At China’s most important political gathering for women, it was mainly a man who was seen and heard.
Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, took center stage at the opening of the National Women’s Congress. A close-up of him at the congress appeared on the front page of the Chinese Communist Party newspaper the next day. From the head of a large round table, Xi gave a lecture to female delegates during the final meeting on Monday.
“We must actively promote a new kind of marriage and culture of childbearing,” he said in a speech, adding that the role of party officials was to challenge young people’s views on “love and marriage, fertility and family.” to influence.
The Women’s Congress, held every five years, has long been a forum for the ruling Communist Party to demonstrate its commitment to women. The gesture, while largely symbolic, has taken on more significance than ever this year, the first time in two decades that there have been no women in the party’s executive policy-making body.
What was striking was the way officials downplayed gender equality. Instead, they focused on using the meeting to highlight Xi’s goal for Chinese women: to get married and have children. In the past, officials had discussed the role women play both at home and in the workforce. But in this year’s speech, Xi made no mention of women in the workplace.
The party desperately needs women to have more babies. China has entered a demographic crisis as its birth rate has fallen, causing its population to shrink for the first time since the 1960s. Authorities are scrambling to reverse what experts say is an irreversible trend, trying one initiative after another such as cash handouts and tax breaks to encourage more births.
Faced with a demographic crisis, a slowing economy and what it sees as an intractable rise of feminism, the party has chosen to push women back into the home, calling on them to raise the young and care for the elderly. The work is, in Xi’s words, essential to “China’s path to modernization.”
But to some, his view sounds more like a worrying decline.
“Women in China have been alarmed by the trend and have fought back over the years,” said Yaqiu Wang, research director for Hong Kong, China and Taiwan at Freedom House, a nonprofit group based in Washington. “Many women in China are in power and united in their struggle against the dual repression in China: the authoritarian government and the patriarchal society.”
The party has failed to address many concerns and views some issues raised by women as direct challenges to its leadership. On social media, outbursts of discussion about sexual harassment, gender violence and discrimination are silenced. Support for victims often disappears. Feminists and outspoken advocates have been jailed, and a #MeToo movement that briefly flourished in 2018 has been pushed underground.
The language used by senior officials at the Women’s Congress in Beijing was a new glimpse into how the party sees the role of women. Xi has pushed a hard agenda to advance his vision of a stronger China, which includes a revival of what he sees as traditional values. At the congress, he encouraged women leaders to “tell good stories of family traditions and guide women in playing their unique role in promoting the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation.”
In a departure from a two-decade tradition, Xi’s deputy, Ding Xuexiang, failed to mention a stock phrase in an opening speech at the congress: that gender equality is a fundamental national policy.
And while Xi nodded to gender equality, he spent most of his speech elaborating on family, parenthood and fertility.
This is in stark contrast to a decade ago, when top officials emphasized the importance of both equality and women’s self-realization, says Hanzhang Liu, a professor of political studies at Pitzer College, who has covered speeches by senior officials at several conferences over the past two years. investigated. decades.
“Women’s work was once about women for themselves, women for women’s sake,” Liu said, referring to party jargon for gender issues.