1900-Present Document 4: East Asia

Bentley, Jerry. Traditions and Encounters. 1999.

During the invasion of China, what became known as the Rape of Nanjing demonstrated the horror of the war as
well, as the residents of Nanjing became victims of Japanese troops inflamed by war passion and a sense of racial
superiority. Over the course of two months, Japanese soldiers raped seven thousand women.
The Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted, and dragooned as many as three hundred thousand women
aged fourteen to twenty to serve in military brothels called "comfort houses" or "consolation centers." The army
presented the women to the troops as a gift from the emperor, and the women came from Japanese colonies such as
Korea, Taiwan, and Manchuria, as well as from occupied territories in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast
Asia. Fully 80 percent of the women came from Korea.
Once forced into this imperial prostitution service, the "comfort women" had to cater to between twenty and thirty
men each day. Stationed in war zones, they often confronted the same risks as soldiers, and many became casualties
of war. Others were killed by Japanese soldiers, especially if they tried to escape or contracted vene real diseases. At
the end of the war, soldiers massacred large numbers of comfort women to cover up the operation. The impetus
behind the establishment of comfort houses for Japanese soldiers came from the horrors of Nanjing, where the mass
rape of Chinese women had taken place. In trying to avoid such atrocities, though, the Japanese army only created
another horror of war. Comfort women who survived the war experienced deep shame and had to hide their past or
face shunning by their own families. They found little comfort or peace after the war.
Nationalist China

In the attacks that drove the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the cities, left Nationalist [Guomindang] KMT and CCP women special targets. The White Terror that began in Hankow in 1927 singled
out any women with bobbed hair and shot them for their supposed radicalism; in Canton, young women
thought to be members of the CCP were wrapped in gasoline-soaked blankets and burned alive; and
everywhere the White Terror prevailed women were physically mutilated (often their breasts were hacked
off) and raped before they were finally killed by KMT agents and troops.
After 1928, the KMT ... began redefining women's roles... KMT philosophers offered a formula of legal
reform, Confucian morality blended with Christian individualism, and a return to the virtues of the family...
The KMT's most significant effort to legislate equality came in the 1930 Civil Code, a document that
gave important legal rights to women in the family. Women, under the new code, were supposed to be able
to choose their own husbands, apply for divorce, and to inherit property; adultery was a punishable offense,
not only for women, but for men as well. New factory legislation protected women from work that might
be physically harmful and theoretically paved the way for equal pay for equal work. Male educators and
members of the KMT now proclaimed Chinese women emancipated.
Coeducation in colleges had been attained in the 1920s, and the graduates found job opportunities
expanding. Women in urban areas made considerable progress in the 1930s and 1940s. Modern marriages
were increasingly contracted among the upper and middle classes. Women, no longer in seclusion, entered
the social scene wearing French perfume, permanent waves, high-heeled shoes, silk stockings, and even the
one-piece bathing suit.
But the Nationalists were fighting a losing battle, the CCP had long been championing womens issues.

Communist China

Some socialist or communist societies transformed their legal systems to ensure basic equality. Legally, the
position of women most closely matched that of men in communist or formerly communist countries like the Soviet
Union, Cuba, and China. "Women hold up half the sky," Mao Zedong had declared and this eloquent acknowledgment
of women's role translated into a commitment to fairness .
The communist dedication to women's rights led to
improvement in the legal status of Chinese women once the
communists gained power in China. In 1950 communist
leaders passed the marriage law, which declared a "new democratic marriage system, which, is based on free choice of
partners, on monogamy, on equal rights for both sexes, and
on protection of the lawful interests of women and children,"
The law abolished patriarchal practices like child betrothal
and upheld equal rights for men and women in the areas of
work, property ownership, and inheritance,
Critics argue that despite such laws China's women
have never gained true equality. Certainly few women
have gained high status in the Communist Party's leadership.
And while most women in China have full-time jobs outside the home, they do not receive wages equal to those of
men. They do most of the work at home as well. Nevertheless, they are able to enter most professions, although most
Chinese women engage in menial work. Long-standing Confucian values continue to degrade the status of women,
especially in rural areas. Parents almost universally prefer boys over girls. One unintended consequence of China's
population policies, which limits couples to one child, is the mysterious statistical disappearance of a large
number of baby girls. Demographers estimate that annually more than one-half million female births go unrecorded
in government statistics. Although no one can with certainty account for the "missing" girls, some population experts
speculate that a continued strong preference for male children causes parents to send baby girls away for adoption or
to be raised secretly, or in some cases to single them out for infanticide.
Sharon L. Sievers. "Women in China, Japan, and Korea," in Restoring Women to History: T eaching Packets for Integrating Women 'sHistory into Courseson
Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, edited by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington, IN: Organization of
American Historians, 1988), 101-2.

"Women Hold Up Half of the Heavens" - Mao

In Mao's struggles to renew the revolutionary fervor of the Chinese people, his wife, Jiang Qing played an
increasingly prominent role. Mao's reliance on her was consistent with the commitment to the liberation of
Chinese women he had acted upon throughout his political career. As a young man he had been deeply
moved by a newspaper story about a young girl who had committed suicide rather than be forced by her
family to submit to the marriage they had arranged for her with a rich but very old man. From that point
onward, women's issues and women's support for the communist movement became important parts
of Mao's revolutionary strategy. Here he was drawing on a well established revolutionary tradition, for
women had been very active in the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-19th century, the Boxer revolt in 1900, and
the 1911 revolution that had toppled the Manchu regime. One of the key causes taken up by the May Fourth
intellectuals, who had a great impact on the youthful Mao Zedong, was women's rights. Their efforts put
an end to foot-binding. They also did much to advance campaigns to end female seclusion, win legal
rights for women, and open educational and career opportunities to them.
Women served as teachers, nurses, spies, truck drivers, and laborers on projects ranging from growing
food to building machine-gun bunkers. Although the party preferred to use them in these support roles, in
moments of crisis women became soldiers on the front lines. Many won distinction for their bravery under
fire. Some rose to become cadre leaders, and many were prominent in the anti-landlord campaigns and
agrarian reform. Their contribution to the victory of the revolutionary cause bore out Mao's early dictum
that the energies and talents of women had to be harnessed to the national cause because "women hold up
half of the heavens."
But arranged marriages persist today, especially in rural areas, and the need to have party approval for

all marriages is a new form of control. Since 1949, women have also been expected to work outside the
home. Their opportunities for education and professional careers have improved greatly. As in other
socialist states, however, openings for employment outside the home have proved to be a burden for Chinese
women. Until the late 1970s, traditional attitudes toward child-rearing and home care prevailed. As a result,
women were required not only to hold down a regular job but also to raise a family, cook meals,
clean, and shop, all without the benefit of the modern appliances available in Western societies.
Although many women held cadre posts at the middle and lower levels of the party and bureaucracy, the
upper echelons of both were overwhelmingly controlled by men.
Jiang Qing got to the top because she was married to Mao. She exercised power mainly in his name and
was toppled soon after his death when she tried to rule in her own right. Women have come far in China,
but as is the case in most other societies their high status often depends on the men in their life.
--------------------------------------------In Chingtsun the work team found a woman whose husband thought her ugly and wanted to divorce her.
She was very depressed until she learned that under me Draft Law [of the Communist party] she could have
her own share of land. Then she cheered up immediately. "If he divorces me, never mind," she said. "I'll
get my share and the children will get theirs. We can live a good life without him."
--------------------------------------------That was when Tuan Fu-yin's eighteen-year-old daughter, Tuan Ai-chen, fell in love with a boy from
Seven-mile Village. But her parents refused to let her marry. They said that the boy was poor and that they
wanted her to marry someone better off. One evening Tuan Ai-chen came to me and wept and complained.
I went with her to her cave and talked to her parents. I said to them: "You have no right to prevent your
daughter from marrying, you know that, don't you? Purchase marriage is not allowed in the new society. It
is a crime to sell your daughter these days. Before you could sell your daughter like a cow, but you can't do
that any longer." I told them about the things that used to happen in the old days, about girls drowning
themselves in wells, of girls hanging themselves and that sort of thing, about all the unhappiness purchase
marriage caused. At first, Tuan Fu-yin tried to stand up to me. He said: "I had to pay dearly for my wife.
Now I have been giving this girl food and clothes. I have brought her up and she just goes off. It isn't right.
I just lose and lose all the time. I must get something back of all the money I have laid out on her. If she
can't fall in love with a man who can pay back what she cost, then it isn't right for her to marry."
I talked a long time with them that evening, and in the end I said: "You don't live badly in the new society.
If you ever have difficulties, your daughter and son-in-law will help you. They are not rich, but they won't
refuse to help you." Then they replied: "We must think about it." The next time I went there, only the girl's
mother was at home. She had thought about it and she now told me her own story. . . . She said: "I was sold
to Tuan Fu-yin when I was a little girl. I was sold in the same way you sell a goat. But my parents got a lot
for me. Tuan's father had to take out a loan. That made them nasty to me. I was forced to work hard so as
to make the loan worthwhile. They were all nagging at me. I can remember how much I used to cry. Now
that I think of that, I dont want my daughter to marry someone she can't like." Then she wept. Tuan Fu-yin
didn't say anything more.
By 1958, the government needed women's labor as it tried to increase production of steel, electricity, and
coal significantly in a campaign called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was an
economic disaster, but it did help women. Their labor outside the family was publicly encouraged, including
the establishment of communal child care and kitchens to reduce their domestic work. A national public
health system that brought medical care to the countryside benefited women. Women began doing men's
tasks, although their pay was less. But even as work was redistributed between women and men, gender
remained paramount, for tasks were still defined as feminine or masculine.

Following Mao Zedong's death in 1976, de-collectivization in agriculture meant that many decisions
passed from commune officials to families, where men retained authority, and income was paid to the senior
male. Sidelines such as pig or chicken raising; which women had pursued to increase income, became the
prerogative of men once market enterprises were encouraged by the state.
Arranged marriages were seldom found in the cities, but in rural areas, which had 70 percent of the
population, they were on the rise. Wedding costs rose also, with the groom's family paying amounts of as
much as ten times a person's average annual income. Such investments suggested that a wife was valued,
but also too valuable to lose. Divorces initiated by the wife were possible, but the courts made them difficult
to obtain.
In 1979, the option of motherhood was sharply restricted, however, by the government's populationcontrol policy, which permitted the birth of only one child to each family.
City dwellers, with crowded homes and hectic lives, accepted their loss of choice in the national interest
more willingly than farm women. Resistance in the rural areas led both to female infanticide and to official
compromise allowing women a second pregnancy if the first child was a daughter. After forty years of
communism, the ancient Confucian joy in the birth of a son and despair at the birth of a daughter had not
quite disappeared in the countryside. Though daughters were valued more than sons in the cities by the late
1980s, rural families still wanted a son to support parents in old age, inherit the land, and maintain the
family name.
Lured to the Factory China, 2004

It is Chinas small industries, which are not regulated and pay the lowest wages, that fuel the countrys
sizzling export sector.
Ma Pighui, 16, and her friend Wei Qi, also 16 had been lured to the factory in Anshan by a South Korean
boss who said he was prepared to pay $120 a month, a princely sum for unskilled peasants, to make false
eyelashes. Their local government labor bureau lent its support, recruiting workers and arranging a bus to
take them to the big city of Anshan. The girls first heard about the job offer from an advertisement on
local television. If this had not been arranged through official channels, we would not have let such a
young girl go, said Wei Zhixing, Ms. Weis father.
As soon as they arrived in Anshan, however, the problems began. They were asked to sign a contract that
offered monthly pay far below the advertised level, initially just $24, minus a $13 charge for room and
board. Bonuses were promised, but only for those who produced eyelashes above quotas. The contract
also demanded that workers pay the boss $58 if they left before the end of the year long contract, and
$2,400 if they stole intellectual property by defecting to a rival eyelash maker. Such terms are not
unusual. Cut-throat capitalism and sweatshop factories are as much a part of Chinas economic revolution
today as they were the early days of industrialization in the West.
Source: Excerpt from Chinese Girls Toil Brings Pain, Not Riches, Joseph Kahn, New York Times, October, 2, 2003.