Intricate Connections: The Reactivated Confucianism and Dilution of Maoist Feminism

As is generally recognized, Confucianism served as a vehicle for rulers and elite scholars to prescribe the “proper” conduct of Chinese women for centuries. Revisionist literature on women exercising their agency in traditional China notwithstanding, Confucian ideas and practices, as commonly defined in Chinese history, functioned to constrain women’s lives. Interestingly and ironically, long after the scathing attack on Confucianism during the New Culture Movement in the early 20^th century, one that was intensified by the Communist government during the Mao era, Confucianism has made a comeback with a vengeance since the onset of economic reforms four decades ago. Despite the political rhetoric of “iron girls” holding “half of the sky,” intended to enhance the official policy of promoting gender equality, the policy, implemented in a top-down fashion, failed to eradicate the vestige of gender hierarchy, thus allowing the resurgence of Confucian influence.

Intriguingly, a renewed Confucianism has converged with a bourgeoning capitalism, two seemingly incompatible systems, to exercise a dual impact on women’s lives. The economic reforms, while generating new opportunities for educated and professional women, have also created hardships for their working-class and rural counterparts. During the wave of industrial privatization, female workers were the first ones to get laid off. The social and cultural transformations wrought by economic modernization gave rise to the reemergence of prostitution and a modified form of the concubine system. While these changes are not necessarily unique for an industrializing society in the global context, they nonetheless bear distinct “Chinese characteristics” in terms of the resurrection of certain antiquated values and practices. The rather seamless confluence between the Confucian tradition and the new commercial culture, despite the three decades of Maoist insistence on “women’s liberation,” has worked to dilute the potency of Chinese feminism.