Key Points
- Several scholars point to women's leading roles in China's latest protest.
- Some believe it has to do with the emerging feminist movement, but some don't.
- Data shows that Chinese women's educational attainment has increased significantly over the decades.
Re-watching footage of recent protests in China, women appear to outnumber men in the frontlines.
The demonstrations, collectively known as the ‘White Paper’ protests, reportedly sprang up spontaneously to mourn the victims of the Urumqi fire in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. The colour white symbolises mourning in China.
The fire claimed at least 10 lives and was blamed by some on the Chinese government’s strict enforcement of the zero-COVID-19 policy which prevented those inside the burning apartment complex from leaving or interfering with the efforts of firefighters. While Chinese authorities vehemently denied these claims, the incident stirred up much public outrage.
The demonstration quickly swept across the country, with protesters taking to the streets in more than 10 cities. On the evening of 27 November, hundreds of people gathered in the Liangmaqiao diplomatic district in Beijing with flowers and white papers, demanding “no PCR test, we need freedom; no lockdown, we need to eat.”
The White Paper protest allegedly began with a female student at Nanjing Communication University staging a blank A4 paper demonstration on campus. Source: AP / Ng Han Guan/AP/AAP Image
“Almost all of (those) standing (in) the first row holding white papers and confronting police were women,” the 27-year-old Peking University graduate who fled to Germany in March says.
In March, Mr Huang fled to Germany and is doing his master’s degree at the University of Hamburg. Credit: Supplied by Yicheng Huang
The growth of feminism in China
Women's participation in the White Paper protests far outweighs their presence in the last major protest in China, the Tiananmen Movement in 1989, where only two of the 21 student leaders were women.
“Women leaders are more prominent in the White Paper protest,” Dr Chongyi Feng, an Associate Professor in China Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, tells SBS Chinese.
“The symbol of the White Paper protest was initially proposed by Kangmeng Li, a female student at Nanjing Communication University, and several arrested women protesters in Beijing were also very remarkable," Dr Feng says.
Zhixin Cao, an editor at Peking University Press, was one of them. She participated in the peaceful protest at Liangmaqiao in Beijing last November and recorded a video before she was taken away by the police in December.
“When I recorded this video, four of my friends had been taken away without any explanation,” the 26-year-old says.
“If we were arrested because we went to the memorial site out of sympathy, how much freedom is there to express our emotions in this society? Please help us. We don’t want to disappear unwillingly,” she says in the video.
Yaqiu Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, points out that one of the reasons for lower female participation in the 1989 pro-democracy movement is that the traditional Chinese view is that "politics is more of a male topic" while women are responsible for the family.
“In China's political context, discussing social issues can be risky. I think women have more practical considerations, such as family, that keep them from being more involved in political issues," Mr Wang says.
"Also, the traditional Chinese educational concept that men should be concerned with politics and women should be responsible for the family has also influenced the perceptions of both on political issues," she adds.
Scholars agree women's voices are more prominent in today's protests than they were in the Tiananmen Movement in 1989. Credit: Human Rights in China
Dr Feng says he believes that the rise of women opinion leaders in the White Paper protest is related to the feminist movement that has emerged in China in recent years.
“The era is different from 1989. There was no feminist movement in China at that time, but now feminism has become an important force in China's democracy movement,” says Dr Feng.
In 2018, the #MeToo movement in China grew to a crescendo with a wave of accusations by women of sexual harassment by sexual predators. More women came forward to speak up for themselves before being suppressed by the authorities.
Human Rights in China says these women were arrested following protests calling for an end to China's zero-tariff policy. Credit: Human Rights in China
She believes that these existing feminist supporters provided the mass base for the spread of the White Paper protest.
“Those women, even though they were loosely organised, still had an association... so when the protest happened, they all went out into the streets," she says.
The Chinese government has yet to announce the number of arrests it made during the protest, but the four women arrested on charges of "provoking and disturbing order" were reportedly released on bail in April.
The feminist movement has emerged and grown in China in recent years. Source: Getty, AFP / William West
Higher education levels among women in China
The wave of peaceful protest in China has also spread thousands of kilometres away to Australia, with many people taking to the streets in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane to show their support.
Wong*, a Chinese student in Melbourne who only wanted to provide his surname to SBS Chinese, says when he first noticed that many of his friends posted a blank image on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, he thought his phone had “got a virus”.
Almost all of those who post are women.Wong, a Chinese student in Melbourne
He attributes one of the reasons for women's active participation in the White Paper protest to the generally higher levels of education among modern-day women, and "many of them had gone abroad and been educated about gender equality".
“The percentage of educated women in China has now surpassed that of men, which is the opposite of what it was in 1989,” the 24-year-old says.
Wong* says the educational attainment of Chinese women has increased significantly over the past few decades. Credit: Human Rights in China
While based on the latest report from China's National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese women's education level has increased significantly over the past few decades. The report shows that China had over 1.71 million female graduate students in 2021, representing 51.5 per cent of the total student population.
Caretaker role strained during the zero-COVID policy
Not all China studies’ experts agree that the feminist movement and improved education levels of women in China are responsible for greater female representation at the frontlines of protests.
Dr Sow Keat Tok, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute, for example, argues “The White Paper movement was mainly a demand for livelihood [not democracy].”
He adds that the "zero-COVID" policy has had a serious impact on people's lives, which led to the explosive protest. He says that women were actively involved because they were the "biggest victims" of the policy due to their caretaker roles.
Dr Tok says women's roles as family caregivers makes them the group most affected by the “zero-COVID” policy. Credit: Supplied by Yicheng Huang
So, for their own benefit, they stood in the front row and actively participated in the protest.Dr Tok, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute
Although Dr Tok says he sees the protests as “a desperate attempt” by people oppressed by the pandemic prevention policy, he admires the courage of younger generations in China.
“In such a tense political environment, they are still brave enough to come forward, which I think shows great courage,” he says.
