work points) in order to prepare dinner or to look after their children. As expected, at home it is almost always still the women who have to bear the responsibility of child rearing and doing the housework. Hence, like their counterparts in the capitalist societies. Chinese women are suffering from double exploitation – both at home and at work and are in no sense economically free.

Love, Marriage, and Sex

On the question of love, marriage and sex, Chinese women are even further away from really being liberated.

The Marriage Law promulgated in 1950 has abolished all feudal aspects of marriage and in its place advocates free love, though in reality however, love and marriage is far from free.

Firstly in order to get married, the couple not only have to consult their parents but more importantly, they have to seek the consent of the leading party cadre in their working unit. Very often, the party cadre can refuse them permission for reasons of age. Although the legal age for marriage to be 18 for women and 20 for men, in practise late marriage is encouraged and even endorsed as part of the policy to control population growth as well as to ensure more concentration on economic production by young people. So it is the rule rather than the exception that men and women have to reach the age of 27 and 25 respectively before they are allowed to get married.

Sometimes the party can also refuse to grant permission for marriage on the ground of class difference. For example, there is a story of a girl who came from a capitalist family. She was introduced to an "old worker" of the Shao Hwan Iron and Steel works. Shao was unmarried. He was then promoted to the publicity section of the Revolutionary Committee of his factory. The two agreed to marry. The old worker knew she was from a 'bad' family but accepted her for fear that he could not find a better girl. The girl congratulated herself for having found a safe "red" protector. They decided on the date of the wedding and notified friends and relatives. But they were happy too soon. The party official at the granary got wind of this and wrote to the Iron and Steel works, informing them of the girl's origin. This committee then asked the old worker to reconsider and that was the end of the marriage.

Secondly, marriage is now less and less determined by love but has become more and more a matter of political or economic concern. Love is no longer the most important criteria in choosing the right person to marry. More often people marry for the sake of political and economic convenience. As the above example has shown, many choose to marry with someone "red" enough to seek political asylum. Some may do so to enhance his or her political asset. For example, there's another case of an attractive girl from a clerical family. She went into the factory high school and became acquainted with a young man who was the son of an Indonesian Chinese, and hence one of the "friendly capitalists". The two were in love for two years. Then the girl joined the Communist Youth League and became an office holder. Before she joined the League the boy was only slightly below in status and love made up the balance. But now she had become an official and her standing rose, and love evaporated. They separated before long and this pretty and proud girl married herself to a colonel in the Peoples' Liberation Army who was old enough to be her father. She was not a 'proletarian' and this marriage was not recommendable in the strictest sense of the term, but it helped that she was fortunately a member of the Communist League. Comrades at the factory admired her for her clever abilities in capturing such a husband. She thought so too, only she had no love for this comrade colonel.

While people may marry for political reasons, they also divorce for political reasons. On the 14th of February 1979, for example a Maoist newspaper in Hong Kong reported a case of "reunion after 17 years of divorce." It told of a medical specialist Chang Ji-chang who had graduated in the United States and returned to China. He'd got married in 1941 with Chan Pi-tei whom he had known in the States. In 1957 Chang was classified as a 'rightist' and in order to protect their children, the couple divorced despite the fact that they had been married for nearly 20 years. It was not until last year when Chang was rehabilitated that they reunited. Such examples are ample. The famous Chinese writer Hai Mao had been struggled against thrice and hence divorced thrice; but since he had been rehabilitated thrice, he re-married thrice. The last time he was thrown down during the Cultural Revolution, he could take it no longer and committed suicide.

Apart from politics, economics also plays a very important role in people's marriage.

After the fall of The Gang of Four a number of reports have been released exposing the rampant practise of buying and selling in marriage. Because of the scarcity of women compared with the number of men, parents are able to impose harsh levies on men who want to marry their daughters. The most popular demands are the "3 Turnabouts and 1 Portable" – the 3 Turnabouts referring to watches, sewing machines, and bicycle and the 1 Portable referring to either the camera or the radio. In addition, they also demand that there be a big wardrobe, a suite of furniture including tables and chairs. Such demands may appear to be mediocre in the eyes of westerners but to the people of China they often mean several years savings! In this way marriage is commercialised and Chinese women once again rendered as commodities to be bought and sold on the market.

Casually speaking, the Chinese people, men and women are still very much a sexually frustrated lot. In order to facilitate the smooth functioning of society, the Chinese rulers have resorted to transforming the inner soul of the people through creating in them an "authoritarian character" (For more detailed discussion on the Personality Model and Authoritarian Character of the Chinese People, please refer to the article Mass Psychology in China published in Three Essays on the New Mandarins edited by Lee Yu See) one that is susceptible to accepting authoritarian rule thereby becoming docile instruments of the State. On the other hand, sexual repression is, as suggested by Wilhelm Reich, one of the key elements in the creation of such an authoritarian character. This explains why the Chinese Communist regime has adopted such a conservative and puritanical approach to the question of sex in China.

In China, sex, instead of being considered as a basic human need is more often seen as filthy and highly mystical, the indulgence in which will lead to the erosion of one's revolutionary spirit and the collapse of body and mind. Young people are therefore taught that sex is unnecessary and destructive so they are encouraged to suppress their sexual desire and to direct their energy onto more productive courses. Even masturbation, not to say having sex with the opposite sex is considered as highly undesirable. In a manuscript on masturbation published in 1975, for example, it has this to say about the "disturbing" consequences of masturbation: 1/ excessive cerebral stimulation: 2/ insomnia 3/ general collapse of the organisation, and 4/ erosion of the revolutionary spirit. For relief the pamphlet made the following recommendations: 1/ acupuncture 2/ gymnastics 3/ physical exercise and most importantly 4/ to study hard the words of Marx, Lenin and Mao!

Thus commented Wu Wen and Yu Shuet

"The inhibition China has shown towards sex is as abnormal as the licentiousness of the West. The policies and advocate of a dictatorship has strangled the need for emotional interaction between the sexes. For the whole generation, sex has become fearful full of guilty feelings...the sexual awakening that comes with maturity usually gives the young people a feeling of guilt. Those with strong self-discipline usually because mentally disturbed, and in behaviour, become stupefied; those who are of a nervous disposition become slaves leading guilty lives."

Such kind of sexual repression, as expected weighs down much more heavily on women than men. Pre-marital sex is deemed to be anti social and immoral, virginity is still considered to be of paramount importance for a girl, so much so if a girl is found to be pregnant before marriage, she will be bitterly scorned and severely criticised. If she is fortunate enough, she may be allowed to get married; otherwise she will be forced to undergo abortion or even in some cases, commits suicide in shame. For example in Canton a girl fell in love with someone another production unit and had sexual relations with him. Then she found herself pregnant, the couple agreed to get married. When they applied for permission, however, the party cadre rejected their demand on the ground that the girl was too young (though she had definitely surpassed the legal marriage age of 18). Then she was forced to have an abortion. The girl helpless and powerless as a shrew could only comply with tears in her eyes. After the abortion she was drastically changed. Before, she was an active, party-going girl and a stern advocate of Mao Tse-Tung thought, but now she became very silent and distressed. And everywhere she went she was being labelleled as a shameless, wanton whore. Fortunately her lover had not forsaken her and he became her only source of comfort and support. A year later the girl got pregnant again and this time regardless of the party's attitude invited some relatives and friends home and announced their marriage. When the party cadre heard about this, he got very angry and came to her house to create. It was only when some sympathetic neighbour intervened bringing along mobs and brushes threatening to fight, that this cadre fled.

Given China's well developed system of birth control, one may expect a girl to ask for contraceptive pills beforehand or to have an abortion on her own account in case of pregnancy. Indeed, abortion is absolutely legal, cheap, safe and easily accessible in China. Nevertheless, if a girl asking for abortion is discovered to be married, the operation will be done all the same but afterwards, the unit to which the girl belongs will be notified and the girl will have to go through the same humiliation, sanction and interrogation. The same applies to those who ask for contraceptive pills. As a result, instead of getting pills from the doctors usually most girls would prefer buying them in the black market from married women who have left over pills. They have then to pay much higher prices, but there are no other alternatives.

Although it is believed that since the Cultural Revolution, pre-marital sex has been on the rise, unmarried couples apart from having to overcome the moral sanction, have yet to confront some very practical problems: that of finding a place where they can have sex. For those who are very keen to marry but refused permission cohabitation is out of the question. This is because in order to rent a house, they must produce enough evidence to prove that they are married. Going to hotels / pensions is not the answer either because to do so, a certificate of marriage is strictly required. So under such circumstances those unmarried young men and women can only borrow their friend's house occasionally, or they can singly go to a forest or countryside venue to satisfy their needs.

In order to keeping with the official line, it is then obvious that many of the young who dare to break the official norms, they have to run the risk of negative social criticism and have to bear tremendous social pressure.

For many of the married couples, however they have not been able to lead a normal sexual life either. Very often husbands and wives are assigned to work in different districts for a long period of time. It is estimated that the number of husbands and wives separated for over ten year's amount to eight million. This figure has not taken into account those who are separated for a relatively shorter time such as diplomats and cadres who have been sent to the countryside to reform their thoughts. For all these separated couples, they are only given 12 days a year to live together. 12 days (at the most) of sexual life in a year is certainly far from enough for these mature couples. So for most of the year, they have to live out lives of sexual frustration and it is not surprising that men look to extra marital sex for release.

One consequence of sexual repression is the rise of prostitution, pornographies and the rise in sexual literature.....

1. Prostitution

In China prostitution is illegal so most prostitutes are operating on a clandestine basis. Prostitutes are mostly found near coal mines, wharves and in big cities. With marriage transformed into a commodity, the ordinary workers who cannot afford to buy themselves a wife have to turn to prostitutes as an alternative. As for those who practise prostitution many do so for economic reasons. Many are the educated female young who have returned illegally to the cities. Unable to find work, they can only engage in prostitution to earn their livelihoods. Recently there are also been accounts of Chinese women sleeping with foreigners for money. On one occasion 12 Chinese women were detained outside a dance in the Nationalities Palace while soliciting dates with foreigners.

2. Pornography

One of the most famous sex novels circulating underground in China is The Heart of a Girl, a story of a girl's sexual experience with two men. Its content strictly speaking, is nothing when compared with the type of pornographies published in the West yet, it has been able to arouse intense public interest in China. There are only 30 pages in mimeographed form yet the selling price soared to 150 yuan, more than an average worker's monthly salary! Those who are making copies of the book have very little sleep and food in order to complete the copying – not to miss a single word of it!

Many of the sex novels are written by ex-Red Guards and are very thought provoking as well as of high artistic value. Apart from sex, these novels contain a lot of criticism against the Maoist authoritarian regime and implicitly embody a form of political consciousness.

3. Sex Crime

There have been an increased number of sex crimes over the last few years. Rape, a crime punishable by death has been important. Many are committed by sexually frustrated young men but it is believed that more have been committed by Party cadres holding positions of power. Educated female youths sent to the countryside are often raped by local Party cadres. In most cases for fear of retaliation, the victims chose to keep quiet so that the criminal is immune from prosecution. Hence in China where political power is what counts, women are victimised in just the same way as in feudal China.

More recently with the liberalisation of control on the importation of foreign movies, there has been a revived interest in the buying and selling of half-naked female film stars. In my interpretation this is yet another manifestation of the public's distorted conception of sex.

Conclusion

If we believe that women's liberation is the returning of women to autonomous, independent human beings free from exploitation or repression, politically, economically, socially then it is obvious that the women in China have never fully attained liberation. Indeed, so long as China remains authoritarian, exploitative and repressive ruled by a firmly entrenched, bureaucratic class, women as well as men will never really be free.

Women's liberation, by definition, is part and parcel of the liberation of all mankind and it is towards this goal that the women's movement should move ahead. It is true so far, there has not occurred any organised revolutionary women's movement in China, yet it is too early to point out that their not be any. On the other hand, on the 3rd of January 1979, one big character poster but up on the Democracy Wall in Peking has spoken out fearlessly against the repressive sexual policy of the regime and called for the abolition of the institution of marriage and the realisation of sex with liberation. These ideas are progressive ones. Although the big character poster has been immediately torn down, the ideas expressed in the poster signify the beginning of awareness in the young people of China of the need to search for a change in society not only in its political and economic aspect but the sexual one too. This will necessarily lead to the formulation of a revolutionary alternative that will bring an end to the entire political-economic set-up of present day China.