The rise of feminist discourse in early twentieth-century China is typically framed as a battle between tradition and modernity. However, this is a simplified view overlooking the constraints of modernity. The modern Chinese legal and political system proved incapable of legislating genuine gender liberation. This is because the hierarchical logic of patriarchy was philologically embedded within the very textual and institutional fabric of the state.<\/p>\n
Progressive male reformers appropriated the radical language of female “slavery” and “property” to articulate their own economic and psychological anxieties. In doing so, they minimised women\u2019s constitutive historical oppression, recasting it as a mere symptom of male frustration. Part of the \u00a0“enlightenment and national self-strengthening, coded either \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cpatriarchal”.1<\/a><\/sup> This is a continuity that anarcho-feminist theorist He-Yin Zhen rejected as a “metaphysical-political principle” woven into the fabric of history.2<\/a><\/sup> She demonstrated that this oppression was intrinsically economic, arguing that the “beginning of the system of women as private property is also the beginning of the system of slavery.”3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n