{"id":1616,"date":"2025-10-26T14:50:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2025-10-26T14:50:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T14:50:56","slug":"failure-to-reject-tradition-the-evolution-of-the-new-culture-movements-xiao-jiating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/2025\/10\/failure-to-reject-tradition-the-evolution-of-the-new-culture-movements-xiao-jiating\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure to Reject Tradition \u2013 The Evolution of the New Culture Movement’s ‘xiao jiating’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The family-reform ideals of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century gained widespread popular support from the nation\u2019s young men through periodicals, such as <\/span>Family Research<\/span><\/i>, which encouraged individualism and attacked patriarchal society. Their absorption in individualism blinded them to the inherent misogyny in their search for the ideal wife\u2014one who was educated and politically conscious. However, it lacked the appeal necessary for a socioeconomic revolution, as those young men did not subscribe to all of the Movement\u2019s radical ideas; often, they subconsciously preferred traditionalism despite their ambition to form a modern state. Moreover, the Chinese Communist Party retroactively revised and imposed the New Culture Movement\u2019s <\/span>xiao jiating<\/span><\/i>, or conjugal family, by forcing individuals to devote themselves equally to their emotional relationships and the state.<\/span><\/p>\n

In her monograph, <\/span>Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953<\/span><\/i>, Susan L. Glosser argues that those who started <\/span>Family Research<\/span><\/i> believed family reform was the \u2018necessary first step in China\u2019s modernization\u2019, as individuals must first be \u2018happy at home\u2019 in order to provide their full contribution to the urban reform movements throughout China.1<\/a><\/sup> The primary obstacle preventing young men from this domestic happiness, they contended, was the patriarch. Under the Confucian standard, the patriarch held great control over his children\u2019s lives. Thus, to free themselves for their ultimate goal of a ‘transformation of the Chinese economy\u2019 and \u2018political structure\u2019, they began by attacking the patriarch due to his control and \u2018as a stand-in for the nebulous forces of \u201cpower\u201d and \u201cclass\u201d that strangled China\u2019.2<\/a><\/sup> It was only then, with the happiness from their new family, that they understood that China could modernize economically and socially.3<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

As happiness, and thus productivity, was believed to be derived from the family, those involved in the New Culture Movement \u2018developed a new set of expectations for their wives\u2019.4<\/a><\/sup> In opposition to traditional arranged marriages, they argued in favor of a concept of marriage based on romantic love, in which the couple involved jointly shared \u2018intellectual and political interests\u2019.4<\/a><\/sup> However, Glosser declares, these young men failed to consider what an ideal husband might be, and pushed unrealistic standards onto the women of their time.5<\/a><\/sup> Thus, they thought only of what would make them happy in marriage, while expecting their wives to work independently in the domestic sphere and join other social spheres, revealing a misogynistic core behind their advocacy for women\u2019s rights.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The surveys of two Chinese sociologists, Chen Heqin and Pan Guangdan, that Glosser examines, reveal that despite the insistence of the New Culture radicals, many young men appear \u2018to have been willing, and even happy, to make their peace with much that was traditional in the Chinese family\u2019.6<\/a><\/sup> The primary family-reform ideals of the New Culture Movement that they supported were the rejection of arranged marriages and the education of women. However, many young couples were not too interested in establishing \u2018households independent of their parents\u2019.7<\/a><\/sup> Moreover, despite wanting to choose their own wife, the qualities they looked for in a wife were more traditional than they might have anticipated\u2014over three-quarters of Chen\u2019s respondents did not list any interest in an ideal wife\u2019s talents.8<\/a><\/sup> In conclusion, Chen and Pan found that many of their respondents simply picked and chose certain aspects of the New Culture\u2019s <\/span>xiao jiating<\/span><\/i> and \u2018ignored or modified others\u2019.9<\/a><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

The Marriage Law, passed by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1950, promised the right to choose spouses and ensured equality among men and women.10<\/a><\/sup> It was described by the Party as the final step in \u2018the long fight, begun by the New Culture Movement, against the \u201cfeudal\u201d customs of traditional China\u2019.11<\/a><\/sup> However, the Party initially hesitated to enforce the law due to concerns that the peasants might react negatively toward legislation that abruptly hindered tradition. <\/span>Glosser contends that the Party \u2018promised to resolve the tension that the conjugal family ideal had created between the individual and the state\u2019 through their \u2018version\u2019 of the ideal <\/span>xiao jiating<\/span><\/i>.12<\/a><\/sup> Although, their method of doing so was to absorb the citizens entirely into the state and make the state the sole legitimizing factor of marriage. Thus, the individuals were forced to jointly devote themselves to their emotional relationships and the state, as marital privacy was stripped away, disguised as the Party\u2019s loyalty to New Culture ideals.<\/span><\/p>\n

  1. <\/span>Susan L. Glosser, <\/span>Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953<\/span><\/i> (Berkeley, 2003), p. 31.<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. <\/span>Ibid<\/span><\/i>., p. 38.<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Ibid<\/i>., p. 44 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Ibid<\/i>., p. 49 [↩<\/a>]<\/span> [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Ibid<\/i>., p. 51 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Ibid<\/i>., p. 57 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Ibid<\/i>., p. 62 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Ibid<\/i>., p. 69 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  9. Ibid<\/i>., p. 77 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  10. Ibid<\/em>., pp. 169, 171 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  11. Ibid<\/i>., pp. 169-170 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  12. Ibid<\/i>., p. 195 [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The family-reform ideals of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the early twentieth century gained widespread popular support from the nation\u2019s young men through periodicals, such as Family Research, which encouraged individualism and attacked patriarchal society. Their absorption in individualism blinded them to the inherent misogyny in their search for the ideal wife\u2014one who was … Continue reading “Failure to Reject Tradition \u2013 The Evolution of the New Culture Movement’s ‘xiao jiating’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,4,170,168,169],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-20th-century","tag-china","tag-marriage-law","tag-new-culture-movement","tag-xiao-jiating"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1621,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}