By Joseph Lawson
Joseph Lawson is a historian of modern China at Newcastle University and ESIS supporter.
Feminists played a significant role in Chinese revolutionary politics from the beginning of the twentieth century. One of the most important was Deng Yingchao (1904-1992), who was a leader in Communist Party work relating to families throughout the Maoist period and into the 1980s.
The patriarchal family was at the core of China’s traditional social and political order, so family policy was critical to the Communist Party’s efforts to transform Chinese society.
One of Deng’s greatest achievements was playing a leading role in the drafting of the 1950 Marriage Law. She ensured that the law contained provisions that greatly expanded the freedom to divorce. This was life-changing for men and women, but especially important in enabling women to leave abusive marriages.
Deng Yingchao’s Marriage Law
The Marriage Law was one of the Communist Party’s first priorities after taking power. It built on some of the reforms to marriage and divorce that had already been undertaken by the Nationalist Party in the 1920s and 1930s.
Nationalist marriage law had theoretically equalized access to divorce between men and women and banned men from having concubines. However, the Nationalist law was not well promoted or enforced.
Moreover, thanks to Deng Yingchao’s efforts, the Communist Law went further in many respects than the Nationalist law. For example, it was no longer necessary to prove that one’s spouse had one of a defined list of serious faults to obtain a divorce, though a period of mediation and a court appearance continued to be required.
Implementation of the Marriage Law
Implementation of the Marriage Law faced many challenges. Some Communist Party cadres sided with men who felt it was wrong for the party—for which they had fought and sacrificed—to allow their wives to leave them.
Many women were also dissuaded from seeking divorce by threats of violence from husbands, in-laws and other members of the community. Women in such situations were often not supported by local authorities.
Responding to these difficulties in a speech at a major conference in 1951, Deng summarized the core work that feminists would undertake within the Chinese government over the next decades: “educating women about society and society about women.”[1]
‘Society’ in this context included the Communist Party itself, but Deng could not put herself in the position of appearing to tell Mao Zedong and the small group of leaders around him what to do. Nevertheless, through patient and persistent work, Deng and other feminists successfully argued for robust promotion and enforcement of the Marriage Law in the early 1950s.
Thanks to their work, access to divorce greatly expanded and a new conception of individual autonomy within the family took root in Chinese society.
Deng Yingchao’s influence beyond the Marriage Law
Beyond the Marriage Law, Deng Yingchao played a leading role alongside other feminists in pushing for greater access to birth control from the 1950s.
China became famous for restrictive birth policies in the 1980s, but in the 1950s many male party leaders favoured pronatalism and restrictions on birth control. The latter approach was dominant in the post-war Soviet Union. Maoist China’s divergence from the Soviet Union in this regard owed much to the advocacy and activism of women like Deng.
[1] Quoted in Zheng Wang, ‘Deng Yingchao (1904-1992): A Feminist Leader in the Chinese Communist Party’. In The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World, ed. Francisca de Haan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), 285.
Source and further reading:
Mans Enning, Kimberly. The Party Family: Revolutionary Attachments and the Gendered Origins of State Power in China. Cornell University Press, 2023.
Wang, Zheng. ‘Deng Yingchao (1904-1992): A Feminist Leader in the Chinese Communist Party’. In The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World, edited by Francisca de Haan. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
Primary source:
Teng Ying-chao, “On the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China” in The Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1950) https://www.bannedthought.net/China/MaoEra/Women-Family/MarriageLawOfThePRC-1950-OCR-sm.pdf
