“‘[We] must destroy the idea of the iron [rice] bowl. . . . [The idea that] workers can be hired but cannot be fired exists nowhere in the world. Workers can be fired in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe’”— reported in 1968 as a quote of Liu Shaoqi.

 (Hong Yung Lee, The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, p. 131.)

 

             One major difference between neoclassical “economics” and Marxist “political economy” is that the neoclassical economists do not speak of labor-power, only labor. To Marxists, labor-power is only the capability to do work that people bring to the market. Labor is the actual work. When a capitalist hires a worker, he pays for the worker’s labor-power. Except for wages by piece-rates or the like it is usually too cumbersome to contract and pay for each task that a worker does.

             Consequently, the neoclassical does not have a theory of firing except as a short-term cost or cost of turnover. On the other hand, the Marxian political economy approach recognizes that firing is a basic method for extracting labor from labor-power. Workers who do not accomplish enough are fired, so that capitalists do not have to stipulate exactly how much work they want done in their contracts. Coercion can even apply to the hiring and firing of piece-rate workers and is a general rule that the capitalist class abides by to get things done.

             Of course, there is the carrot as well as the stick. Workers can be played off against each other over promotions and wage raises. In some Western countries, the unions can largely determine issues of the workfloor in return for stability of the workforce. Corporate welfare programs, retirement schemes and guaranteed promotions and raises all work toward a loyal workforce that wants to work and not be fired.

             There is a big movement in China to increase wage differentials and thus link income to work done. In the original move to bonus-oriented salaries for hard work, firms handed out so many bonuses that the CCP took this as a sign of egalitarianism. In order to prevent indiscriminate bonus-granting, the state imposed a tax on enterprise bonuses. At the same time the limit holding bonuses to two months of a worker’s salary was abolished.

             Treasured are the jobs in the urban enterprises because they earn so much more than jobs in the countryside. Loyalty to a particular firm is less important. Any job in the city is guaranteed various subsidies characteristic of a welfare state. In this section, the focus will not be on the carrot of urban jobs but on the stick of contracts, sexism and the state.

            Sexism and racism can also be expected from capitalism. Playing off one group of workers against another is a favorite strategy of capitalism. In China, sexism is a part of tradition that the state capitalist class draws on to divide workers, as the author will soon demonstrate. Undoubtedly, racism or ethnic chauvinism play a role too, but the author is not qualified to explain what relations of domination may exist between the Han nationality and the other nationalities that make up China.

             Neoclassical textbooks leave out the issue of firing in the real world. They teach that labor is simply a matter of hours spent at the workplace. Whether anything gets done—labor—does not matter:

                        The total supply of labor means the total

                        number of hours of work that the population is

                        willing to supply. This quantity, which is often

                        called the supply of effort, is a function of the

                        size of the population, the proportion of the

                        population willing to work, and the number of

                        hours worked by each individual.

  

Missing is any discussion of how hard a worker works. Moreover, class power seemingly does not affect economic behavior. “Economic theory assumes that the same principles underlie each decision made within the firm and that the actual decision is uninfluenced by who makes it. The key behavioural assumption is that the firm seeks to maximize its profit.” The radical rejoinder to the assumption that power does not matter is to ask what would happen if the worker tried to fire his boss in order to maximize profits for the firm? Clearly there are some limitations concerning the relative powers of classes that influence profit-making decisions. By assuming as given the existence of the institutional relationship of firing, neoclassical economist is serving a very crude ideological purpose—the mystification of class relations.

            However, the Chinese economists, as explained earlier are more conscious bourgeois propagandists than their Western counterparts. They recognize the difference between actual work completed and the potential to do that work. They have a theory of firing and they intend to use it. “Nor will workers strive for high production in a system in which they can always be hired but never fired.” The post-Mao economists would like to pass this off as a “law” of human nature. The people are inherently lazy and unchangeable according to these economists. Thus, the new policy is to fire workers for efficiency reasons. In fact, the Chinese report that in some places only 40% of workers dismissed are given jobs in other places. In Beijing 88.2% of a group of 1700 extrabudgetary and illegal workers were fired. One half of 2200 illegal workers total have been fired. Undoubtedly, the fact that there are 7 million additional unemployed workers each year in China also hurts the position of these fired workers.

             Hong Kong sources convey a Chinese report that “the central task of this reform is to reduce the number of permanent staff and workers and to practice the system of contract workers.” The new drive is necessitated by the chaos in capital construction to be discussed in the section on the anarchy of production.

 

The swelling capital construction ranks and the excessive

              number of permanent staff and workers have always been a

              major reason for the low efficiency in China’s capital

              construction. The adoption of the system of contract workers

             is conducive to streamlining state capital construction ranks and

              raising labor efficiency.

The reason for the increased use of contract workers is unabashedly coercive. A report from the Yantai Prefectural Construction Company in Shandong Province is paraphrased as saying

                        that when the system of contract workers is

                        adopted, the enterprises are able to increase

                        or reduce the number of workers according

                        to the needs of different tasks and that the

                        contract workers, who are more willing to obey

                        orders and bear hardships and who usually

                        have a higher rate of work attendance, are

                        better than the permanent workers. The use

                        of contract workers will help the enterprises

                        raise their labor productivity.

  

According to some Chinese economists, regulations for the use of contract workers should allow that contract workers be paid more than permanent workers, thus driving a further wedge into working class unity for the benefit of making the workforce more temporary in nature.

            In any case, the new use of contract workers is only the tip of the iceberg. Now, a new “labor contract system” is being prepared for the nation, as apart from the old “contract workers.” So far “7.8 percent of all workers in state-owned enterprises” or 7.5 million workers fall under the new system. Already as seen, the independent financial unit in the countryside is now the family which contracts out to the team or more directly to the state. Now the labor system in the cities is going through a series of experiments and reforms.

                        In order to eliminate the maladies of “the

                        iron rice bowl” and “everyone eating from the

                        same big pot” existing in our present labor

                        system, a series of experiments has been

                        developed in the labor contract system, in

                        Shanghai, Beijing, Guangxi, Henan, Jiangsu,

                        Gangu, and Heilongjiang. . . . Marked results have been

                        achieved.

  

While the Chinese ruling class has a theory of firing that the Western economists do not have, the Chinese are learning about the mystification potential of law and contracts from the West. The Chinese rulers are now talking about the equal status of parties to a contract as if there were no classes and class power. In neoclassical theory, contracts are voluntary and the mobility or freedom of “factors” of production is assured. The Chinese rulers are going in for this mystification of the social relations of capital too. “A labor contract is also a type of economic contract, and therefore possesses the normal characteristics of an economic contract; that is, both contracting parties are of equal status, and draw up a certain agreement voluntarily and according to law.” However, “Naturally, when setting out the labor contract system, it is necessary for us to use foreign law documents for reference, but this is by no means to say that our labor contract system can be equated with the capitalist labor contract system.” In short, the Chinese ruling class would like to make use of that great ally of exploitation—the law—but in the process can not help offering the very critique that exposes class rule.

            Class power can also be seen behind the new policy of labor immobility in the labor contract system. “According to the agreement, the laborer becomes part of the unit’s staff and workers, undertakes a certain type of work and abides by the internal regulations of the unit; while the unit issues wages according to the quantity and quality of labor.” At another point in the same report, there is a discussion of “buying and selling labor,” as if to say that the Chinese state capitalists have done better than the Western capitalists in buying labor, not just labor-power.

            In any case, the class power behind issues of labor mobility even smacks of corporatism. “Labor service companies” are to be set up to collect up workers to distribute and to take care of. “Social insurance and welfare may be the responsibility of labor service companies.” Furthermore, “collective welfare facilities should be set up, so as to provide conditions beneficial to workers’ housing, convalescence, rest, and recreation.” Moreover, “strengthen the work of labor service companies, making them responsible for the management, technical training, introduction to employment, self-help through production, and personnel awaiting employment and for social insurance and welfare work.” If these labor service companies really come to play all these roles of discipline and welfare, they will bring about a new chapter of corporatism in the world. If corporatist style unions set up by the state are to coopt the working class and provide workers what they need, where will the money come from? Will this entail an expansion of existing welfare efforts or a consolidation of old ones? This is not known yet, but in 1986 the Chinese government credited labor service companies with cutting down unemployment since 1979.

                        Labour service companies now total 38,674. They have set

                        up 75,000 production enterprises, 108,000 commerce,

                         catering and service enterprises, and 26,000 construction,

                        transporting and loading service companies.

                        They have provided jobs for 5.57 million people and their

                        sales volume from 1981 to 1984 was 477 billion yuan.

 

             One of the main points Huang Shilin, the author of a 1983 article on the labor contract system, tries to make is that the new system should not be confused with contract labor. This new system, originally envisioned by Liu Shaoqi,

             can easily give people the impression that

             the implementation of the labor contract

             system is merely a question of using part

             of the labor force of an enterprise as

             contract laborers, and nothing more than

             adding social insurance and welfare to what is

             basically temporary work; it will, therefore,

             be very easy for people to treat such workers

             as “second class citizens.”

  

In addition, “this attitude is not without justification at present.” However, there are supposed to be some real differences between this system and the contract work previously discussed. First, “the laws of their application are different.” One operates by “labor laws” and the other by “civil or economic law.” Secondly, once the new system is in place, distinctions between casual and permanent labor will be broken down. Everyone “will carry out their work according to the stipulations of labor contracts.” The ruling class intends to be fair about coercing the masses as equally as possible.

      Still, there will be some inequalities upon introduction of the new system.

             The fact that after the introduction of the

             labor contract system the jobs of some people

             will not be as stable as those of regular

             workers, and that in insurance and welfare

             will no longer be undertaken wholly by the

             unit, gives some people misgivings . . . and

             arouses in them doubts as to its socialist

             nature. This attitude is incorrect.

  

Indeed, “some workers, after their contracts have expired or been terminated, may find themselves in a temporary situation of ‘unemployment’ between jobs.” Here the state capitalists blame the masses by saying “those laborers who find difficulty in gaining employment due to their labor attitude or poor working ability” will be taken care of by the state. Overall, it is not hard to see why labor contracts have not been popular: the regime has only managed to implement them for new workers and of those new workers in Canton, one poll shows that only 31% support the labor contract system.

            In agriculture, the state is also taking a blame-the-victim approach. “Help the poor stations” are being set up in the rural areas by prosperous and technically astute peasants. Financial aid to the poor is considered pretty small—1.5 billion yuan a year or 8.6% of the state’s aid to agriculture.

             This raises some differences between welfare capitalism and socialism. Under socialism, poor individuals do not go to departments or stations for help. They receive education in group practices—collective action. Poor individuals raise their technical and material level through the team, brigade and commune. Welfare states can be criticized not only because they never go far enough but because they are subject to fiscal austerity. Rugged individuals out for themselves will not help others when there is a crunch. In collective labor, people see their welfare as unitary. The group can organize politically and economically against the attacks of nature and exploiters. Using a socialist cover consistently, the CCP is installing a less than wealthy welfare state to coopt and pacify the people. In case this approach does not work, the bourgeoisie is starting to implement corporatist labor schemes historically associated with fascism.

                                                                                                                              

 SEXISM AND THE DIVISION OF THE WORKING CLASSES

  

             Liberal theory has an inadequate approach to race and sex discrimination. The Liberal explanation for the lower incomes of minorities with the same job qualifications is that consumers must prefer the goods produced by the mainstream group. Therefore, the employer prefers to hire mainstream workers. If the employers could sell the goods produced by minorities, then it would pay employers to hire them and pay them less. With time, the demand for minority workers would increase as employers caught on about the wage differentials. Thus, without consumers’ and employers’ prejudiced tastes there would be no discrimination according to the bourgeois economist. However, since most people buy products without knowing who produced them, this bit of neoclassical theory is as ridiculously ahistorical and anti-institutional as the rest. There is perhaps some concern with the barriers that minorities face in becoming capitalists, but for the most part, neoclassical theory has little worthwhile to say about persistent discrimination.

             The problem of discrimination is that the institutions of capitalism are premised on the exploitation of one group by another. For a reason perhaps not fully explained here, it were as if capitalists did better to discriminate against minorities and women than to hire them individually as part of competition amongst capitalists. For the case of China, it is relatively easy to provide evidence that discrimination against women is a conscious policy advocated and utilized by at least sections of the ruling class.

            This conscious sexism advocated in official press organs is largely a new phenomenon of post-Mao China—something that the Gang of Four never would have tolerated. It is important, therefore, in looking at sexism to notice not only the constant historical presence of patriarchal oppression, but also the variables affecting the elimination of that oppression. To see the importance of the Cultural Revolution in the battle against sexism, one must take a historical view of patriarchy in China and not lightly conclude that patriarchal oppression in one period of time was the same as in another period.

             Women face greater discrimination now that China has entered the post-Mao era. The “woman question” is now treated generically with no distinctions made for class and largely with the view that what is good for China is good for women. Consequently, the mass-mobilization and political campaigns initiated by the Cultural Revolutionaries have ended. The style of the Thermidorians is to act as if the problem of discrimination will be solved by the market and the Four Modernizations.

             Trends in the workforce in post-Mao China have been unfavorable to women. According to the CCP, women have increased their share of the urban workforce from 33.1% in 1978 to 36.3% in 1982. At the end of 1985, the percentage of female staff and workers stood at 36.4%. However, 60 to 70% of these workers are recent graduates from school. This fact reinforces the claim of Phyllis Andors that the Chinese are making women into a temporary labor force in the cities. On the other hand, Andors believes that women’s preponderance in textiles and other export-oriented light industries (concentrated in special economic zones that their own openly pro-capitalist rules) may give them new power given the new emphasis on exports and the opening to the West.

             However, the greater emphasis on competition with the West and hence technology is a double-edged sword for women. As seen in the earlier chapter on technology, the technical elite has resumed its traditional importance in China. Ideologically, workers are being drilled into respect for the intelligentsia: “Staff members and workers must be made really aware that respect for knowledge and intellectuals fully conform to the fundamental interests of the working class and the entire nation, and constitutes an indispensable social quality for the working class.” The shift to the technical elite away from mass-mobilization is a particularly big loss for women because there are fewer women in the technical elite than in the workforce as a whole. While women compose 43.70 percent of of the workforce, they are only 31.6 percent of those employed in scientific and technological areas. In addition, Women compose a mere 10.5% of the senior Chinese scientists and engineers—7,400 out of 70,000. The then CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang said, “My dear female compatriots, you want true equality with men. But without education and scientific-technological knowledge and skills, how are you to do so? You lack the qualifications.” The shift of power to experts largely represents a new justification for the subordination of women as well as an actual structural subordination.

            Similarly the shift away from mass-mobilization toward cadres who “decide everything” is detrimental to women. “Women cadres who assume leadership positions on every front only come to 10.4 percent of the total.”

Men also compose 79.35 percent of the personnel of administration and party organs.

             The unemployment brought on by the capitalist social revolution has also resulted in outright discrimination in hiring. According to Ran Maoying, 80 to 90% of employers at a “labor exchange meeting” in Beijing requested males only. At the Beijing Institute of Foreign Languages in 1983, graduates were equal proportions of men and women, but a majority of employers wanted only men. At the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, one-third of all employers making job offers in 1984 accepted only women—including a library, medical school and printing institute. Some enterprises openly accept inferior male candidates for jobs and reject all women. Others accept women only when they reach their prime.

            The unemployment situation has put some young men in the position of openly favoring the return of women to the household. While party newspapers print the letters and concerns of these young men, some periodicals also propose that women take three or four years for pregnancy and maternity leave.

             Numerous biological determinist arguments and theories of human nature, sometimes masquerading as Marxism, have appeared in recent years to justify the oppression of women. One argument is that although women may be better educated than men they are inferior in other ways and hence deserving of their employment fates.

            Other arguments are meant to highlight the rationality of a division of labor subordinating women. Typical of the uncritical analyses, one compares China with the United States, Soviet Union, France and Czechoslovakia and finds that Chinese men do fewer hours of home chores than Chinese women, but more hours than the men of these other presumably more “advanced” countries.

             At the same time that modernization favors the highest technical stratum and men, the Dengist policies reinforce barriers to women in education. With the introduction of quasi-private farming, families have been pulling their kids, especially girls, out of school in order that they may contribute to the family’s income. “The proportion of school-age children at school actually fell” between 1978 and 1981. In 1985, according to the State Education Commission, parents kept home 3.5 million girls. One observer found a factory that had drawn children from neighboring villages. Phyllis Andors remarks on the trend.

                        The inability of the rural areas to provide

                        even elementary education for all children,

                        combined with the cutbacks in aid from urban

                        areas, the decline of the xia-xing movement

                        and the decreasing opportunities for rural

                        youth to receive college education in light

                        of the reinstitution of the examination

                        system, will make it more difficult for women

                        to gain those skills needed for industrial

                        work.

  

In particular, the ending of the xia-xiang movement has undermined the position of women in society. First, once youth were no longer sent to the countryside, China found itself with an unemployment problem for the first time since 1958. The two main sources of unemployment in the urban areas are youth who returned from the countryside and urban school-leavers. Returned youth are alone responsible for doubling the unemployment rate. Of these urban unemployed youth, about 70% are women. Again this group serves to demonstrate the temporary nature of the female workforce and coercive potential in having a reserve army of unemployed taken from youth and women as groups. This kind of fragmentation of the working class has been used to coerce it into the contract system, work in the Western-owned factories and generally intensified labor.

             In contrast, the countryside movement, especially from 1968 to 1976, helped women break into jobs formerly held only by men. Young women from the urban areas—sometimes one half of the students sent out to the countryside —took jobs of great responsibility because they were highly skilled and needed for modernization in the countryside. Indeed, many of these role- model women decided to stay in the countryside and marry beneath their traditional social station. Those that married in the countryside received favorable publicity for breaking down the urban/rural division.

             The ending of the countryside movement was followed by retrogression in the official line on women in 1978. Women were only slowly to break away from the double burden of housework and agricultural or industrial work. “Women workers, commune members and women scientists and technicians need to work hard and study, but they have to spend a considerable portion of their time tending to housework and children.” Carl Riskin epitomized the new look of modernization in a footnote. “The major attraction of fall 1980 in the windows of Beijing’s largest department store was a complete modern kitchen, in which stood a Western mannequin hovering over a mobile serving table labeled (in English) ‘wifely wage.’” Another problem created by modernization was explained by Chinese official Wan Li. “The problem is the sharp increase in marketable grain within a short period. He said that we used to say ‘good housewives can hardly cook a meal without rice.’ Now we have [an] abundant supply of rice, but we are running short of ‘good housewives.’” The government sums up the role of women: “Women form the main force in logistics. Among them are women childcare and education workers, salesclerks, cooks, street sweepers, nurses, barefoot doctors and other service personnel who are making extraordinary contributions in their ordinary posts.” Even officially, the goals of the Four Modernizations are not inspiring for those seeking women’s liberation.

             The actuality of the return to quasi-private farming in the countryside is even worse. “It is the redistribution of production back to the household which more than any other factor has repercussions for the productive activities of peasant women.” In collective work, women had higher visibility and a chance to learn various skills. Now, women are likely to be “employed in traditionally prescribed occupations” and “will be increasingly confined to the household.” The responsibility system puts a premium on having children as a source of labour for family plots (unless paring of family plots is used as a disincentive for having children) and a premium on labor done at home.

            In contrast, women in the Maoist period broke through tradition. Women rose partly as a result of the countryside movement and partly by local initiatives and mass-mobilization reminiscent of the Great Leap. By 1975, 20 to 30% of the workforce in rural industry was composed of women. In Lin County of Henan, up to 40% of the workers in industry were women, largely thanks to the Great Leap precedent. Moreover, the Great Leap directly encouraged women to join the labor force, but it also created favorable structural conditions. With the creation of community dining rooms to take care of cooking chores, the labor of women outside the home increased an estimated 30% in Henan Province and labor productivity of women in Zhejiang Province, 47% in seasonal labor. Thus, even in the jobs formerly reserved for men in China, women were making strides because of their part in mass-mobilization.

             This aggressive championing of women is part of the Thermidor’s flattering indictment of the Cultural Revolution.

             During the “cultural revolution,” influenced

             by the “Left” thinking, the slogans “equality

             of men and women” and “what man can do, woman

             can do” were overstressed. Many women workers

             regarded it an honour to do jobs beyond their

             physical ability.

  

Feminist and China expert Elisabeth Croll finds a material basis for this attitude in the current division of labor. “The allocation of their [women’s--author] labour to agricultural production organized by the household, to domestic sidelines and to domestic labour is likely to make any further redefinition of the sexual division of labour and improvement in the political and socio-economic status of peasant women much more difficult in the future.” Outside of their role in the workforce, women have faced ideological and social setbacks as well under the post-Mao leadership. These ideological setbacks will place limitations on the contributions of women to China.

             Morally speaking, a basis for women’s work in the house was established as early as the campaign against Jiang Qing. “From time immemorial women have been the source of all evil,” “Down with China’s modern witch,” “procuress Lan P’ing,” and “the woman devil Chiang Ch’ing” were all phrases that appeared during the campaign. Moreover,

             a relative of Mao is described as

             “encumbered by outstanding personal problems.

             Although she was over 30 years old, she had

             never had a boy friend.” She was an “old

             maid.” Her “lackey,” Tang Wensheng, was also

             an “old maid,” and “unable to succeed with men

             at either a high or low level and never able

             to find a suitable husband.” They were a “pair of

             female tyrants.”

  

  

Rita Helling found these quotes in the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service documents. They are therefore easily accessible. Other statements can be found that directly speak to the moral responsibilities of women by the neo-Confucian standards.

             The problems that usually concern women

             comrades are the burdens of children and

             household chores. Should we blame them

             because of their burdens? When you blame

             them for having children and therefore,

             being cumbersome, you should listen to your

             conscience and ask yourselves whether you

             have helped them solve their problems.

  

             The quote goes onto say that the work of women in kindergartens and nurseries is helpful to production, but the point is that men should help women with “their problems” of housework and family. Speeches by Kang Keqing, a female CCP veteran received renewed attention as early as September 1977 for emphasizing the same sort of moral obligations of women.

             The moral obligations of women are of course phrased in the rhetoric of revolution. “‘The future of the revolution and the hopes of the motherland rest with the children . . . The bringing up of such a mammoth new force is a great undertaking for the whole of society and primarily for the women.’” “One of the five major tasks assigned to women by the National Women’s Congress in 1978 was to ‘bring up revolutionary successors with care. We must educate women with children to nurture carefully the next generation and turn their children into worthy revolutionary successors.’” Croll concludes that “in all probability the demands on women’s labour may be intensified” as a result of policies loading domestic work on the shoulders of women.

             Socially speaking, women came to be considered “generically.” The main responsibility of the women’s mass- organizations is to ensure the Four Modernizations. The Women’s Federation attempted to resist the use of women models in advertising in magazines and billboards, but failed. In 1978, the issue of class was dropped from the concerns of women. Indeed, the lowest common denominator uniting the country on the question of women is back in force—patriarchal ideology.

             Female infanticide is not a conscious part of the CCP’s ideology, but the lack of mass political campaigns to discredit sexism is striking given the recent resurgence of this ancient patriarchal atrocity. In some areas in places such as Anhui, female babies only number one fifth the number of male babies in what the Chinese admit is a recent development. Furthermore,

                        There is a production brigade in Huaiyuan county in which

                        more than forty infant girls were drowned in 1980 and 1981.

                        In the first quarter of 1982 in Meizhuang Production Brigade,

                        Junwang commune, eight infants were born. Three boys were

                        in good health. Of the five girls, however, three were drowned

                        and two abandoned.

The reasons for this are many. The state offers incentives to have one child and disincentives to have more than two. Since parents are less likely to want to keep having children till they get a boy, they kill girls. The problem is especially strong in the rural areas.

             Boys are considered as providers for old age. Women, by custom, marry off and are not considered to be obliged to the parents. In addition, male children are key to continuing one’s lineage, which by tradition is also of utmost importance. The existence of this custom led the People’s Daily to call “remnant feudalist ideology” the “principal contributing factor” to female infanticide.

            Scientifically, however, this is a dissatisfying explanation. The more years that pass since China overthrew feudalism, the weaker traditions that constitute “remnant feudalist ideology” supporting female infanticide should be. In modernization theory terms, the continual increase in China’s prosperity should also steadily undercut tradition. Yet, it appears that female infanticide is enjoying a resurgence.

__________________________________________________________________

County            Birth                           Total               %Boy

                        year 

 

Weiqi              1979                11,522 5,950               51.6

                        1980                11,554 6,115               52.9

Huaiyuan        1980                13,487 7,593               56.3

                        1981                10,768 6,266               58.2

Source: People’s Daily, 4/7/83, Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Stanley Rosen ed., vol. xx, no. 3, (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Spring 1988), p. 46. Weiqi and Huaiyuan counties are in Anhui province.

__________________________________________________________________

Whereas the boy to girl infant birth ratio should be about 1.06 to 1, in China nationally, the ratio is 1.085 to 1.

            There are at least three new factors that contribute to the strength of “remnant feudalist ideology,” which should probably be relabelled “rising capitalist ideology.” One is the change after the death of Mao to put pressure on families to have one child; however, this alone does not determine that families will choose to have boys if they have only one child. Thus, this explanation is inadequate by itself. The second factor is the introduction of family farming, which gives peasants the incentive to have more boys to work on the family plots of land, especially to do the heavier labors of carrying water and thatching roofs. In addition, the new outlook on inheritance and prolonged leasing of land reinforce traditions concerning the continuation of one’s lineage through boys.

            The third factor is the general increase in the structural oppression of women. During the countryside movement, as seen, men were encouraged to move in with their wives’ families and women were able to break down the traditional patterns of employment. Now, however, women are more and more subject to the patriarchy.

            A survey of mothers who had baby girls, shows that they themselves had ambiguous feelings about the baby girls, but their husbands and relatives were quite clear. In some cases, men beat wives who give birth to female babies. 16 out of 65 young rural women who gave birth to baby girls cited beatings by their husbands as reasons for not being happy about having the girl. 5 out of the 65 also mentioned beatings by the parents-in-law. A letter justifying this practice was published in the Worker’s Daily in 1982. Similar letters preaching the innate superiority of men have been published. One editor justifies the letter publishing by saying that the one-child policy forces these issues into serious consideration.

            Short of violence, the patriarchy has many other channels. Of the 53 young rural women out of 65 who were unhappy with having baby girls, 100% cited “low spirits” and “moaning and groaning” by the husband. 80% cited the parents-in-law’s turning “a cold shoulder” and 60% the husband’s turning of a cold shoulder. 58% cited abuse by parents-in-law, 55% by the husband. 28% of the women worried about divorce threats by the husband and 37% were brought unhappiness by parents-in-law who were inciting divorce.

            For themselves, 75% of the women unhappy to have a girl said they were in need of hands to help and 87% believed a son would provide in old age. Both of these reasons can be expected to be stronger now that families are on their own to do the farming and see to welfare benefits previously provided by collective units—the team, brigade and commune.

            As one might expect, rural women who give birth to baby girls show side-effects other than unhappiness. Of those 53 rural women survey who were unhappy having a girl, 43 (81%) lost weight; 36 (67%) became neurasthenic and 45 (85%) remained depressed.

            By taking a step backward in the mode of production and by failing to restructure society to combat patriarchy, the CCP believes it is achieving unity and undisrupted modernization. It has in effect capitulated to tradition and gained responsibility for the increase in female infanticide.

            The capitalist social revolution has brought clear retrogression in other aspects of social life. 75% of all rural marriages are still arranged. Very often there is a brideprice. The amount of money spent on marriage gifts and ceremonies by families anxious to prove the marriage value of their children has exploded since about 1970.

             According to Butterfield and Croll, women and children are frequently sold and prostitution has enjoyed a resurgence under Deng. Orville Schell reported that a liumang—Chinese for a hooligan and black marketeer who is usually an unemployed youth—asserted his ability to sell anything including women through his connections.

             China has also acknowledged the existence of “human trading.”

                        The eighty-seven, [convicted criminals surveyed—ed.] acting

                        singly or in gangs, abducted a total of 347 people, 1 of whom

                        died. They received a total of 143,784 yuan from sales of their

                        victims, of whom 8 were children, 12 were teenage girls, 68

                        were young women, 5 had mental disorders, and 259 were of

                        other categories. The majority of the victims were first raped

                         by the male abductors.

In addition to the usual lack of willpower, morals, knowledge of the law, expectations of escape attributed to criminals, authors cited greed first in their list of salient characteristics of female human-traders followed by conflict between greed and reality and the desire for an easy life.

             Croll also cites increasing violence against women— including family violence and an increase in rape. According to Zhu Wei, an increase in urban rapes was followed by an increase in rural rapes; however, out of the six reasons Zhu cited for the increase, only two were really variables that explain the increase; the others, such as the availability of easy cover for rape in the countryside, were always true and cannot explain the increase. The two reasons that could explain the increase were “environmental influence” and “change in rural mode of production.” The change in environmental influence is really cultural influence including the open door and the new tolerance of pornographic fiction. According to Zhu, one survey found that “70 percent of the rapes were caused indirectly by the influence of dirty stories.” The “change in rural mode of production” variable is the distinction between collective and individual labor. Zhu suggests that women workers who work alone in the fields are more vulnerable to rape than women who work in collectives.

            Rape, assault and even consensual sex have different implications for unmarried women in China than they do in the United States. One of those implications may be a subsequent life of crime. “Young female criminals of this category accounted for 53.2 percent of the total.” Commonly women who lose their virginity before marriage “give themselves up as hopeless and willingly become degenerate.” Thus, women who suffer from rape in China are caught in a double bind. First, there is the pain of the crime itself. Then there is the social stigma attached to women who have had sex such that they are no longer considered attractive marriage partners. The women quite apparently blame themselves for the society’s sexual values as they become involved in crime.

            In contrast, the Cultural Revolution sponsored ideological campaigns such as the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius Campaign,” which sought to destroy sexist ideas about the family, motherhood and female subordination to men. On the issue of chores, “men and women helped each other, and when the women were engaged in study, the children were looked after and household work was attended to by the men commune members.” Today, on the other hand, official organs such as the Liberation Daily proclaim that “it is not a good thing for more husbands to take charge of household affairs.”

            The effect of the Cultural Revolution and the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius Campaign” is the subject of two chapters in Andors’ book. Together the two movements were summarized by Andors in their impact on women.

             Increased collectivization, equal pay for

             equal work, rural mechanization and

             industrialization, the xia-xiang movement of

             sending youth to the countryside, the

             expansion of educational opportunities, and

             the renewed emphasis in support for free-

             choice marriage, family planning, and the

             creation of health facilities all were

             official policy during the early to mid-1970s.

  

            Elisabeth Croll concurred in particular on the importance of the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius Campaign.”

             What is significant about the campaign is

             that it is the most concentrated and

             analytical attempt to date to integrate the

             redefinition of the female role into a

             nationwide effort to change the self-image and

             expectations of men and women and combine a

            consciousness of both women’s and class interests.

             Through a nationwide study programme the campaign has

            aimed to identify and trace the origins and development

             of the ideology responsible for the oppression of

             women, and identify, criticize and discredit

             the remaining influence of the traditional

             ruling ideology.

  

Started in 1973, the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius Campaign” was halted with the arrest of the Gang of Four.

            The upsurge in sexism has become so conscious that it extends to the CCP itself.

 

In the 1987 re-election for leading bodies at the county and

                         township levels, the number of women representatives was

                         found to be down in 12 provinces and municipalities. In some

                         areas, there was not a single woman in county and township

                         governments.

At the prefect and county level, women increasingly headed the party and government according to figures comparing 1983 and 1986, so the 1987 figures may indicate the beginnings of a reversal of gains for women in the much-maligned mid-level of bureaucracy, where the Cultural Revolution generation and Hua Guofeng supporters supposedly remain in control. At the top levels women have definitely faced retrenchment. Just as the CCP started to emphasize that the National People’s Congress is the “supreme power organ,” the numbers and proportions of women leading this supreme organ through its standing committees fell.

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Year                Congress                     Number of %                       Number of                  %

                                                   Women Deputies                           Women Standing

Committee Members

1954    First                            147                  11.9                             4                      5

1959    Second                        150                  12.3                             5                      6.3

1964    Third                           542                  17.8                             20                    17.4

1975    Fourth                         653                  22.6                             42                    25.1

1978    Fifth                            742                  21.2                             33                    21

1983    Sixth                           632                  21.2                             14                    9

Source: Beijing Review, March 7-13, 1988, p. 25

__________________________________________________________________

In 1987, the CCP removed all women from its Political Bureau. Despite opposition from some women comrades, the CCP abolished the quota for women on the Political Bureau. Among other reasons, the CCP cited increased democracy that allowed for the competitive election of Political Bureau members. Beijing Review also dutifully trotted out some statistics that show women are slightly more passive than men in political matters. One third of men would reportedly make their disagreement with a municipal government known in issues that affect everyday life, whereas only 26.8 percent of women would. Rather than point to the statistics as symptomatic, Beijing Review seemed to imply that political passivity is inherent to women and hence causative in the decline of women in the Political Bureau once quotas were abolished. This argument is not only theoretically dubious, but also the difference in political passivity is not big enough to explain why there are no women on the Political Bureau. If anything, the survey draws into sharper relief the decline of women in leading political roles.

             In conclusion, much of the impetus for the liberation of women was lost in the Chinese Thermidor. Specifically, women are being relegated to the home once again. The ruling class has been able to take advantage of traditional divisions in the working class by using women in temporary work and the reserve army of unemployed. Also, the new emphasis on technology and the end of political mass-mobilization means a smaller role for women in the workplace and stagnation if not retrogression in their social position. Andors concludes her chapter on post-Mao developments: “The present attempts to identify women with home and family and certain kinds of jobs, in what must be considered a retreat from the goals of female emancipation, are likely to create new tensions within Chinese society.”