Feminist Counterpublics in Authoritarian China: Resisting Repressions While Excluding ‘Weak’ Women

Feminist Counterpublics in Authoritarian China: Resisting Repressions While Excluding ‘Weak’ Women

Earlier researchers of Chinese feminism have identified a post-2000 feminist generation whose primary approach of mobilisation is through ‘performance art’, namely bodily performance and behavioural art presented publicly on streets (Q. Wang, 2018, p. 266). However, since 2015, when a group of feminists were detained for an ‘performance art’ event, feminist demonstrations have seemingly ceased in China (Z. Wang, 2015, p. 476), at least from the public’ attention.

The fading of offline feminist activism does not indicate a complete disappearance of feminist resistance. Instead, feminists devised covert tactics to continue their activism, particularly with the help of digital media. Drawing on and extending Nancy Fraser’s theorisation of feminist counterpublics, this research looks into contemporary feminists’ experiences of online censorship and the Chinese party-state’s suppression of their offline activities. It investigates how Chinese feminists, despite censorship and state suppression, secretly and strategically expand their discourses and women-empowering events without being monitored or eliminated by the authoritarian state. In the meantime, this study also explores the downsides of these feminists’ resistance, especially from the angle of power relations. It argues that due to intricate political repressions and cultural restraints, as well as interactions with transnational feminist actors (especially within East Asia), today’s Chinese feminism reveals a neoliberal element, establishing young, urban-based, independent elite women as an ideal womanhood, while ignoring or even stigmatising housewives and women with disadvantaged backgrounds.

Yi Wang is a PhD researcher in Sociology at SPAIS, University of Bristol. Her research interests include gender, resistance, feminism, and social movement studies.