Welcome, China Watchers. This week’s guest host is Leta Hong Fincher, author of “Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China” (2018) and “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China” (2014). She is the first American to receive a PhD in sociology from Tsinghua University and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Over to you, Leta. — John Yearwood, global news editor

At least 20 Chinese feminist activists have had their Weibo accounts deleted in recent weeks after a wave of online, misogynistic attacks by nationalist trolls. Weibo’s CEO, Wang Gaofei, suggested that the women’s accounts were removed for violating the company’s terms by “inciting mass confrontation,” among other complaints. China Digital Times has tracked the removal of at least eight feminist discussion groups on another social media platform, Douban, some of which called for women in China to fight the patriarchy by refraining from marrying or having children with men. In response to the ban, the hashtag “women stick together” started to trend on Weibo, attracting almost 50 million views.

The coordinated deletion of social media accounts is the latest example of a growing conflict between the Chinese government’s crackdown on feminist activism and the emergence of a broader, feminist awakening that is beginning to transform young women in cities across China. The outcome of this conflict between the patriarchal, authoritarian state and ordinary women who are increasingly pushing back against pressure to marry and have babies could have far-reaching consequences.

Most observers expect China’s new census to show a sharp decline in the birth rate in 2020, despite the government’s much-heralded easing of its decades-long “one-child policy” in 2016. The Financial Times’s Sun Yu writes that the census is set to report China’s first population decline in five decades, but it has been held back out of fears that its results are “very sensitive.”

In addition to plummeting birth rates, China must grapple with a drastically aging population and a shrinking labor force — all of which are closely linked to the country’s decelerating economic growth, labor productivity growth, and fundamentally, the political legitimacy of the Communist Party.

China also has one of the world’s most skewed sex-ratio imbalances, with roughly 30 million more men than women in 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. With the Chinese government struggling to deliver on its promise of rapid economic growth, state media have revived some sexist elements of Confucianism, in particular trying to push the notion that a traditional family (based on marriage between a man and a virtuous, obedient woman) is the foundation of a stable government.

Carl Minzner argues in The National Interest that under the Communist Party’s coming pronatalist policy, local cadres could start to be “graded on their success in increasing — rather than reducing — birth rates in their jurisdictions.”

THE ‘FEMINIST FIVE’

It is impossible to understand China’s Communist Party without recognizing the patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism.

China’s ultimate strongman, Xi Jinping — like other autocrats around the world — views patriarchal authoritarianism as critical for the survival of the Communist Party. The Chinese government aggressively perpetuates traditional gender norms and reduces women to their roles as dutiful wives, mothers and baby breeders in the home, to minimize social unrest and give birth to future generations of skilled workers.

The more women who are free agents — independent and beholden to no one — the more they resist and disrupt the established order. It is no wonder that China’s all-male rulers feel threatened by young feminist activists, who are calling for the total emancipation of women. Although some media outlets present images of successful women executives, the majority of women in China have experienced a dramatic rollback of their rights and gains relative to men.

In his International Women’s Day address this year, Xi emphasized the importance of women’s reproductive function. “Without women, there would be no continuity of the human race,” he said. But a critical mass of women are rejecting the state’s relentless promotion of marriage and child rearing, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Despite pervasive censorship, the rise of China’s new generation of feminist activists is inextricably linked to the explosion of Weibo in 2010 and WeChat in 2011. The internet provided space to explore ideas with more freedom than in their workplaces and homes. It also allowed like-minded women throughout the country to find one another. As record numbers of Chinese women attended university, both at home and abroad, they went online and began to challenge widespread sexism and unequal treatment.

Feminist activists began to regularly participate in performance art and direct action across the country in 2012 to denounce growing gender inequality driven by market reforms. They took up the rampant scourges of domestic violence (China had no anti-domestic violence law in effect until 2016), sexual harassment, gender discrimination in employment and university admissions, even insufficient toilets for women — issues chosen because they were not too politically sensitive, but relevant enough to spark public debate.

On the eve of International Women’s Day in March 2015, authorities jailed five young women for planning to hand out stickers against sexual harassment on subways and buses. News of the arrests — the women became known as the “Feminist Five” — spread swiftly around the world, sparking an international outcry from rights organizations and world leaders. The women were released after 37 days but the term “feminism” (nüquan zhuyi) became politically sensitive and subject to frequent censorship online. Since then, hundreds of thousands of young women — mostly college-educated — became curious about feminism and spoke out about their personal experiences with sexism.

Women who had previously avoided political discussion now decided to identify themselves publicly as feminists on social media, forcing the government’s internet censors to work even more aggressively to shut down new feminist content. In January 2018, thousands of students and alumni in China signed #MeToo petitions at dozens of universities across China, demanding action against sexual harassment. Many of the petitions were deleted by censors soon after being posted, but users came up with ideas to evade the censorship, including the use of emojis for “rice” (mi) and “rabbit” (tu) to make the hashtag #RiceBunny — which sounds like “Me Too” in Mandarin.

In March 2018, the day after International Women’s Day, Weibo banned the most influential feminist social media account, Feminist Voices (nüquan zhi sheng), because it supposedly “posted sensitive and illegal information.” But even that ban failed to stop the increasingly vibrant discourse about women’s rights online. And although Chinese authorities have cracked down on feminist activism, government agencies have attempted to demonstrate that they are responsive to some of the key demands.

After a spate of high-profile #MeToo cases, China’s first-ever civil code went into effect in January, defining sexual harassment as a legal offence and requiring schools and government agencies to set up mechanisms to prevent and respond to complaints.

WAVE OF ATTACKS

The Party-state’s ongoing crackdown on feminist activists is particularly ironic, given the central importance of gender equality during the Communist revolution and the early Mao era, following the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the Chinese government publicly celebrated gender equality and boasted the biggest female workforce in the world. But in the 1990s, gender inequality deepened as China accelerated economic reforms, dismantling the Party-mandated system of equal employment for women and men.

In 1990, 73 percent of Chinese women 15 and older were in the workforce; by 2019, that figure had plunged to below 61 percent, according to the World Bank.

Concerned about declining demographics, China’s propaganda apparatus began a crass campaign in 2007 to stigmatize single, professional women in their late 20s, mocking them as “leftover” women (sheng nü) to push them into marrying and having babies for the good of the nation.

Since then, the government’s pronatalist, pro-marriage propaganda aimed at Han Chinese women has only become more intense, as policymakers continue to view women primarily as reproductive tools to realize the nation’s development goals. Most of China’s persecuted feminist activists come from the exact demographic that the government is targeting in its pronatalist propaganda: university-educated, Han women in their 20s and early 30s.

Although Chinese feminist activists eschew the appearance of overt political opposition, their underlying message is radical. By mobilizing women to break free of China’s patriarchal institutions of compulsory marriage and child rearing, feminists are sabotaging the government’s fundamental objectives of ensuring that “high-quality,” Han Chinese women remain baby breeders and docile guarantors of political stability.

The eugenic undertones of China’s population-planning objectives are unmistakable. Even as officials urge Han women to marry and get pregnant in order to “upgrade population quality,” (one of the goals outlined in China’s latest five-year plan) they are carrying out a campaign to slash births among Uyghur and other Turkic women in Xinjiang. Scholars, such as Adrian Zenz, and independent reporters have documented mass violations of Uyghur women’s reproductive rights, including forced sterilizations, abortions and forced insertion of intrauterine devices (IUDs). The United States and allies, including the U.K. and the European Union, have announced sanctions on several Chinese officials linked to what they have termed a genocide against Uyghurs.

Meanwhile, China’s misogynistic harassment campaigns online have begun to extend beyond the country’s borders to target female critics abroad, including spreading fake videos about the “dating life” of an Australia-based researcher, prompting her to temporarily delete her Twitter account. Chinese officials have used gendered lies to smear Uyghur women who have fled China and given witness accounts of their abuse, accusing some women of having “affairs” or a sexually transmitted disease. The Wilson Center published a report in January documenting China, Iran and Russia’s recent use of gendered and sexualized disinformation against women online (including your host).

It is impossible to predict whether China’s feminist movement will be able to survive this latest wave of attacks. China’s all-male rulers see gendered oppression as crucial for the future of their dictatorship, but feminism — which demands that women control their own bodies and reproduction — is in direct conflict with the eugenic, pronatalist, population-planning goals of the Chinese state. As China’s demographic challenges become more acute and the battle for Communist Party survival more fraught in coming years, the crackdown on feminism is likely to intensify.

But some of the most prominent Chinese feminists refuse to be silenced. The founding editor-in-chief of Feminist Voices, Lü Pin — now based in New York — wrote a defiant essay in Chinese for Medium after her account was deleted. “With the help of my friends, my voice will be able to penetrate the blockade and reach those who need to hear it,” she wrote. “This is not the last war.”

And now, back to your regular China Watcher programming...

— A tech update from Protocol | China. Protocol | China, backed by Robert Allbritton, publisher of Protocol and POLITICO, tracks the intersection of technology and policy in the world’s largest country. Sign up for the newsletter and learn more about Protocol’s research here. This week’s coverage includes the attempted murder of Shanghai gaming executives by a man upset over the global depiction of a female character, a look at how America’s most popular local news app is powered by AI technology birthed in China, and the failed promise of China’s rural ecommerce plans.

TRANSLATING WASHINGTON

— DOMESTIC LENS ON CHINA FEUD: President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday was loaded with domestic priorities — including competing with China to “win the 21st century.”

Biden said supporting his almost $4 trillion domestic plan is critical to proving that democracies can triumph over autocracies, such as China. Since taking office 100 days ago, Biden has talked often about what he sees as a battle between democracy and autocracy, including his plans for an upcoming democracy conference.

But on Wednesday, he framed the competition in starkly domestic terms.

“We are at a great inflection point in history. We have to do more than just build back better,” Biden said. “We have to compete more strenuously.”

In speaking to reporters ahead of the address, Biden explained why China’s Xi and other autocrats believe they can win against the United States, CNN reported.

“Things are changing so rapidly in the world, in science and technology and a whole range of other issues, that — the question is: In a democracy that’s such a genius as ours, can you get consensus in the timeframe that can compete with autocracy?”

For a deeper dive of Biden’s speech and China, check out this article from Business Insider and this one from CNBC.

— CLEARING THE AIR — OR NOT: Biden’s Climate Summit has come and gone. The meeting was good for the environment — not just because it was virtual — but its impact on U.S.-China relations is less clear.

CNN reported after last week’s summit that the United States and China now have a new area of competition — leading the world in staving off environmental catastrophe.

On April 21, Biden hosted a virtual two-day climate summit attended by 40 other world leaders, including Chinese leader Xi, who just three days earlier criticized the US for “bossing others around”at another forum.

Compared with technology, trade, geopolitics, defense and other areas of increasingly intense face-offs, climate change is an issue where decoupling is least likely — and allows most room for agreement, cooperation and potentially even joint leadership on the world stage, CNN reported. You can read more of its assessment of the meeting and the relationship here.

Translating China

CHINA AND THE ‘OSKARS': The timeline of Beijing’s response to Chloé Zhao’s historic win as the first woman of color and of Asian descent to win best director at the Academy Awards on Sunday veered from criticism to silence to praise, reports CW contributor Shirley Martey Hargis.

Initially, Chinese social media was abuzz, celebrating Zhao’s achievement. But Beijing then censored images, videos, hashtags and other social media posts. The censorship was triggered by Zhao’s comments in an interview eight years ago. She said then that China’s a “place where there are lies everywhere” and that made her feel “you were never going to be able to get out.”

Not only did Beijing quietly remove Nomadland from theatres, the movie became unsearchable under its Chinese name, “无依之地.” The Global Times cited a local critic saying that Zhao’s win was due to “the Oscars’ ‘political correctness.’” Another article stated that she was being used to “further soil U.S.-China relations,” and hoped she would “become more and more mature.”

Another now deleted article stated that Nomadland is “typically American and far from the real-life of Chinese people.” Chinese netizens were undeterred and found loopholes around the censorship, including writing “Oskars” instead of “Oscars” to criticize Beijing’s actions and continued celebrating Zhao.

Beijing’s tone then swiftly changed. English language positive headlines and comments flooded the internet. A Shanghai-based critic stated that “…her achievements demonstrate that she is a great talent and that should be praised.” Global Times pieces focused on how she honored her Chinese roots in her acceptance speech. Articles also discussed Zhao’s influence and exploring the issues of of racial equality in Hollywood.

Beijing’s new tone surprised some China watchers. “That is really encouraging. I hadn’t expected that,” said Robert Sutter, who teaches international affairs at George Washington University. “I thought that the party propaganda apparatus was organized and moving in the direction of basically trying to censor this issue…and isolate her and make it a very negative thing.”

Did China suddenly discover the value of soft power in the Zhao case? Sutter doesn’t think so.

“This just shows them to be so out of step with progress in the world,” he said. “They opposed it for a fairly minor issue that they had.”

Hot from the China Watchersphere

— UNFULFILLED PROMISES: The European Union’s stance on China is hardening, which should please Washington, POLITICO’s Stuart Lau reported from Brussels this week.

Only four months after Beijing and Brussels concluded the principles of a landmark investment agreement, a high-level internal report seen by POLITICO shows the EU is now increasingly pessimistic about keeping business interests separate from political concerns over what it calls President Xi’’s “authoritarian shift.” This tougher language reflects a new approach in the EU’s official communications on China.

The EU’s “progress report” on China also slams Beijing for “little progress” on economic promises made by the Communist leadership, particularly in regard to opening up digital and agricultural markets, addressing steel overcapacity and reining in industrial subsidies. More on Lau’s report here.

— NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang had some advice on Wednesday for German Chancellor Angela Merkel: Stay out of China’s “internal affairs,” such as human rights and the political situation in Hong Kong, POLITICO’s Hans von der Burchard reports from Brussels.

Li’s warning comes amid heightened tensions between Europe and China over Beijing’s crackdown against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the western region of Xinjiang. Last month, the EU imposed sanctions against four Chinese officials in Xinjiang, to which Beijing reacted with harsh counter-sanctions against EU diplomats, lawmakers and academics. Chinese consumers have also reacted with boycotts against some western companies.

A parliamentary committee in Germany is set to discuss “human rights violations against the Uyghurs” next month.

Thanks to: Editor John Yearwood, Ben Pauker, Shirley Martey Hargis, Stuart Lau, Hans von der Burchard, Luiza Ch. Savage and Matt Kaminski.

Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Would you like to contribute to China Watcher or comment on this week’s items? Email us at [email protected].

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