Leftist Feminists Silent on China’s Bought Wives By Mrs Vera West
It all began with a video that went viral on Chinese social media of a woman, in a shed, with a chain around her neck. It is but one of China’s wife slaves, poor women kidnapped and sold off to men in more remote areas due to the demographic imbalance created by old Chairman Mao’s one child policy. The story of one such woman has been told in moving detail at “The Oz,” and the communist Chinese authorities have promised to crack down on this. But, this comes from a tyrannical mob of communists who foster organ harvesting, so I think, not likely. And notice how these women’s issues involving non-white countries never get attacked by Leftist feminists in the West. After all, they turned a blind eye to the migrant rapes in Europe, so why would they?
“The one-minute video clip started circulating on Chinese social media last winter. A woman is shown in a shed with no door, dressed in a thin sweater. She is chained by the neck.
The footage set off a storm of social-media outrage: How in today’s China could a human being be treated this way? Many suspected she must be a “bought wife,” a reference to a long-held but illegal practice to help rural men find brides—often involving human traffickers who lure or abduct poor women from remote regions.
The furor in turn has set off a broader debate over how Chinese women are treated. The Communist leadership prides itself on promoting gender equality and officials frequently repeat a Mao Zedong quote: “Women hold up half the sky.” But many educated, urban Chinese women found in the chained woman’s misfortune a lens on their own roles in society.
Much of the initial anger had to do with the level of tolerance that at first led local officials to shrug off questions about the chained woman. Authorities in Xuzhou, in the southeastern Jiangsu province, at first denied she was a trafficking victim: She “lived apart from her family,” they said, because she was mentally ill and sometimes violent.
The outpouring has forced officials to acknowledge the continued trauma of bride-buying—as well as the level of tolerance that has persisted around it.
Later they confirmed the public’s suspicions. She had been sold as a bride not once, but twice, and had eight children. She was brought by traffickers from a poor corner of Yunnan province in southern China inhabited by members of the Lisu minority, whose names are often based on plants or animals. Authorities identified her as Xiaohuamei, a name that means Little Plum Blossom.
With the disclosures, her current husband was arrested and she was hospitalised. Jiangsu provincial authorities said in February that she was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and that her condition improved in the hospital but that she still wasn’t able to communicate; they have made no further comment.
Protest in China does not gather momentum often. In a country with little tolerance for street demonstrations, social media provides an outlet for discontent, but under tight controls; the government has battled any sign of a broader feminist awakening from this or other incidents, throwing feminist activists in jail or deleting their social-media accounts. Still, the outpouring over the chained woman catapulted the issue of bride-buying to the level of national soul searching.
For weeks and then months, images from the video have dominated China’s social media. The groundswell was reminiscent of the global #MeToo movement, which had been comparatively muted in China. In February it stole attention from the Beijing Winter Olympics. Over time it inspired poems, graffiti, memes and Andy Warhol-style portraits online.
Complaints have spread to unexpected quarters of society. An equipment mechanic in Tianjin, 370 miles away, said he called police in the woman’s town several times to plead for justice on her behalf after seeing the video. “Jiangsu in the year of 2022 shouldn’t still be a society of slavery,” he said. State-affiliated commentators also chimed in. “Isn’t it suspected of breaking laws to force a mentally ill person to give birth, to have so many babies, to use her as a reproductive tool?” asked Hu Xijin, a columnist and former editor in chief of the nationalist Global Times newspaper, on the Weibo social-media platform.
Months after the footage emerged, a national campaign is under way to track down and rescue women unwillingly sold into marriage. Officials in Xuzhou have adopted a new tone, saying they felt deeply ashamed to the point of not being able to eat or sleep. Officials in Hebei province rescued 11 trafficking victims in a crackdown, while officials in Jiangsu and other areas have gone door to door to see if other women are in similar situations.
National legislators are working on making it illegal to turn a blind eye to signs someone is a trafficking victim. Any traffickers were given until June 30 to turn themselves in return for leniency. On July 3, the Ministry of Public Security said the authorities have set up more than 5,000 stations to collect blood samples from victims of trafficking and from family members who have reported missing persons.
The outpouring has forced officials to acknowledge the continued trauma of bride-buying—as well as the level of tolerance that has persisted around it, partly because it helped assuage a surplus of unmarried men.
Bride buying is rooted in China’s skewed gender ratio, the result of a preference for sons in a society where men traditionally inherit a family’s assets. Under China’s one-child policy, baby girls were more often targeted for abortion or, in the more distant past, sometimes left to die after birth. That left a surplus of men. Many bachelors have enlisted matchmakers, some of whom were traffickers, to find a wife.
Coercing a woman into marriage has long been against the law in China, but paying money for a wife didn’t become a criminal offense until 1997. Many local officials adopted a “one-eye-open, one-eye closed” attitude to evidence of bride trafficking, driven by fears of unrest if a lot of men couldn’t find wives. Transactions that turned abducted women into brides were often regarded as legitimate because they were consistent with existing traditions such as the paying of dowries.”
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