One of the most outstanding characteristics of traditional Chinese society has been its family

system, it is in the family where the basis for social stability and historical continuity,
characteristic of Chinese culture, are given. It is for this reason that the role of the family is
intertwined with the history of Confucian philosophy, in which the family is not only the
sustenance of social organization, but also of political and economic organization. Confucian
philosophy understands that there are five basics socials relations that sustains the "Society-
State" relationship: ruler-governed, father-son, husband-wife, older brother over younger
ones, and friend-friend.

When we are taking into account those five socials relations, we can understood that the
control exercised by the power structures in Chinese society makes this country one of the
most interesting cases for an analysis of the power structure's influences. Not only because
it is an oriental country, but also because we are talking about a communist country. This
double difference make the analysis of the advancement of women's cause and the
acquisition of women's rights, totally different from an analysis about a western country.

Those power structures have extended to modern China, we are not only speaking of the
power exercised through the five basics socials relations, referred in Confucianism, but now
we can speak of the power exercised by the media and the industries. Those structures tend
to sexualize women and occupy public space, it is one of the consequences of modern
consumerism.

Considering the above, it is imperative to ask ourselves how, and in what ways, the chinese
power structures have contributed to the sexualization of the woman in the society ? We will
also try to explain their roles in the women's struggle for rights.
For answering those questions, we will develop an historical review of the phenomenons of
women's rights and freedoms in China. An analysis of how power structures have
transformed the culture of sex, and how they have significantly affected the value of women
in Chinese society.

One of the concepts that will help us solve those problems is the concept of "Biopolitics",
defined by Michel Foucault as the control of the body by power structures. This concept will
help us to understand how powers structures in modern societies exerce their grip over the
bodies in function of their interests. Additionally this concept will be see throughout this
essay to treat about another aspect of the chinese society : the matter of the gender and the
women. Because one of the mecanisms, and one of the materialization, of those powers
structures, is the gender itself wich his efficience is incalculable in the way of something
conceived as natural, inherent and universal.

I. Background on changes in women's rights in China.

It is essential for the analysis to take into account two moments in Chinese history that were
key to the women's liberation movement. On the one hand, the moment of the foundation of
the People's Republic of China with the appearance on stage of Mao. And on the other
hand, Mao's subsequent death and its implications.
Like other contemporary societies, Chinese society has undergone profound social changes,
before and after the communist regime. Traditional Chinese society, which is the society
prior to the establishment of the communist regime, was composed of locals units centred
around a kinship structure, the organization and permanence of which represented the
stability of the traditional order and the continuity of culture. The role of the basic continuity
of the family for the state placed the individual's loyalty to the family even above loyalty to
the state itself. In all the functions of the family there was a hierarchical division that obeyed
the parameters of sex and age.

In the family structure, man represented the figure of the chief, who was a source of
authority and superiority. In this structure, the woman did not possess any type of authority
whatsoever, they were totally alienated to the right of private property and did not have the
possibility of transmitting the lineage.

The philosophies of Confucius and Mencius attest to the marginal role played by women. A
clear example is the following sentence: "It is not for a woman to decide anything for herself,
but she is subject to the rule of the three obediences. When she is young she always has to
obey her parents, when she is married she has to obey her husband, when she is a widow
she has to obey her son.” (Mention 320 B.C.). Behind these thought forms was hidden the
imaginary of a woman totally subordinated by the will of the man who represented the figure
of power in Chinese society.

Feminist ideas were slowly introduced in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. However, something interesting to mention is that in the first decade of the
nineteenth century, society was characterized by being strongly nationalistic which translated
into a struggle to overthrow the reigning dynasty, the Qing, who was Manchu. It's in this
period that women were accepted in school, who, for the first time left their homes to receive
education. In a short amount of time, women became aware of the role they could play in the
struggle against the Manchu dynasty, who were based on a social order in which the
development of women was very limited. One of the most documented cases is that of Qui
Jin, an educated and politically active woman, who, as a consequence of her subversive
activities, was beheaded in 1907. For the first time in Chinese history, women also
participated in the armed struggle and several women's military and paramilitary corps were
formed.

This is a small example of how women of the time emphasized the need for gender equality
as a prerequisite for the creation of a new social and political order that needed to be
established.

After this, at the beginning of the 20th century, the right to education and the right to vote
were introduced. These principles of new equity incited the first formations of a feminist
consciousness to get form up. As an example of this, we have the participation of women in
the 1911 revolution with demands ranging from opposition to foot bandaging, to demands for
equality between the sexes and women's political participation. It should be clarified that this
event was isolated from a feminist struggle, and was seen, at this time, as an irrelevant issue
in comparaison of what the revolution of 1911 was about : the constitution of the Republic
and the overthrow of the Manchu Qing dynasty.
The struggles of the feminists that took place in China have been various and at different
historical moments, since they all happened in different contexts. There were women's
struggles in China, ranging from 1910 to 1930, with what might be called the beginning of
the development of "feminist consciousness" and the oppressed role in which women find
themselves. (García, Tamara. Bisurgi, Santiago. Faidutti, Luciano, 2014).

The change took place in 1949 with Mao's rise to power and the establishment of the
People's Republic of China. With his proposal of modernization he tried to distance the
Chinese population from superstition, tradition, lineages and Confucian patriarchy. In order
to transform the family structure, in 1950 the government enacted the Marriage Law, which
aimed to democratize family relations and neutralize the hierarchy of authority according to
the criteria of generation, gender and age. And thanks to this decree, women were
theoretically "liberated" from "the three obediences"; with the father as daughter, with the
husband as wife, and the son as widow. In addition, law for stopping arranged weddings
without the prior consent of the spouses was promulged, the divorce was facilitated for the
women and access was given to the custody of the children once the matrimonial rupture
materialized.

Another relevant historical event in the allocation of rights to women was the Agrarian
Reform Act of 1950, which gives women equal ownership and rights over land. At that time,
much of the population lived in rural areas, and gender segregation was latent. This reform
gave the possibility to women to work away of their homes, and this is something that
marked Chinese history.

The Chinese government's commitment to pave the way for women's equality resulted in
regulations, laws, job creation, propaganda and warnings that were largely effective.
However, the existence of a special problem was not recognized, and this resulted in
traditional gender relations being maintained. This meant that the position of women
changes according to the political will of the moment and there is no significant change in the
collective consciousness of the population.

II. Sexualization of women in the public and private sphere in China

Despite the significant achievements in terms of women's rights, sexualization in China

(practices and representations associated with the human body) has corresponded to
economic interests and the maintain of the system by power structures that can be
represented as the same power structures that oppress women. In other terms those are te
limits of what I called earlier the commitment of the Chinese government to promote gender
equality.

Nowadays, the Chinese government is obtaining important economic benefits through the
expansion of cosmetic companies, beauty clinics and fashion. We are talking about an
exploitation and a financialization of the female body, directly or indirectly, assigning a social
value to the body. The use of advertising, in those buiseness sectors, by the power
structures contribute to create consumption patterns leading to the need to remain physically
beautiful.
Another example of this exploitation is the Chinese multimillion dollars sex industry, which,
among other things, reifies women. China is the world most prolific country in term of sex
buiseness (sex-toy, porn, etc). The porn industry, although banned, has a wide audience
even in Chinese society, and participate to share the stereotype of feminine soumission as
we see it in Josh Freed's documentary “China: The Sexual Revolution”. For some years the
country has been experiencing a great ideological and cultural change in terms of sex. The
Chinese population is discovering the sexual liberties that the West enjoyed in the 1960s
and then did not reach the Asian country due to the closing of Mao's doors. Young people
have broken taboos and are not ashamed to kiss in public or have premarital sex, something
they would have been shot for during the time of the Cultural Revolution, because until 1997
having sex before marriage was illegal. (Documentary "China, the sexual revolution.
Cernetig, Miro. Freed Josh, 2007).

This can be seen in large cities, where sexuality can be seen represented in various forms,
in shops, in advertisements and in photographic exhibitions. The desirable body shown in
advertising can be read as a figure of a consumer society appealing to individual aspirations
to compete in the marketplace. In its different forms, the sexed body delineates social and
gendered boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, hierarchy and privilege, acceptability and
unacceptability.

One of the most influential messages disseminated through the media is the ideal of beauty.
Creating in women the desire to adapt their bodies to the established model. And
unfortunately they reinforce the values that have traditionally been attributed to women;
weakness, vulnerability, docility, among others. These characteristics make women tend to
deny important characteristics related to personal and individual fulfillment.

Considering the above, we can say that in the matter of sexualization and direct or indirect
exploitation of women, Chinese society catches up with westerns societies. So it is possible
to affirm that the expansion of capitalism in Chinese culture has allowed sexuality to be
incorporated into everyday life, making sexual matters represented in leisure, in medias and
advertising, and in changes in gender roles.
However we can also observe that, rooted in generalized macho thinking, still exists some of
the traditional Chinese values in women like chastity or fidelity. Values always dictating the
function and use of women's bodies by men, allowing sexual or moral violences.

The words of Josephine Ho, in Sexuality in Contemporary Chinese Culture, illustrates very
well this matter : “Spurred on by an ever-expanding capitalist culture that promotes the
smooth and diverse flow of not only capital but also desire, the movement of women and
teenagers in the erotic culture seems to cause the most anxiety, not only because they have
traditionally been portrayed as a-sexual beings easily victimized by the sexual messages
presented in advertising, clothing, movies, and other leisure activities; but more importantly
because the growing mobility and autonomy of women and teenagers in sexual matters
prove to be devastating to the maintenance of unequal power relationships within the family.
The diversification of desire has thus prompted governments to adopt conservative sex
education programs which further exacerbate the tension between desire and control.”

Today, China is going through a hyper-modernization of its culture and society, and get
confront to a great flow of images and ideas from outside its traditional cultural norms,
especially regarding sex. In that regard we can say that the specificity of the Chinese model,
is located in the level of social liberalism and equality. The capitalism and the consumerism
are extremely developped in Chinese society, without having nothing to envy to western
countries in that regard. However, with the same comparaison and proportion, the chinese
society does not stand on the same level in term of equality, sexual liberation, genders
matters and such. This is why we can say that the sexual revolution in China has brought
both positive and negative things, but it has not brought a real liberation of women.

This means that women are still controlled by the power structures which are represented
through industry and the media. Because despite progress on legislation in favour of women,
there is still a gender disparity in employment, income and political participation as shown in
the graphs. In addition, the Austrian Freudo-Marxist Wilhelm Reich noted the same problem
in the Russian Revolution: "It is generally believed that the essential aspect of the Soviet
sexual revolution was to be found in the changes set down in legislation. But a legal or
otherwise formal change achieves social significance only when it really reaches 'the
masses,' i.e., when the mass psyche is restructured. This is the only way for an ideology or a
program to become a historically revolutionizing force--solely by a deep-seated change in
the feelings and instinctual life of the masses. For the often quoted and yet so little
understood 'subjective factor of history' is to be found exclusively in the psychic structure of
the masses. Therefore, no investigation of historical developments may call itself
revolutionary if it regards the psychic condition of the masses merely as a product of
economic processes and not also as their motor force." (Reich 174).

So changes in women's rights are not only achieved on the sole institutional level, because
they need a change in the mentality and in the habits in the everyday life. We can't say that
the struggle for rights has been in vain, but in Chinese society the fact that anxiety and fear
accompany the daily lives of a lot of women, and that patriarchal dominance still disciplines
bodies and minds for reproduction or satisfaction purpose, through a variety of coercive
devices, are sufficient proofs.

In conclusion, in spite of all the things we've said, feminism has not been able to be silenced
and women goes from resistance and transforming political practice, to defensive and
offensive positions. We can't ignore the struggles that have allowed advances in the
recognition of women's rights, and in the same time the change of patriarchal mentality of
society cannot be left in oblivion. However true sexual liberties are still limited and tradition
continues to be important or even predominant in some cases.

This is why it is imperative to create a new culture of eroticism, comprehensive and

respectful of women no matter how much or little progress they make, the women, the
teenagers, the homosexuals, and other sexual minorities will no longer have to start their
struggle from ground zero. They can start from the thinking and practices that are now being
created in contemporary Chinese sex culture.