Over the past few years, the Chinese government has promoted increasingly conservative social values and encouraged women to focus on raising children. It suppressed civil society movements and enacted laws to expel foreign influence.
So a 75-year-old Japanese feminist scholar who is single and childless is unlikely to become a celebrity on the country’s heavily censored internet.
But Chizuko Ueno, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, is a phenomenon. She shot to fame in China in 2019 for a speech that criticized society’s expectations for women to be cute and the pressure they face to hide their success.
Leta Hong Fincher, a researcher at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, said Ueno’s popularity reflected rising interest in women’s rights. Finch has written about sexism and feminism in China.
A fierce feminist movement erupted in China about a decade ago, with protests such as occupying men’s restrooms demanding more toilets for women or marching in wedding dresses splattered with fake blood to draw attention to domestic violence of attention. But the movement has been suppressed as President Xi Jinping’s government tightens its grip on civil society and promotes conservative family values to promote fertility.
Ueno declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this article.
In mainland China, Ueno’s books sold more than 500,000 copies in the first half of 2023, with 26 titles available in Chinese bookstores as of September, according to sales tracker Beijing Open Books. They cover topics ranging from misogyny in Japanese society to feminist approaches to elder care in an aging society.
“Starting from the Limit,” a collection of letters between Ueno and Suzuki Suzuki, a writer who has appeared in Japanese porn films, topped the 2022 annual book list on Douban, a popular Chinese review platform.
Fans say Ueno’s openness about choosing not to get married or have children makes her a role model.
Writer Edith Cao, who asked to speak by her English nickname out of fear of government retaliation, said seeing an East Asian woman succeed without a family helped her decide not to get married. Graduate student Yang Xiao said Ueno’s example helped ease her anxiety about being single and inspired her to start booking vacations on her own to build confidence.
Even among Ueno’s Chinese fans, relationships are a divisive issue. Earlier this year, fans attacked a Chinese vlogger who asked Ueno if she wasn’t married because “she was hurt by men,” saying the blogger was reinforcing traditional assumptions. That sparked a series of months-long online conversations about marriage and feminism, with the hashtag attracting some 580 million views on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform.
Hong Finch said Ueno’s failure to write about China may be one of the key reasons her book escaped censorship.
Feminist ideas are not banned in China, but the authorities view all activism with suspicion.
Several organizers and founders told The Associated Press that police regularly summon bookstore and cafe owners and pressure them to cancel feminist-themed events. Online, posts mentioning the #MeToo movement have been deleted, and nationalist bloggers have openly attacked feminists as foreign agents.
Chinese journalist and activist Huang Xueqin helped spark China’s first high-profile #MeToo case. Tried it last week Suspected of inciting subversion of state power. Huang is accused of publishing “inflammatory” articles and promoting “nonviolent movement” training events, according to a copy of the indictment released by Huang’s supporters.
Lu Pin, a US-based Chinese women’s rights activist, said protests and campaigning are no longer possible, meaning feminism is limited to individual actions and small groups. Ueno’s prosperity, she says, helps keep feminist ideas within the “legitimate” mainstream.
Megan Ji, a 30-year-old financial analyst, said she didn’t become interested in feminist ideas until she read one of Ueno’s books.
It helped her confront her boss when he started rubbing her back at an after-get off work karaoke party with colleagues and potential business partners. She was in a highly competitive industry and attending after-work parties was widely considered essential to her job, and the other woman said nothing when a drunken manager put his arm around her shoulders.
But when her boss started badgering her about singing, she shouted, “Do you respect me? Who do you think I am?” Her colleagues were shocked, but Ji’s boss apologized on the spot and again the next day. Apologize. Ms. Ji said she suffered no retaliation and there have been no awkward gatherings at the office since.
The Associated Press could not independently verify Ji’s account, and she asked to be identified by her English name to avoid repercussions from the company.
Kuo Qingyuan, a 35-year-old copywriter, said reading Ueno’s work made him question how he views women. He said he no longer talks to friends about women’s appearance and instead looks for children’s books for his daughter that don’t promote stereotypical gender roles.
Cao, who is also an author who advocates for victims of domestic violence, said there are some issues that reading feminist books can’t solve.
In 2019, two years after China first listed “sexual harassment” as a cause of action, the Beijing-based nonprofit Yuanzhong Family and Community Development Service Center found that only 24 cases using the law had been recorded in a national database. The researchers also found 12 additional sexual harassment-related cases filed under other laws.
Ueno-inspired feminism is unlikely to bring direct pressure to change the law. It was much milder than the earlier wave of radicalism, although it was probably more widespread.
But “even if her words don’t bring about policy change,” Cao said, they “further galvanize the underlying power.”
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Associated Press researcher Chen Wanqing in Beijing contributed to this report.
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