“New” for State and “Old” for Families: The Discourse-M

aking of May Fourth’s “New Women”

Word count: 4131 words

In today’s People’s Republic of China, “Feminism” has been seen as a

negative word linked with “Western ideology” and “Bourgeoisie ideology” in
the mainstream state narrative. However, a closer look at Chinese history
says otherwise. Research on the early years of the revolutionary movement in
China “shows the importance of the women’s struggle as an essential com-
ponent of the political struggle” (Jayawardena, 1986, p.194), besides, “women
question” or “women problem” (“funü wenti”) had been one of the important
discussion topics among the New Culturalists — who initiated and led the de-
bate of New Culture during the May Fourth New Culture Movement, which is
considered to be the ferment of the political and social revolution that eventu-
ally led to the birth of the PRC, and the aftermath of the massive campaign of
gender equality during this period also put the “women problem” on the
agenda of revolutionary political parties - Chinese Communist Party and
Kuomintang (Hershatter, 2007, p.80).

Much research has been done in the scope of women in twentieth-century

China as Hershatter concluded, which she divided into three main categories,
“Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and Gender Difference”, “Labor” and “National
Modernity”. “Women and national modernity” was the dominating topic for the
“women problem” debate during May Fourth period. When the New Cultural-
ists attacked Confucianism using the tool of western liberalism and individual-
ism, women problem not only became an essential symbol of the Confucian
feiren (inhuman) system, but women’s emancipation was also seen by New
Culturalists as a sign of modernity, drawing the references of feminist move-
ments in the West in the early twentieth century (Wang, 1999, p.13). Thus, the
connection between liberated women and powerful nation was built.

With the undertaking of building the “New China”, a new phrase, the “New
Women”1 was created and popularised as an alternative identity for women
1 “xin funü 新妇女”, sometimes appeared as “xin nüxing 新女性” or “xin nüzi 新女子”. Other
similar terms in circulation for this “new style woman” also includes: “xinshi funü 新式妇女”, “xinshi
nüzi 新式女子”, “xinpai funü 新派妇女”) and “modern woman” (“jindai nüzi 近代女子”, “jindai
nüxing 近代女性”, “xiandai nüzi 现代女子”, “xiandai nüxing 现代女性”, “shidai nüzi 时代女子”)
and so on.
who supposedly were more progressive and capable of striving for China’s
independence.

In her book Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, Wang Zheng briefly

pointed out, that “it is not accidental that the era created the term xinnüxing
(new women) instead of xinnanxing (new men)” (1999, p.23), but didn’t ex-
pand the argument. The question still needs to be further addressed, why only
“new women” was created and calling for the change of women, not men? Is it
that “men” are naturally seen as “new” (and probably “capable” and “progres-
sive”)? What is the possible aftermath for gender equality in today's China of
the (possible) absent “new men”?

To answer these questions, I will interrogate the concept of “new women”, by

examining the works of the main New Culturalists, to find out the exact mean-
ing of “new women” and the connection between women and the state. Then,
I will look into the May Fourth discussions about women and family to explore
its limitations. Finally, I will briefly touch on the possible legacy that “new
women” discourse had left for gender equality in today’s China.

By using the term “May Fourth New Cultural Movement”, I take the publication
of the New Youth magazine in 1915 as the start, till the May Thirtieth Incident
in 1925 which ended intellectual freedom and brought nationalism as the pre-
dominant agenda, based on Wang Zheng’s reasoning (Wang, 1999, p.9). In
this article, the term “May Fourth period”, “May Fourth era” and “May Fourth”
all refer to the decade between 1915 to 1925.

Who are the “new women”?

Much existing research point out the first introduction of the term “new women
” was by Hu Shi (Harris 1995, Yang 2016) — a representing characters
among the New Culturalists — in a speech given at then Beijing Normal
School for Girls (Beijing Nüzi Shifan Xuexiao) in 1918, then it was also later
published in New Youth magazine. In his speech, Hu described his encounter
with an American women journalist who was working in then Russia as a spe-
cial correspondent. He defined the journalist as an absolute contrast against
the concept of Xianqi liangmu (a term used in China and other parts of Asia as
“good mother good wife”), and argued what a “new woman” beyond Xianqi
liangmu should look like —
“Who is very intense vocally, who tends to behave extremely, who is not reli-
gious or follow the rituals of conduct (lifa), yet who is an extremely good
thinker with extremely high morals.”2 (Hu, 1918)

According to Hu, the distinction between “new women” and traditional women
does not lie intellectually or knowledge-wise, but rather in their independence
(zili) and the “view of life” to do something more than just being a good wife
and good mother.

It can be argued that from this particular speech, the image of “new women”
echoes with the western ideology of liberalism and individualism. However, Hu
also emphasised that a new woman is a “good thinker with extremely high
morals”, which resembles a lot with the revolutionary intellectuals like himself.
Here, Hu touched upon new women’s departure from the traditional cultural
discipline (in China’s context, Confucianism), as well as contribution outside
of the family — probably to society and state — like male intellectuals aiming
to do. Thus I will suggest that Hu was at least partially expressing the ambition
of intellectuals including himself by talking about new women. Hu’s view
stands in the same line with many other New Culturalists, the concept of “new
women” was interpreted and circulated widely throughout the May Fourth pe-
riod, sometimes without actually using the term.

Starting from the very first issue, New Youth magazine had set women prob-
lem as one of its main agendas. In the first issue of New Youth, Chen Duxiu
— founder of the magazine and another main representing character among
New Culturalists — depicted his ideal blueprint for New Culture in China in
“To the Youth”, which sees women’s emancipation as an integrated part of
Europe’s “history of emancipation”:

“…The women's suffrage movement was for the emancipation from male
power. To seek such emancipation is for the liberation from the bondage of
slavery in order to reach one’s autonomous and free personality.” (Chen, 19
15)

In Chen’s view, the history of Europe’s emancipation indicated the in-

evitable trend of modernity, hence that China should also be modernised with
a precondition that the youth should be armed with “free personality” (Wang, 1
999, p.45). Then, with a series of articles focusing on the “new culture”, Chen
slowly focalised his argument from youth to women, and built the connection
2 Except noted otherwise, all resources originally written in Chinese are translated by me.
between women’s emancipation and nation’s modernity. In “1916” (Chen,
1915), he directly targeted Confucianism’s “Sangang” (three principles that
require officials to be obedient to the monarch, son to father and wife to hus-
band) demanding youth to not settle for subordination status, his argument
connecting personal emancipation with nation’s independence was very
convincing based on the fact that back then China was harshly beaten by a
much stronger West. Then, in “The way of Confucius and Modern Life” (Chen,
1916), Chen went a step further to demonstrate the incompatibility between
Confucianism and modernity, largely using the examples of women being op-
pressed by Confucianism to make his point, including gender segregation, fe-
male seclusion, forbidden widow’s remarriage, wife’s subordination to hus-
band, wife’s obligation to husband’s extended family. Thus, for China to
move to modernity, Chinese people have to get rid of the oppressive Confu-
cianism rules, which, a lot of them are being forced on Chinese women, and
women should be the ones who stand up and revolt against their subordina-
tion. After being widely circulated among the intellectuals and society, those
issues soon became a hot topic and set an agenda for New Culture Move-
ment’s debating of “women problem” (Wang, 1999, p.47).

Chen’s reasoning between “new women” and “new China” is not original
creativity, but rather a continuation of late Qing’s reformist intellectuals like
Liang Qichao, who sees Chinese women’s foot-binding and illiteracy as the
reason for China’s backwardness, since half of the population is not produc-
tive citizens. Similarly, Yan Fu in his introduction of Eugenics also states, that
only physically-strong women can produce strong male children who’d thus
protect the nation. However, as we can see from Hu and Chen’s work, New
Culturalists expanded their argument beyond reformists and built a narrative
that connected women’s general subordination with China’s modernity.

In 1917 February, Chen started a column “women problem” in New Youth, the
magazine continuously published articles about women’s education, mar-
riage, virginity, and inheritance rights among other topics. Not surprisingly,
male intellectuals are the main contributor to the debate, given the fact that
still very few women got a chance to finish higher education back then, let
alone got exposed to western ideology by studying abroad, and being able to
break the hierarchy of male-dominated knowledge production. In other words,
the “new women” as a concept and an identity in May Fourth period was cre-
ated by the male intellectuals, to serve the symbolic purpose of building a
stronger nation. Based on that, I take inspiration from current scholarship on
the definition of “new women” (Wang 1999, Edwards 2000) and conclude:
“new women” in May Fourth Period should be educated, independent, politi-
cally active, and most importantly patriotic.

To explore the possible reason why male intellectuals choose “new women”
as a symbol for their own vision of new China, I wish to draw insights from
post-colonial gender theories which points out that (male) colonisers’ polic-
ing over women’s body and behaviour in the name of civilisation is a way to
exercising their power as guardians of civilisation (Colette, 2022). Besides, ex-
isting research also shows, the “new women” concept that created by male
dominating intellectual class in several countries still requires women to be in
a subordinated status (Chatterjee 1993, Kumari 1978). Researchers have in-
spected this scenario from different angles: Schwarcz (1986) sees it as male
intellectuals’ expression of their own disempowerment in the oppressive
system; Edwards (2000) interprets it from intellectuals’ anxiety of losing con-
trol and voice in modern China’s governance since they were being
marginalised politically; Barlow (1996) and Wang (1999) states the motivation
for male intellectuals to remain their dominating role “enlightened moral
guardians and therefore leading advisers for the nation”.

I would like to point out two contradictions within New Intellectuals’ argu-
ments about “new women” before making my own intervention on their incen-
tives. To begin with, they accused Confucius control over women, but they did
the same thing by creating a discourse of new women being a necessity for a
new nation3; besides, the oppressive system that male intellectuals keep at-
tacking, is precisely the same arrangement which entitled them to represent
others and exercise their power by creating narratives like “new women”.

Hence, I will suggest that calling for “new women” and technically avoiding the
discussion about “new men”, is rather a discourse strategy of the New Cultur-
alists — by “othering” women, they kept themselves safe from critics — to not
address their own insecurity and anxiety. By “othering” women, they have le-
gitimised their status as the guardians of enlightenment, without directly con-
fronting the system in which they enjoyed the privilege and power. And, by ad-
dressing only women, they sustained the gender hierarchy by setting women
as inferior and incapable, which I will discuss more in detail in the next sec-
tion. I believe it is not that the New Culturalists were not aware of what should
“new men” do to be part of the stronger country, in fact, the discussion in New
3 For example, Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren) criticised men’s intervene on women’s chastity in
the name of saving the nation, but in his later work, he also repetitively express that if
women only focus on personal freedom instead of devoting for societal change, they will end
up in the same tragedy.
Youth was not gendered in the beginning but addressed to all youth (in this
case, othering all youth in contrasting to their image of enlighteners and se-
niors), thus I suggest, the discourse shift happened because of New Cultural-
ists’ insecurity and anxiety about their own identity in the making of modern
China.

Who are “new women” in the family?

In this section, I will go beyond the May Fourth discussions about new women
and nation, to throw light on the discussions about new women and family. By
examining the (possible) gap in addressing “new women” and their reproduc-
tive responsibilities within the family, I wish to draw insight from Social Repro-
duction Theory and suggest the limitation of the women’s emancipation dis-
course in May Fourth. I will first look at how New Culturalists engage with
gender relations in their personal lives and work, then introduce younger gen-
erations’ expectations of “xiao jiating” and “suitable wives” using the exam-
ple of male followers of the New Culturalists — who were actually the unad-
dressed “new men”.

New Culturalists’ engagement with power relations in the private sphere fo-
cused on attacking the Confucian patriarchal joint family (da jiating). As men-
tioned above, Chen Duxiu was one of the first intellectuals who pointed the
gun to Confucianism oppression over individuals in the patriarchal joint family,
his opinion was circulated and backed by many others. In general, intellectu-
als accused the patriarchal joint family of being responsible for China’s
weakness in serval aspects, including jeopardising individual development,
creating a slave mentality, sustaining generational and gender hierarchies,
and more importantly, hindering individuals' contribution to greater social and
national problems (Schwarcz 1986; Glosser 2002). As an alternative, small
family or core family (xiao jiating) was promoted as a modern formality for pro-
gressive youth. Not surprisingly, many New Culturalists themselves are also
the pioneers in refusing old styles of arranged marriage and experimenting
with the new styles of passionate marriage, usually with the “new women”
they had described4. However, examining the personal life and writings about
family of the New Culturalists shows that they had sustained the old gender hi-
erarchy in their own family lives, which can also be seen as a continuation of
their enlightener and leader role in the public discourse of “new women”.

4 Including Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Zhou Shuren and many more.
I will take Chen Duxiu as an example. Chen’s first wife was Gao Xiaolan
from an arranged marriage, who was a traditional woman figure of an elite
family, she was not educated and naturally became a housewife after mar-
riage. After ten years of marriage and several kids, Chen decided to get out of
the marriage and choose a new woman Gao Junman as his wife, who was ed-
ucated and also the younger sister of Gao Xiaolan. After marriage, she
worked as an assistant and secretary for Chen — just like many May Fourth
intellectuals and their wives — involved in the publishing of New Youth, partic-
ipating in the early organising of Chinese Communist Party, as well as taking
care of Chen and their children5. Gao can be seen as a new woman in May
Fourth period, since she was well-educated and actively participated in politi-
cal affairs. She also can be argued as independent based on the fact that she
bravely chose her own husband against the Confucius ethics, that too, her
own brother-in-law, in this sense, she was independent of the control of Con-
fucius joint family. However, she was undoubtedly subordinated to Chen not
just in family life but also in public affairs. Ironically, after they parted ways,
Chen choose another “traditional woman” who was neither educated nor was
working outside of home as his partner.

Lu Xun6’s experience is another example of this. He decided to discontinue

his arranged marriage and fell in love with one of his students Xu Guangping,
who ended up being Lu’s secretary and housewife, and Lu had stopped her
several times from attempting to work outside (Zeng, 1990). Wang (1999)
calls women like Xu and Gao “women who are both new and old”, and sug-
gests that they were seen as ideal wives to some New Culturalists because
they were “new” in pursuing their free-willing chosen marriage, but old in ac-
cepting husband’s dominant as mentor and enlightener.

The fact that New Culturalists kept their wives as both caretakers at home and
as assistants at work, echoes with their reluctance or incapability of acknowl-
edging women’s full responsibilities of reproduction in the families. Inspired
by Karl Marx’s critics of capitalism, some left intellectuals also shifted their
focus from individualism to social revolution, and started to depict a blueprint
in which socialism eventually liberated everyone including all women7. In 1921

5 Four women in Chen Duxiu’s life. China News. https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cul/

news/2009/04-16/1648788.shtml
6 Pen name of Chinese writer Zhou Shuren, he was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature and
also a representing character for New Culture Movement.
7 Lu Xun’ speech of What happens after Nora left home, can be seen as a prelude of intel-
lectuals questioning to individualism and searching for a societal solution for women’s oppr
ession.
January, in the speech “Women Problem and Social Justice”, Chen made
such an argument:

“Under socialism, both men and women must work hard; as minors, they are
both educated by the public education, and when they become adults, they
both work in the public society. Women will not be oppressed by their families,
and will not be oppressed by men after marriage. Because socialism recog-
nises that both men and women have personality, a woman can not be subor-
dinate to her father or her husband.” (Chen, 1921)

However, what he did not mention is what happens after work, who will be ex-
pected to take up childcare and other housework. The answer from his per-
sonal life is pretty clear, while he was able to devote himself to social revolu-
tion, his wives could not enjoy the same privileges. Hu Shi also showed a sim-
ilar view by stating that women should take main responsibility for children’s
family education.

According to Social Reproduction Theory, the primary factor behind women’s

oppression is the burdensome nature of social reproduction (Vogel, 1983). If
we look back at May Fourth period, the missing of attention to reproduction
labour is nothing strange, since Marx himself did not address this issue seri-
ously, despite stating that one essential factor of economic reproduction is the
reproduction of labour. Besides, the feminist movements of the west which
New Culturalists referred to, were also focusing on public and political rights
instead of equal rights in private life at that time. Drawing insight from mas-
culinity research (Haque & Kusakabe, 2005), I would also like to add that,
male intellectuals were more comfortable talking about women’s emancipa-
tion in the public sphere because it allowed them to hold masculinities by sus-
taining themselves as emancipator and mentors of women; but in the private
sphere, liberating women means they have to actually give up their own privi-
lege, which leads to loss of masculinity.

The limitation of May Fourth discourse of women’s emancipation can be fur-

ther understood from younger male intellectuals in the 1920s. Glosser (2002)
examines the Family Research (Jiating Yanjiu) magazine which was founded
by two Beijing students Luo Dunwei and Yi Jiayue, and explores what family
mean for the younger generation of intellectuals who were educated and
largely agitated by the ideology of New Cultural Movement. Luo and Yi started
the magazine in August 1920 when they were 19 and 21 years old, all other
members and contributors were also mostly young men in their early twenties,
which makes their views representative of their peers. Yi justified the neces-
sity of Family Research by emphasising the connections between family prob-
lem and the New Culture Movement, saying that New Culture Movement calls
for liberation and reformation, “but ‘the family problem’ (jiating wenti),
which bears an important relation to this, has been put to the side and ig-
nored.” (Glosser, 2002, p.125)

In its two years of publication, Family Research devoted a huge space criticis-
ing the traditional joint family, and expressing the desire of young men to be
autonomous and control their own destinies. Besides, the magazine also gave
chance for young men to express their expectations about marriage and fam-
ily. Glosser finds out that, majority of the articles were young men complaining
about their fiancée and wives of not being ideal women who can support their
husband’s productivity and ability to contribute to the nation. Glosser argues
that, because having a “new woman” as wife was so essential for these young
men’s identification as enlightened individuals, “despite the rhetoric about
women’s rights to independence and full personhood, these men were most
interested in creating women who met male demands for educated, enlight-
ened companionship. ” (Glosser, 2002, p.139)

To conclude, the May Fourth “new women” narrative, can be seen as a story
of male intellectuals’ inclusion of women in their imagination of modern na-
tion and modern human being. Indeed, it gave women certain level of freedom
by giving them an alternative identity to enter the public and political sphere
(though, guided and led by males) and challenged the domestication of
women under Confucian family power relation; however, I also argue that
since the gender relation within the small family — especially the reproductive
labour — was not addressed at all, and younger male intellectuals still saw
women as supportive roles in the family for their personal fulfilment, the gen-
der hierarchy remains untouched.

The absence of “new men”

In this section, I will extend my discussion to the reality aspect, and briefly explore
the possible legacy of the May Fourth “new women” discourse’s impact beyond
1925. 

The discourse-making of “new women” was male-centric, also devalued women’s

own expression of their perception of women's empowerment. At the same time,
while male intellectuals keep writing about how women should break the bondage and
be emancipated, the discussion of “how men should be emancipated” was really
rare, especially how men should be relieved from the pressure of the patriarchal narra-
tive. Thus, men’s self-awareness was lag behind the raising of women’s self-
awareness, and this is what I call the absence of “new men” — the missing of men’s
contribution to domestic work, put women in a dilemma of being the “new women”
for the nation, and the “old women” for their families. 

As we can see from the discussions in Family Research magazine, in a “reformed

family” that male intellectuals imagine, they still expected women to contribute
their reproductive and domestic labour in order to strengthen both the family and the
state (Glosser, 1995). This was utilised by businessmen in the 1930s, and created a re-
verse trend of calling women to “return home”, by creating the commercialised im-
age of a women’s centrality in a modern nuclear family (Glosser, 2002, p.108).
Then, despite urban and rural women joining the paid labour force in the socialist
PRC, domestic work still was seen as women’s work, which Elisabeth Croll’s the-
orises as the government “rely upon female unpaid labour to subsidise economic de-
velopment programmes” (1983, p.9). 

If we look at today’s China, women are still negotiating with the “double burden”
of both working at home and working outside. While the working-class women have
little choice but to take up most of housework, the elite class and upper-middle class
women are facing a trend of “return home”, as it is deemed that well-educated
women’s contribution to offspring nurturing is much more valuable than working
outside. 

Conclusion:

In this essay, I examined the public discourse making of “new women” in the May
Fourth era, and analysed the reason why “new women” was created as a symbol of a
promising new nation, as well as the limitations of such discourse to realise women
’s emancipation. 

I argue that the “new women” narrative built by the dominating male intellectuals,
shadows the power relation that males used to represent, appropriate even misuse
women for their own purpose. By “othering” women, they avoided interrogating
themselves and other men, and sustained the gender hierarchy both in the public and
private spheres. 

As a result, the narrative of “new women” did incorporate women into the great un-
dertaking of liberating China and gave women access to public affairs to some extent,
but also failed to acknowledge the oppressive nature of the ideal “small family” and
women’s sole responsibilities for domestic work, which exposed women to the risk
of being “doubly exploited” by both family and nation.  
On that note, we can see the absence of “new men”, from May Fourth to the present,
is like a metaphor for the struggle of Chinese women between the nation and society.

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