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Abstract. This study is concerned with transitional gender roles and relations, illuminated through an examination of the status of women in China from the Mao era to the post-Mao era. The study reveals that the socialist state has maintained a high degree of control over gender construction in order to legitimise its historical achievement of revolution and liberation, assuming given gender identities within the official discourse of socialism. Liberation meant creating a fundamentally new and more democratic socialism within a male hegemony. This is derived from the core philosophy Confucianism in which human role relations are cultivated and developed within a malecentred world. Consequently, this discourse opens up an authoritative normalisation process that hinders women's progress in the state, in the household and in organisations.Women's new identity involves aspects of biologically given features, internalisation of the patriarchal family and social relations. Collective relational construction therefore emphasises the feminine/maternal principles of identity, denouncing separation and independence. This phenomenon seems to be pushing the whole of gender politics in China back towards more traditional sex role differences and power imbalances.
Keywords: China, women, gender identities, socialism, liberation, Confucianism
1. Introduction
At the opening of the 15th Party Congress in September 1997, President Jiang Zemin announced: "Hold high the great banner of Deng Xiaoping's theory for an all-round advancement of the cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics" (Hong Kong Standard, September 13, 1997). In the post-Mao era and in the pursuit of Deng's theory of modern-day Marxism in China, it is both culturally and politically correct to speak of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In this regard, it makes sense to say that feminism in China evolves with Chinese characteristics.
Gender relations in China have gone through a series of historical stages, being integrated with the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist view of gender equality during one phase, and with Deng's Economic Reform introducing newmarket forces during the most recent phase. When women's relation to this development is placed in its historical and cultural context, Chinese socialism is seen to be full of unresolved tensions: tensions between the old and the new; between gender and a persisting kinship system; between the family and the state. It becomes obvious that Confucian patriarchal hegemony, with thousands of years of collective experience, has proved...