The emergence of this special issue of NORA is indebted to many years of collaboration between Chinese and Nordic gender scholars. Since China opened up its borders to foreigners in the late 1970s, Western gender researchers have studied the vast political and cultural processes of change in this huge country, which today comprises a fifth of the world’s population, is the second largest economy in the world, and has recently surpassed the USA in regard to the annual number of scientific publications. China studies are also a vital part of Nordic gender research, which might not be so well known to Nordic gender scholars in general. A Sino-Nordic Gender Studies Network was established in 2002 on the initiative of the Danish-based China scholars Cecilia Milwertz and Qi Wang. The aim of the network was to encourage a dialogue between gender researchers of the two regions (see http://nias.ku.dk/fudan/sino-nordic-gender-studies-network). Triennial conferences have been organized since 2002, alternately in China and in the three Scandinavian countries. The latest one took place at the University of Oslo in August 2017 (see https://www.stk.uio.no/english/research/news-and-events/events/conferences/2017/age-agency-ambiguity.html). The theme chosen for this 6th conference of the network was Gender and generation in times of change—in China and in the Nordic countries. This special issue of NORA arises from this event.
The idea behind the conference theme was to focus on how gender and generation are affected during times of rapid change and what differences and similarities one might see in so different regions as China and the Nordic countries. Processes of industrialization, urbanization, deregulation, migration, and globalization have a profound transformatory effect on gender and generational relations all over the world. It relates to gender and generational aspects of family life, family–work relations, ageing societies, the situation of the younger generations, popularization of higher education, the expanding middle class and emerging precariat, the environment and sustainable development, and inequalities between different groups and classes. In spite of the huge differences between the Nordic countries and China in regard to size, culture, history, and political regimes, there might also be common features to these processes and the tensions they create, especially between genders and generations. Furthermore, China and the Nordic countries share some similarities, such as, for instance, a strong emphasis on the state’s role with regard to educating and socializing youth, and promoting gender equality, for instance through co-operation with women’s organisations. A comparative view on conflicts, negotiations, and changing relations between genders and generations may thus illuminate both general and specific traits of processes of change as well as what might be entailed in the concepts of modernization and crisis.
The conference in Oslo elicited more than 100 papers that applied a generational and gendered lens on a variety of issues like feminist activism, gender politics, parenting cultures, growing up, ageing, sexualities and sexual futures, human rights, migration, risks, and uncertain futures. Cases from Chinese, Nordic, and other countries were presented; however, the majority of the papers were about China. Nordic scholars authored some of these, but none of the studies of Nordic countries were authored by Chinese scholars. The organizers had to put a good deal of work into getting presentations about the Nordic countries even from Nordic scholars and met difficulties in surmounting the general attitude that when Nordic scholars attend a Sino-Nordic conference, the issue must be China! As Cecilia Milwertz writes in her position paper in this issue of NORA, the general experience from the Sino-Nordic Gender Studies Network has been that the exchange has been somewhat lopsided. The Chinese gender scholars have been eager to meet their Nordic colleagues on all sorts of thematic issues, whereas the interest on the Nordic side has mainly been from scholars whose object of study is China. This mindset among Nordic gender researchers has had an even stronger impact on this special issue of NORA. In spite of our call that underlined that the theme “gender and generation in times of change” could be applied both to China and the Nordic countries, we only received papers about China. Thus, the theme of the issue had to be adapted to this fact. The authors, however, represent Chinese, Nordic, and other China scholars: three Nordic-based, one based in China, and one in Switzerland.
During the Reform period, which started in 1978 with Deng Xiaoping when China was opened up to market-economy and globalization, the Chinese society has experienced very rapid processes of economic growth, increasing consumption, increasing inequalities, and internal migration. Processes of individualization, increased higher education, and cultural and sexual liberation are also part of the picture—in tension, however, with strengthening political control and reduced human rights. The one-child policy (1978–2015) has had a huge impact especially on individualization, education, gendered expectations, and generational relations. However, as many of the contributions in this special issue demonstrate, the changes along the generational axis in the family have been more profound than the changes along the gender axis. In fact, compared to earlier periods in China’s recent history, a re-traditionalization of gender in the family is emerging, both as a consequence of new structural conditions in the work market and decreased social security, and as a result of revival of Confucian family ideology from the political leaders.
The articles in one NORA issue can, of course, only cover a tiny bit of these complex processes and, thus, has less variation in themes than the conference had. Three articles focus on how the developments in the Reform era have produced generational changes in feminist politics, in the labour market, and between young people and their parents—and what impacts these changes have for gender relations. Two articles look into changes in middle-class motherhoods and fatherhoods towards more emphasis on intimacy and love between parents and child, but often in asyncronicity with traditional gender roles among the parents. As we unfortunately did not succeed in prompting an article on China’s emerging queer communities and activism, there is a general bias towards heterosexual families in the issue. However, most of the articles do refer to the situation that China is slowly on its way to accept more sexual diversity.
The special issue opens with a glimpse into different feminist political agendas in contemporary China. In the first decades of the Reform period there was a top-down women’s movement initiated by the party-led All-China Women’s Federation. Since the 1980s a new historical phase of the women’s liberation movement in China developed with the emergence of various non-governmental organizations that address gender and development issues and challenge gender-based inequalities in society. Qi Wang’s article, “From ‘Non-governmental Organizing’ to ‘Outer-system’—Feminism and Feminist Resistance in Post-2000 China”, introduces us to a younger generation of feminists who are working outside “the system”, i.e. both the Women’s Federation and NGOs, to challenge and resist inequalities and discrimination. Wang connects this both to generational changes and to the harshened political climate and tightened government control on social organizations, including the All-China Women’s Federation. She describes the approach of the young generations as a “paradigm shift” in Chinese feminism where the domains of action have moved to performance art, philanthropic volunteerism, and cyber-feminist articulations. These new modes of feminist protest, often in semi-private and semi-public spaces, also contribute to the emergence of new and alternative cultural patterns and interpretive frames.
The young feminists’ distrust in the system makes sense also when seen in relation to the new insecurity in the labour market and how this may affect gender relations. This is the theme for Sandra V. Constantin’s article, “Increasing Employment Precariousness in Post-socialist China: All Equal in a World of Uncertainty?” The article examines the transformation of the employment structure and compares the trajectories of young adults who grew up in post-socialist China with those who lived at the same age in the collectivist society. It discusses the numerous challenges induced by the rise of employment precariousness for the young adults as the collectivist welfare system has yet to find a solid substitute able to provide social protection for the whole population. The article argues that neoliberal ideology in China is mobilized in conjunction with a neo-familist discourse which emphasizes the central role of women within Chinese families, in a situation where the country still holds a high level of female labour market participation.
Lisa Eklund’s article, “Filial Daughter? Filial Son? How China’s Young Urban Elite Negotiate Intergenerational Obligations”, takes us into the Chinese family and shows us how the old system of “filial piety”, i.e. the obligation for young adults to show respect to their parents and also materially support them in old age, is challenged and renegotiated. The unprecedented flow today of resources from parents to their children is both resulting from and resulting in new norms and expectations of intergenerational relations, and is likely to play out differently depending on gender, class, and family composition. Still, most of Eklund’s informants regard themselves as filial, and getting married and having children is understood as the main act of filiality. Intergenerational obligations need to be managed in tandem with obligations envisioned towards future spouses, as well as work opportunities. Although no longer explicitly son-centred, the intergenerational contract is highly gendered. While filial sons may be involved in more complex relations of reciprocity due to both cultural imperatives and material investments, filial daughters appear to have more leeway in negotiating intergenerational relations.
The two last articles take us into new and old Chinese middle-class families, one in a contemporary perspective and with a focus on new intensive motherhood, the other by drawing up a larger historical backdrop for the changing of Chinese fatherhood. In “Feeding Mothers’ Love: Stories of Breastfeeding and Mothering in Urban China”, Michala Hvidt Breengaard investigates how new breastfeeding practices are understood and legitimized among middle-class urban mothers. Emotional ideals have not been prominent in the Chinese family culture, something that may be an effect of the tradition of filial piety in which parental love was assigned a minor role. Today, however, the governmental discourse of “quality children” has launched another climate for mothering, which stresses an intensive and emotional investment in the single quality child. The main focus in Breengaard’s article is on how such practices also contribute to form new maternal subjectivities where motherhood is experienced emotionally in terms of closeness and intimacy. The ideal of mothers as primary caregivers is somewhat out of sync with the Chinese tradition of multiple caregiving in the mothers’ everyday life. In this way the debate on breastfeeding in China seems to be an inverse reflection of the Nordic debate where the recommendation of breastfeeding for nutritional reasons is seen as a threat against the agenda of including fathers more in early childcare.
The claim that emotional ideals have been absent in the Chinese family may be challenged by historical research, however. In Xuan Li’s article, “Chinese Fathers in the Twentieth Century: Changing Roles as Parents and as Men”, the focus is on middle-class or upper-class fathers over two centuries. Based on family letters and autobiographical writing from four historical periods, Li indicates that close emotional relations between parents and children is not a new phenomenon in China, at least with regard to these elite fathers. The part of the Confucian family ethics that promoted a hierarchy between the parent and the child was weakened already in the Republican era early in the twentieth century, and the Socialist and Reform eras saw an increasing recognition of children’s autonomy and a heightened sense of intimacy in the father–child bond. However, the other part of the Confucian family ethics assigning segregated spaces and roles to men and women has been less amenable to change. The affection and intimacy shown by the fathers to daughters has often stood in a stark contrast with the tone in which the same men talk about their wives. Again, we discern the pattern that intergenerational relations have been more flexible and open to change than gender relations.
This is also a main conclusion in the recent published anthology edited by of Goncalo Santos and Stevan Harrell, Transforming Chinese Patriarchy: Chinese Families in the Twenty-First Century (2017), which is reviewed by Susanne Bregnbæk. Bregnbæk describes the book as a thought-provoking collection of meditations on the gendered landscape of contemporary Chinese society, revealing both continuity and change in the role of patriarchy in rural and urban China. The review follows a highly informative review essay by Harriet Zurndorfer about “Waves of Publications on Chinese Women and Gender Studies”. The essay introduces us to a goldmine of Western-language publications on China and gender between the 1960s and the present. Zurndorfer describes how the field has developed from studies favoured by left-leaning academics to scholarship fed by multi-disciplinary approaches and integral to China scholarship. A real treat for all new scholars in the field!
Finally, returning to the point about the lopsidedness of the exchange between Nordic and Chinese gender research, Cecilia Milwertz in her position paper “A New Generation of Sino-Nordic Gender Matters” asks what the implications for Nordic gender studies of China’s increasing presence and influence globally as well as in the Nordic region could or should be? Maybe the predominant emphasis on separate nation-state research, which also characterizes this special issue, should be extended with a focus on some of the gendered dimensions of connections between China and the Nordic countries? Thus, Milwertz’s paper points to new directions in research in which it is neither China nor the Nordic countries that are the sole object of study, but the expanding global relation between us.