Quotes

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.

“A: It is the source of all things (wanyougenyuan). It is not a single religion; it has the power to clarify the good. . . .Actually the dao has no name, but we in the human world have to give it a name to show our reverence. So, we revere the founders of the five religions. . .. We also respect nature and morality, and cultivate the self through charity”

This is a quotation in Prasenjit Duara’s book Sovereignty and Authenticity. It was a statement made by a leader of the Daoyuan to a Japanese surveyor, demonstrating the spirits of Daoyuan, the predecessor of the Red Swastika Society. These are redemptive societies that embraced a boost in the early 20th century in China. Most of them possess the characteristics of synthesis of Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Redemptive societies adopted a syncretistic worldview in their discourse of civilization. Their speech contains the awareness of self-cultivation; through the effort made by men in charity and philanthropic activities, a person’s good nature can be recovered.¹ This seemingly idealistic idea of universalism proved to be a real threat to governments in China and Japan. The universalist view of religion extends to the potential overthrowing political worldview.

“Cultivate the self through charity” can be interpreted as the combination of Confucianism and Pure Land Buddhism. The awareness of self-cultivation comes from Confucianist teaching of rites and rituals; by practising them, people could achieve the state of a gentleman; this belief remains in the doctrine of Redemptive societies, it became to be Jiaohua.² And “through charity” reflects a Pure Land Buddhism idea of doing good to accumulate good karma so that one day one can receive a good result. From this statement, we can see that these Redemptive societies possessed a complete framework from the most abstract ideological level to the most practical instruction to the secular life of people. It also reflects how these metaphysical philosophies were brought into real life by these redemptive societies in the historical context in China in the early 20^th century. According to Duara, they were one of the leading intellectual forces to form a new discourse of civilization, complementing the influx of Western ideas, representing an Eastern attempt to find solutions for contemporary society.³ Redemptive societies’ success of ‘secularizing’ all three schools of thought was why they could gain such significant influence among the public. Both people from higher and lower classes can take part in the societies.

This universalism, accepting all kinds of religion and thinking, and people from different classes proved to threaten Chinese and Japanese governments. Duara suggests that the redemptive societies, in a way beyond the boundary of government, conduct their world-saving activities, which is why the KMT sought to prohibit all redemptive societies. ((Ibid, p. 109.)) For example, the Red Swastika Society had a universalist view to see all nations, races, and religions as the same. The concept of boundaries is eliminated from the framework. They see the world in a transcendent view; they believe that the boundaries like nation-states will disappear one day.⁴ This cosmopolitan idea can be seen as the attempt to find a unique way to reform East Asia exclusively. Kang Youwei, as a prominent figure for his cosmopolitan thinking in Ta Tung Shu, was one of the leaders of redemptive societies. These characteristics of redemptive societies sometimes could remind us of Cooperatism anarchism in Japan; both believed in a boundary-free world.

Its popularity among the public and its potentially dangerous ideas all become why governments like KMT and Manchuria were highly concerned about redemptive societies. In complementing Duara’s argument, Sun Jiang’s analysis on the Red Swastika Society also proves the government’s worry about the universalism of redemptive societies.

1. Prasenjit Duara, “Asianism and the New Discourse of Civilization” in Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), pp106. [↩]
2. Ibid, p.108. [↩]
3. Ibid, p.109. [↩]
4. Ibid, p.106. [↩]