Leta Hong Fincher

In 2018, the #MeToo movement erupted on Chinese social media, with women standing up to accuse prominent men in the media, academic, and entertainment spheres of sexual harassment and assault. However, Chinese advocates of greater transparency around these issues faced an additional barrier not shared by #MeToo activists in the West: censorship and threats from the Chinese government.

This nexus between the growing tide of feminism in China and the government’s heavy-handed attempts to thwart the movement is exactly the subject of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, the latest book by Leta Hong Fincher. Hong Fincher, who received her Ph.D. from Tsinghua University, has written extensively on Chinese feminism and gender issues, including in her previous book Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. Betraying Big Brother, which will be released in September 2018, outlines both the rise of feminism in China and the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing efforts to suppress it. In this interview, Hong Fincher discusses her book and the recent surge in China’s own #MeToo movement.

Much of Betraying Big Brother focuses on the stories of the “Feminist Five,” five activists arrested and detained by the Chinese government in 2015 over a planned demonstration against sexual harassment. As you detail, these women had taken part in demonstrations and “actions” before – why do you think the government decided to move against them three years ago?

In 2015, feminist activists had become much better organized, with a growing number of supporters in different cities, so the Chinese government for the first time identified feminist activism as a threat to Communist rule. The authorities apparently thought that by jailing some of the core activists, they could stamp out a nascent women’s movement. But the arrest of these five young women backfired drastically by galvanizing the feminist community in China, as well as sparking a global outcry and attracting a lot of international media attention. More and more young women began signing up as volunteers in feminist campaigns and women who had previously avoided political discussions began identifying themselves publicly as feminists on social media. This prompted the government’s internet censors to work even more aggressively to shut down online expressions of solidarity with the Feminist Five, so the term “feminist” became a politically sensitive keyword, subject to new waves of censorship. The huge media and diplomatic response to the feminists’ detention finally pressured the Chinese government into releasing the women after 37 days, just as President Xi Jinping was preparing to host a United Nations women’s summit in New York.

Though feminism and awareness of gender issues is on the rise, the patriarchy is still strong in China – not just in the government, but in society at large, as evidenced by the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault, domestic violence, and vicious online trolling of outspoken women on social media. How widespread is China’s “feminist awakening” against the backdrop of society at large?

We are witnessing an extraordinary moment in modern Chinese history, with what could potentially become the most transformative, ground-up mobilization of the public since the pro-democracy uprising of 1989. Even though most women don’t explicitly identify as “feminist,” just look at the numbers of young women joining China’s #MeToo movement against all odds – in an environment hostile to the freedom of information – over the past few months.

China has no press freedom, no freedom of assembly, no independent judiciary, and heavy internet censorship, but women continue to come forward courageously with their stories of sexual harassment and assault in spite of their extremely slight chance of ever finding justice. These women often face severe retaliation not just from employers and peers, but sometimes state security agents who warn that they might be charged with “subversion” for acting as a “tool” of “hostile foreign forces” who are trying to interfere in China’s affairs. Nonetheless, growing numbers of women are angry about the misogyny and injustice in their lives, and they are recoiling from the state’s relentless efforts to push them into heterosexual marriage and child rearing.

In 1995, then-U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton famously declared in Beijing that “women’s rights are human rights.” Several of the feminist activists you feature in the book (most notably lawyer Wang Yu) also take up more general “human rights” concerns. Yet you note that this intersection often doesn’t work both ways, with many male human rights activists unconcerned by or guilty of patriarchal attitudes. How does feminist activism fit into the wider “human rights defender” category?

As young people in China increasingly embrace the basic ideal of gender equality, feminism is beginning to influence traditionally male-dominated social movements. Some male labor rights activists are starting to recognize that there can be no economic justice without gender justice. In recent years, sexual violence, gender discrimination, and LGBTQ rights have been at the center of landmark, precedent-setting lawsuits. In addition to enduring mistreatment by state security agents, feminist activists have had to face entrenched sexism and even sexual harassment from some male human rights defenders. Quite a few feminist activists themselves experienced sexual abuse or gender-based violence, which often fuels their fervent commitment to women’s rights.

Although so far the feminist movement has focused more on educated, middle-class women, some feminists have for years linked their activism with a deep concern for labor rights and the struggles of working-class women. The ability of Chinese women’s rights activists to connect the grievances of different marginalized groups – potentially combining them to create a mighty, intersectional force of opposition – is another reason that the Communist Party sees feminism as a threat.

You analyze the importance of the internet and social media to the rise of feminism in China. Given the ever-looming presence of the “Great Firewall,” how plugged in are young Chinese women to global feminist trends, such as the #MeToo movement (which faces heavy censorship in China)? What role do foreign debates over feminism play in shaping Chinese understandings of gender issues?

In the United States, #MeToo went viral in 2017 after the publication of news reports on famous Hollywood women sexually abused by the producer Harvey Weinstein, but in China the lack of press freedom prevents news media from conducting similar investigations. China’s version of the #MeToo movement began to take off in January 2018 when a U.S.-based graduate of a university in Beijing was inspired by #MeToo in America and posted a personal essay online about being sexually assaulted by her former professor. Her essay set off a whole chain of #MeToo-related actions online and on university campuses.

The growing rights awareness among Chinese women in recent years has been closely linked with the evolution of China’s internet and feminist social media, including the recently banned platform, Feminist Voices. As record numbers of Chinese women attend university – both at home and abroad – they have gone online and begun to challenge the sexism in their society. That so many women have seized on the global momentum of #MeToo in spite of the Great Firewall is a testament to their determination and passion. It also shows you how challenging it is for the government to stamp out a movement with such broad appeal to women in this era of global connectivity.

Even as more and more Chinese women undergo a “feminist awakening,” the Chinese government is doubling down on traditional gender roles, in the hopes of pressuring more “high-quality” (meaning middle-class, educated, ethnically Han) women into having children. Can the genie of feminism be put back in the bottle?

I hope that women across China will continue to stand up for their rights, but the government’s backlash against feminism is likely to intensify. China’s male leaders see the subordination of women – confining them to the traditional roles of dutiful wife and mother – as critical to their authoritarian rule. But feminism – which demands that women control their own bodies and reproduction – is in direct conflict with the pro-natalist, ethno-nationalist, population-planning goals of the Chinese state. The Chinese government’s crackdown on feminist activism is a form of state-level, fragile masculinity, terrified at the prospect of angry women rising up collectively to challenge the Communist Party’s political legitimacy. As China’s population ages, birth rates fall, and the workforce shrinks, the battle for Communist Party survival will become more fraught, with highly unpredictable consequences.

We are living in very perilous times not just in China but in the United States and elsewhere, with the rise of strongman authoritarianism threatening democracies around the world. The United States is ceding its global leadership role to a newly assertive China, while misogynistic autocrats bent on rolling back women’s rights have been emboldened in many countries from Russia and Turkey to the Philippines and Hungary. I believe the solution lies in supporting feminist activists in authoritarian countries around the world. We must fight for women’s rights and freedom from patriarchal oppression everywhere.