Susan Greenhalgh and Xiying Wang
172 μ£¥³¤ ¬μμ¬
story, it is one committed by the Chinese
Communist Party, which cracked down
on young feminists who were only
trying to advance its ocial agenda.DAUGHTERS AND CITIZENS
As Hong Fincher describes it, the basic
story oÊ her book is a “conÁict between
the patriarchal, authoritarian state and
ordinary women who are increasingly fed
up with the sexism in their daily lives”—
a conÁict pitting good feminists against a
bad party-state (which she generally
reduces to “the government”). Although
this narrative oers a sense o moral
clarity, it requires limiting the cast to
two main actors (feminist activists and
the state), Áattening out both in the
process, and omitting other relevant
actors: corporations, nongovernmental
organizations, and communities such as
villages and neighborhoods.
In this way, the book’s plot recalls
classic tropes o the Cold War: a cruel,
power-hungry communist party-state,
unwilling to brook any popular challenge
to its authority, oppresses its people and
provokes heroic resistance. There is an
undeniable element o truth to such
stories today, as the harsh authoritarian
regime o Chinese President Xi Jinping
cracks down on dissidents and rights
advocates o all sorts. In Xi’s China, the
invisible line that separates what is
permissible from what is impermissible
is moving; with every new arrest, the
party-state seems to shift it. The Femi-
nist Five believed that their activities fell
on one side o the line. For reasons that
are hard to know for certain, the state
security apparatus concluded otherwise.
The trouble with accounts o this
kind, including Hong Fincher’s, is that
they tend lionize their subjects and robIn a private conversation with one o the
authors o this review (Wang), Wei
conÃded that she felt uncomfortable
with the title and was considering asking
Hong Fincher to change it.
This sort o distortion extends beyond
the book’s title. Throughout, Hong
Fincher inaccurately elevates the Femi-
nist Five’s protest against sexual harass-
ment and sexism to a direct and open
challenge to the Chinese state. But the
notion o Chinese women collectively
and openly challenging the state—either
today or in the long history o women’s
movements in China—lies beyond the
realm o political plausibility.
Today, as in the past, most Chinese
feminists, including the Feminist Five,
believe that their agenda is consistent
with the Chinese Communist Party’s
long-standing ocial policy and the
Chinese constitution’s guarantee o
“equal rights for men and women.” The
Feminist Five’s activism aimed to turn
that goal into reality, but it never
escalated into an attempt to contest the
legitimacy o party rule. Rejecting
strategies such as the protests and dem-
onstrations used by Western feminists,
they chose the mild tactics o perfor-
mance art to express their ideas. They
seldom directly critiqued government
policies; instead, they submitted
proposals to China’s legislature, advo-
cated a new law on protecting women,
and skillfully referred to China’s
ratiÃcation o international agree-
ments, such as the Convention on the
Elimination o All Forms o Discrimi-
nation Against Women. They deliber-
ately chose topics, such as domestic
violence, on which their positions were
in the line with national policy. I
there is a betrayal involved in this