Women see reversal of China's one-child policy as more state pressure

Business Standard

19-06-2025

Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China
Published by Bloomsbury
320 pages ₹599
For anyone trying to understand China behind the headlines and the propaganda, Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China is an important read. It provides a people's perspective of how Chinese society has evolved since economic reform and the manner in which the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have impacted Chinese women in particular. The book is an attempt to present the story and idea of China beyond the CCP and through the lens of the Chinese people.
The word revolution is also aptly used in the title underscoring how the word can mean different things to different sections of society and the Party. According to the author, 'This book is about revolutions in two senses. It is about China's economic revolution from the 1980s and 1990s onwards, after the Reform and Opening Up era…. It is also about the personal revolutions undertaken by four young women born in those decades as they came of age amid the inconsistent rise — and now stumble — of social mobility in China's capitalist era'.
Women pay the highest price in any revolution and China is no different. Though Mao Zedong did famously proclaim, 'Women hold up half the sky', Chinese society does not reflect this outlook in any meaningful way. China is inherently patriarchal; for proof, one need look no further than the gender composition of the Chinese Politburo Standing Committee.
Even initiatives such as the 'One-Child Policy' have been aimed at directing and controlling women's agency over their bodies. This coupled with the preference for a male child has consistently aggravated the intensity of inequality within Chinese society. The modification of the one-child policy to a two-child policy in 2016 and to a three-child policy in 2021 directly impacts the lives of Chinese women. These changes were driven primarily because of decreasing birth rates. She describes how Chinese women responded: 'Rather than being seen as a permission to have more children, everyone saw it as a sign of looming government pressure on women to rescue the country's plummeting birth rate'.
There is no denying that Chinese society has seen enormous changes since economic reform. Large swathes of the population were lifted out of poverty, compulsory primary education ensured a high degree of literacy, urbanisation has been swift, and the country is an economic and military powerhouse. What gets lost in this big upbeat picture is the people. How have their lives been impacted? Can data be the only measure of success?
For instance, the author shrewdly offers a take on how Chinese women approach the issue of using make-up. She highlights how using makeup is linked to the notions of being feudal and the 'fact that the party had later denounced wearing makeup as a bourgeois fashion'. But equally, a decision to apply makeup can also be considered revolutionary.
The book skilfully juxtaposes the lives of four 'ordinary' women since their birth to their adult lives. It also paints a picture of how the policies adopted and implemented by the Party impacts each one of them differently and yet similarly, and underscores why the major challenges that the Chinese society faces today cannot be addressed by top-down policy changes.
These policies primarily represent what the Party needs at any given point of time to survive and gain legitimacy. But these policies have also failed to address the real challenges. What China needs is a major revisit of the hukou system, the healthcare system, the insurance system, and child care and education system. The book details that, 'by the mid-2010s, government figures suggested that there were 13 million people without any kind of hukou, of whom 8 million had been children outside their parents' birth quotas'. It also highlights the challenges migrant workers face today, the same workers who have played a crucial role in China's economic revolution.
This is not just a book about four lives; it is about how these women adapt to the changes around them. How they try to understand the lives of their parents and their children while understanding themselves. How they all define a purpose for themselves while making the most of the limitations and challenges.
The book also shows how feudal, Marxist and capitalist structures coexist in China today. It provides a nuanced and novel context for what is a revolution in today's China. And that can be a small decision, something as simple as expressing your own opinions and deciding what kind of life you want to live.
The reviewer is associate professor, O P Jindal Global University