China’s Rousseau

Jin Tianhe, author of The Women’s Bell, is mostly remembered for being not only a revolutionary nationalist in late Qing China, but also one of the primary advocates for gender equality in that period. Presumably his tendency to approach the issue from a Western perspective led other feminists of his time to favourably call him “truly China’s Rousseau”1 or “our women’s Rousseau.”2
However, this comparison may seem rather bizarre, if not sarcastic, to readers who are familiar with some of Rousseau’s writing beyond the famous Social Contract, as the Swiss 18th-century philosopher was anything but progressive when it comes to the propagation of women’s rights. In fact, Rousseau’s views become especially obvious when looking at Emile, or On Education. Here, he claims that women were “made specially to please men” and are supposed to be “passive and week.”3 The nature of women therefore, according to him, requires a special type of education:

Thus all women’s education must be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to be loved and honoured by them, to bring them up young, to care for them as adults, to counsel them, to console them, to make their lives pleasant and sweet: these are the duties of women in all times, and what they must be taught from their childhood.4

Were then Chinese feminists comparing Jin Tianhe to Rousseau simply not aware of this rather conservative position? Not according to Wenxuan Peng, who claims that Emile, or On Education was rather popular among Chinese intellectuals in the late Qing period and even inspired a new trend of using novels for education.5

Els van Dongen and Yuan Chang present a solution to this paradox: They argue that Rousseau and his work in late Qing China became symbolic for a wider trend of selectively using elements of Western (political) philosophy in support of already existing theories with Chinese origin. For this purpose, two elements of Rousseau’s thought were particularly interesting: First, his advocacy for a utopian revolution, and second his proclamation that all men are equal. Especially the latter was also appropriated by anarchists like Liu Shipei when arguing for gender equality.6  We can therefore see that China’s Rousseau was a very versatile figure as, rather than there being only one canonical interpretation of his philosophy, his theories were adapted to multiple different and individual causes.

Thus, when the comparison is drawn between Jin Tianhe and Rousseau, we can assume that the feminism of the former was thought to be largely based on the latter’s call for equality of all men, broadened in Chinese interpretation to equality of all humans.

Nevertheless, scholars like Lydia Liu, co-author of The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, think that at the same time “the linkage between Jin and Rousseau sarcastically pointed at the misogynous, androcentric nature of nationalist feminism”7 promoted by Jin Tianhe, among others. This nationalist feminism was already severely criticized in late Qing China by women like He-Yin Zhen who stated that, rather than having the women’s benefit in mind, the feminism of nationalist-progressive Chinese men was mostly born out of their own desire to imitate Western nations and receive international appreciation for their efforts.8

Lastly, He-Yin Zhen also argued that the realization of nationalist feminism would only lead to a new systematic way in which men would claim women as property.9 Surprisingly, this resonates with yet another aspect of Rousseau’s opinion on women and their education. In a passage already attacked by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Rousseau makes the following statement: “Educate women like men, […] and the more they resemble our sex the less power will they have over us.”10
Based on this quote alone, the comparison between Jin Tianhe’s nationalist feminism and Jean-Jacques Rousseau maybe no longer seems so far-fetched at all.

  1. Ono, Kazuko and Fogel, Joshua A. Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989, p. 59. [↩]
  2. Ibid., p. 58. [↩]
  3. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, or On Education. New York: Basic Books, 1979, p. 358. [↩]
  4. Translated from             Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Émile, ou de l’Éducation. https://gallica.bnf.fr/essentiels/anthologie/education-femmes. [↩]
  5. Cf. Penx, Wenxuan. Rousseau and His Chinese ‘Apprentices’: Interpretation, Adaption and Internalisation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Thoughts in Late Qing China in the Realm of Literature and Social Concepts through Intellectual Elites, 2017. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/52052. [↩]
  6. Cf. Van Dongen, Els and Chang, Yuan. “After Revolution: Reading Rousseau in 1990s China.” Contemporary Chinese Thought 48, no.1 (2017): 1-13. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10971467.2017.1383805. [↩]
  7. Liu quoted in Neubauer, Daene E. and Kaur, Surinderpal. Gender and the Changing Face of Higher Education in Asia Pacific. Berlin: Springer, 2019, p. 92. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=npaDDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=jin+tianhe+china%27s+rousseau&source=bl&ots=Qs-kash_3z&sig=ACfU3U11oA6Lp5kiwSabip6BUIE8Hp8wpA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizprqGyqPlAhVxTxUIHX65D7gQ6AEwBHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=jin%20tianhe%20china’s%20rousseau&f=false. [↩]
  8. Cf. Liu, Lydia et al. The Birth of Chinese Feminism : Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013, p. 2. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/st-andrews/reader.action?docID=1103412&ppg=150. [↩]
  9. Cf. ibid. p. 2 [↩]
  10. Rousseau, quoted in Wollstonecraft, quoted in Darling, John and Van De Pijpekamp, Maaike. “Rousseau on the Education, Domination and Violation of Women.” British Journal of Educational Studies 42, no. 2 (1994), 115-132. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3122332?seq=8#metadata_info_tab_contents. [↩]