1. Lecture 8: Gender and Communism in Maoist China

3. Confucianism How to be an ideal man Humanistic
Relationships were strongly hierarchical
Kong Fuzi (Confucius)
551–478 BC

4. The 5 Bonds of Relationship:
1. Ruler – Ruled
2. Father – Son
3. Elder brother –
Younger Brother
4. Husband – Wife
5. Friend – Friend
In family, woman subordinate to father,
then husband, then son.
Strong age hierarchies
Chinese family was patriarchal, patrilineal,
and patrilocal

5. Foot-binding
Upper and middle classes (only occasionally peasant girls)
“Three inch golden lotus”
Necessary to make a good marriage
Highly eroticised
Several governments attempted to ban (late Qing, Nationalists, and Communists)
Comparison between
an unbound and bound
foot

6. A pair of shoes
for bound feet
The bandages can
never be removed or
the foot begins to
revert to its natural
shape

7. The bones in the four small toes were broken and
forced underneath the foot over a period of time

8. Girls in the late Qing Dynasty

9. Chastity arch in Zhejiang province erected to honour a guafu (chaste widow)

10. Gender and the Communist Revolution
Qing Dynasty overthrown in 1911 by Guomindang (Nationalists) led by Dr Sun Yat-sen. Founded the Republic of China 1912.
Followed by decades of warlordism as Nationlists struggled to keep control.
On-off civil war between Nationalists and Communists
The Communists, led by Mao Zedong, took control of mainland China founded the People’s Republic of China 1949.

11. Early Communists during the May Fourth Movement (1915-1921) writing on ‘woman question’:
Criticised Confucian morality code
Criticism of treatment of daughters and wives
Marriage is analogous to prostitution (Engels)
Need educated and economically independent women
Modernisation dependent on improving women’s lives

12. 1920s-1940s:
Communist focus turned from workers’ revolution to peasant revolution
Implementation of guerrilla tactics against the Guomindang
Change of policy - several initiatives shut down
Women’s movement denounced as counter-revolutionary and bourgeois

13. Mao Zedong ( )
addressing the crowd
1st October 1949
Chairman Mao declaring
the People’s Republic of
China

14. After the Communists Came to Power
1950 Marriage Law (“Divorce Law”)
Women could seek divorce
Prohibited polygamy, concubinage, and child betrothal
1950 Land Reform Law
Eliminated landlord class
Land redistributed
Women had right to land

15. “The life of the peasants is good after
Land Reform”, 1951

16. The First Five Year Plan 1953-57
Peasants encourages to form/join agricultural collectives
Hukou (household registration system) introduced in 1956
Attempts to enhance status and education of rural women
Welfare state created for urban workers
Banishing of religious institutions, replaced with political meetings and propaganda sessions

17. The Great Leap Forward 1958-61
Political and economic campaign
Rapid development of agricultural and industrial sectors should take place in parallel
Private ownership abolished
Peasants forced to join communes
Followed by a lengthy famine (CCP state 15 million died; scholars believe 20 to 45 million)

18. The People’s communes are good, 1958
(The Great Leap Forward)

19. Tractor girls – symbol
of women’s equality
and Chinese modernity

20. “When the dining hall is well-run, the production spirit will increase”, 1959

21. Conference poster for 50th anniversary of Great
Chinese Famine. The famine ran parallel to the
Great Leap Forward ( )

22. The Cultural Revolution 1965-76
Mao’s violent solution to tackle existing feudal and patriarchal ideology
Creation of the Red Guards to punish bourgeois party members and citizens (“struggle sessions”)
“Women hold up half the sky”
Mass destruction of cultural and religious artefacts, bourgeois and foreign literature, paintings, and old buildings
“Down to the countryside” movement
No formal education for a decade

23. Red Guards holding Mao’s Little Red Book

24. The 1964 revolutionary ballet Red Detachment of Women

25. Struggle sessions

26. “Educated youths must go down to the countryside
to receive education from the poor and lower-middle
class peasants” 1969

27. “Hold high the great red
banner of Mao Zedong
Thought--thoroughly smash
the rotting counter-
revolutionary revisionist line
in literature and art”.
1967