Beijing Newspeak

The attention given to International Women’s Day in China today was nothing short of incredible. Xinhua love it. It is a great event for filling story quotas - just find any female reference and stick “ahead of Women’s Day on ..” somewhere near the opening line. I just can’t help but feel that the occasion, in some ways, plays up to stereotypes, particularly when most women I know back in Britain regard the concept as patronising. A sign of more equal rights, I suppose.

Female colleagues at the Great Hall of the People were visited by the Xinhua big boss - Tian Congming (TCM) - and were lavished with flowers, chocolates, shampoo and body lotion. Women all over Beijing were bombarded with text messages in the morning from clothing stores proclaiming unprecedented discounts of up to 70 percent off for one day only. Well, many women in the capital were given the afternoon off so what else were they going to do. Ahem. Unfortunately, Xinhua ladies missed out on that one. TCM returned to the main building to give a lecture in the afternoon in “celebration” of Women’s Day. The main point of the talk was to encourage women (and a few token men) to spend less time sitting in meeting rooms listening to people talking.

A couple of female colleagues said that for a developing country, China has some of the best women’s rights.  It seems that old Mao can take some credit for this with his “Women hold up half the sky” line - although his infamous biographers Jung Chang and Jon Halliday believe that he just wanted to boost the nation’s workforce. It was encouraging to see a report by China Daily carried in the People’s Daily about guaranteeing a much-needed minimum number of female NPC deputies for the elections next year.

The problem has not gone unnoticed by the NPC Standing Committee, too. In a draft resolution on the number and election of deputies to the 11th NPC to be discussed at the ongoing NPC session, it has asserted that the number of woman deputies should not be less than 22 percent. This is the first time that the NPC has drawn a bottom line for woman deputies in its election plan.

The figure is below the UN target of 30 percent for women in leadership positions and legislatures set back in 1990 but a start nevertheless.

Incidentally, there is a Chinese phrase which seems to have originated from Hong Kong films and televisions and is inspired by International Women’s Day. In a cunning use of the date of the occasion (san yue ba hao - 03-08), the phrase is: “Ni shi da san ba”. It means something like “You are a big gossiping woman”. Ah, the sterotypes.