A look at three tendencies of the women’s movement in China; the feminist, Christian, and workers.

‘The Women’s Movement in China’ y K.G. Hsiany from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 4 No. 1. January 4, 1924.

The present Women’s Movement in China shows three separate tendencies:

The Working Women’s Movement, Feminism and the Women’s Christian Social Movement.

The Working Women’s Movement.

As a result of the development of international imperialism, the barriers which separated China from the outside world have been broken down and the country industrialized. Upon the ruins of the patriarchal regime, modern factories have arisen which, for the greater part, belong to foreign capitalists. The textile, silk and cigarette industry employ a whole army of women workers. The foreign capitalists, as everywhere, take advantage of the backwardness and the unorganized condition of the women workers in order to subject them to a double and threefold exploitation. Want and misery force the working women to participate in the class war.

Thus, there took place in the year 1922 and the beginning of 1923 a great number of strikes which bear witness to the awakening class consciousness and activity of the women workers. The far greater number of the strikes occurred in Shanghai, which is chiefly devoted to the textile industry and the cigarette industry. Two important strikes, each of them involving three thousand women workers, took place in a large cigarette factory in Hupei. The extent and force of the movement are evidenced by the fact that in some instances the strike lasted three or four weeks and involved 20,000 women in twenty two different branches of the concern. The strikes, some of which were successful and some of which were without success, were carried out for various sorts of demands, all of which, however, bore the stamp of the outspoken class struggle against the capitalist exploitation: For increase of wages and salaries, against wage reductions, against the worsening of the factory rules, for the shortening of the working day and, it is interesting to note in repeated cases, including the largest strike, for trade union rights and the creation and recognition of organs for conducting struggles.

The total number of strikes from the period from February 1922 till January 1923 amounted to 18, the number of workshops involved in the strikes 60, and the number of working women taking part in the strikes 30,000.

The Feminist Movement.

The feminist movement in China dates back to the Revolution of 1911, in which the women also participated. Although immediately after the overthrow of the dynasty this movement dis- played a lively activity, it weakened noticeably during the time of the reaction which lasted until 1919. With the setting up of the government in the South, the feminist movement also revived, especially in Canton. A group of women intellectuals demanded equal civil and political rights for women. These demands were eagerly supported by the youth of both sexes and in January 1920 were crowned with success. A women was elected to the municipal council of Canton, and other women were appointed as inspectors of education, as municipal officials and officials in the state service etc. In the year 1922 the students of Canton founded a political society which set itself the task of fighting for the economic, political and civil rights of women. Similar organizations were formed in Shanghai, Tientsin, Nanking, Peking and other large towns. Their object is to fight for civil equality between men and women.

The activity of the Chinese feminists consists in joint petitions and demands to parliament. The feminist program contains the following demands for women:

1. Political Rights.

2. Right of inheritance and independent disposal of property.

3. Equal pay for equal work.

4. Equal marriage rights.

5. Equality in instruction and education.

The feminist association of Shanghai has in addition, its program of demands for the women Postal employees, as well as the demand for the eight hour day for the women employed in the silk factories, further the prohibition of the employment of children under 14 years in the factories and, finally, the demand for a weekly day of rest for women workers.

The lumping together of women’s demand which bear an outspoken bourgeois character with those which would be entirely in place in a proletarian class war program of working women, reflects the two-sided character of a women’s movement which as yet has no clear orientation with regard to the classes. This is due to the fact that capitalism and bourgeois democracy in China have not yet reached that stage of development when the illusion of the universal sisterhood of the women of all classes and of every social standing, as opposed to the men, has been torn aside.

The Women’s Christian Social Movement.

Finally there exist in China Christian Women’s Organisations. (Christian Youth, Anglo-American Associations of Christian women.) They are fairly numerous and work for benevolent aims. These societies occupy themselves more or less with the working women, but in a purely petty bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic reformist sense. For instance, they set up situation bureaus for women, societies for mutual help and schools for young women. They send delegates to the International Congress for the Protection of Women’s Labour. The society in Shanghai has, for example, addressed the following requests to the municipal council of Shanghai.

1. Prohibition of night work in factories for children under twelve years of age.

2. Organization of obligatory courses in the factories for the education of young working women.

3. Hygienic conditions of work in the factories.

It further demands the organization of creches in the factories for the children of the women workers and also sought to mediate on behalf of the working women on strike in the silk industry.

Of these three kinds of women’s movement in China it is only the working women’s movement which is a mass movement. The feminist movement is limited to the intellectuals and relies upon a purely petty bourgeois ideology and opportunistic tactics which do not permit of the least revolutionary act. In spite of this however, it is to be noted that many members of the Chinese women’s organizations actively support the national revolutionary movement and thereby enter into a broader movement of the masses.

The Christian Social movement seeks to draw the masses of the working women into its ranks by demanding reforms for the bettering of the conditions of labour and the living conditions of the women. But this movement stands quite under the influence of foreign capital and continually seeks to stultify the revolutionary movement. Nevertheless, the cultural activity of this movement is accelerating the awakening of the Chinese women and is thereby creating the possibility for organization work among the broad masses of the working women and preparing the ground for bringing them into the Communist Movement.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. Inprecorr is an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1924/v04n01-jan-04-1924-inprecor.pdf