The preeminent anarcho-feminist He-Yin Zhen constructed her critique in an early twentieth century China marked by turbulent political, social and cultural reinvention. Her article On the Question of Women’s Liberation utilises the analytical term nannü to frame the ideological and historical bases of institutionally gendered social relations. This lens challenges contemporary structural hierarchies, arguing that they must be dismantled at their very root through a radical social revolution in order for true liberation to be achieved.
In The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts of Transnational Theory, Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl and Dorothy Ko discuss and contextualise He-Yin Zhen’s theories, many of which were published in her journal Natural Justice. Firstly, He-Yin’s work represented a fundamental challenge to the conventional ideological foundations of patriarchal society, including that of progressive Chinese male intellectuals who also wrote about women’s rights. For instance, she critiqued Jin Tianhe’s The Women’s Bell for framing the struggle for equality within a nationalist rhetoric of self-strengthening._((Liu, Lydia He, Rebecca E. Karl, Dorothy Ko (ed.) The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p.7.)) The feminist movement from this perspective became a means of reforming China in line with Western ideas of gender equality to the ultimate ends of restoring the country’s global prominence as a modern nation, rather than for the sole sake of bettering the lives of women. He-Yin Zhen, on the other hand saw the emerging movement as a chance to deconstruct traditional conceptions of gender as a source of power and inequality, not as a means of enabling women to become better agents of the nationalist cause, but in order for women to gain true independence and freedom in their own right. For instance, she brought these ideas into practice by incorporating her maternal surname with her traditional patrilineal surname, thus including the female element of her identity in a traditional conventionalised space.
While these divergences demonstrate the range of perspectives prevalent in China at the time, this argument can perhaps be taken further than Liu, Karl and Ko go by positing that Chinese male intellectuals like Tianhe and Liang Qichao should not be defined as ‘feminists’ at all. While they may advocate for reforms that have characteristics that further women’s rights, such as ending the practice of foot binding or endorsing women’s education, their ultimate motivation to strengthen China undermines the core characteristic of feminism that believes in equality as a sufficient goal in itself. He-Yin expresses this point succinctly when she writes of ‘men’s pursuit of self-distinction in the name of women’s liberation’_((He-Yin Zhen, ‘Question of Women’s Liberation”, in The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013) p.60)), where these men critique the traditions that do not conform with their nationalist perspective and emulate Western powers in a manner that perpetuates the very social and structural hierarchy He-Yin seeks to overturn._((Hershatter, Gail, ‘Disturbances, 1840-1900’, in Women and China’s Revolutions (Maryland, 2018), p.84)).
Liu, Karl and Ko also discuss He-Yin’s anarchism and her attack on the misconception that the state could be anything but a system that perpetuates oppression._((Liu et al. The Birth of Chinese Feminism, p.23)) He-Yin’s anarchism and feminism were fundamentally intertwined. Unjust social relations of wealth, law and rule underpin a society where women are systematically excluded and subordinated in the patriarchal capitalist social hierarchy. Her theory of shengi critiques capitalism, coloniality and state and imperial traditions by foregrounding the fundamental role of nannü within each of these systems._((ibid., p.22)) This feminist attack on the state as a reproducer of conditions that benefit only the powerful and wealthy diverges from the majority of her contemporary radicals and reformers, who largely sought to exchange the imperial dynastic regime with a republic. He-Yin instead called upon women to be the agents of their own liberation. She argued that only with such genuine motivation to uproot systems of material oppression will the power structures that currently exist not be repeated, and women could be freed from the commodification of their bodies._(ibid., p.25))
He-Yin Zhen therefore takes an innovative feminist-anarchic standpoint by advocating for a social revolution that relieves society of the oppression within the current state of nannü. Liu, Karl and Ko’s explanation of the difficulties in attempting to literally translate the conceptual term nannü is thus an opportunity for scholars to question institutionalised, largely western, terms of reference and acknowledge the discursive multiplicity in the global formation of feminist theory._(ibid., p.10)) He-Yin argues that social hierarchies have spanned class, age, gender and ethnicity, and this ties in too within the skewed scholarship surrounding the feminist movement. Only by opening up the field to new terms and frame of reference that acknowledge their individual historical and social contexts can unilateral claims to social truth or historical reality be avoided.