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Currently, abortion can be lawfully performed in China at any gestational stage for a wide range of social and medical reasons. I critically explore the Chinese regulatory model of abortion in order to examine its practical effects on women. Although I focus on the post-Maoist abortion law, I also analyse the imperial Confucianism-dominated regulation and the Maoist ban on abortion in order to scrutinise the emergence of the notion of ‘glorious motherhood’. By examining how ‘glorious motherhood’ is constructed and reinforced (...) in the Chinese family planning context, I argue that the post-Maoist government intentionally made abortion ‘law in the books’ unrestrictive in order to impose its control over female fertility. As a result of this, women are persuaded and even forced to lead a ‘glorious’ maternal life, which means sacrificing themselves for the purpose of achieving the state’s Malthusian and eugenic demographic goals. Furthermore, I argue that, in addition to exacerbating gender oppression, abortion law’s embrace of the idea of ‘glorious motherhood’ also produces ‘group oppression’ of unmarried women and working-class women. (shrink)

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This commentary examines the laws and policies on reproduction adopted in New China since 1949 and reflects on how they have regulated womanhood and whether they have promoted gender equality. By doing so, it also demonstrates how the regulation of reproduction constructs the notion of an ideal womanhood in order to justify the state’s enforcement of the population policy and its exercise of control over women’s fertility.

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The proverb ‘women hold up half the sky’ was created by the Maoist government 64 years ago in order to show that women in ‘New China’ have equal power and rights to their male peers. I selected three photographs for my FLaK zine and called them ‘unwanted girls’, ‘battered wives’ and ‘inglorious women’. To examine the relevance of the proverb in Modern China, I will discuss three women-related problems behind these photographs and analyse their cultural and legal causes. By doing (...) so, I aim to achieve two purposes—first, to help the reader have a better understanding of the problems of women in the region where one-fifth of the global population lives, and second, to argue that seemingly gender neutral law and policy can produce new and greater restrictions on women’s freedom. (shrink)

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