WOMEN IN NEW CHINA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP82-00457R007600040003-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 63
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 6, 2001
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: January 1, 1949
• Content Type: REPORT

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Women in New China-.
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Women
in
ilew China
Foreign languages Press, Peking
1949
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CONTENTS
Page
1. Woinen of China in 1949 1
4
.t 2. The Great Struggle for Liberation 23
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?
? WOMEN OF CI-INA IN 1949
A new China was born on October 1, 1949, when
the Chinese People's Republic was officially inaugu-
rated. As Chairman Mao Tse Tung pointed out in his
proclamation delivered on that historic occasion, the
formation of the new people's government symbolized
the fact that "the Chinese people have stood up."
This was a great event for all Chinese people, but
most of all for Chinese women. During the past 5, 00
years, Chinese women have shared the degradation and
oppression which a feudal society imposed upon those
who toiled. In addition to such injustices, Chinese
women were also 'forced to endure the Suppression
which the old society meted out to the so-called "infe-
rior sex." From birth to death they were mere slaves
that could be bought and sold like commodities, beaten
or even killed ? slaves first of their parents and later
.their husbands, to whom they were often married
as children., Now, for the first time in, China's long
history, women have gained true sociailequality with
men. They have stood up beside men as. equal partners
in creating and shaping China's new society, in which
those who labour have become the tillers.
The Common Program, adopted by the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference as the poli-
tical cornerstone of the, new government, proclaimed
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that feudal and semi-colonial China is dead. At the
same time, the Common Program carefully prescribed
the status. of women in the New Democratic China. In
precise and unequiVocal terms, it declared:
"The People's Republic of China shall abolish
the feudal system which holds women in bondage.
Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in poli-
tical, economic, cultural, educational and social
life. Freedom of marriage for men and women
Shall be established."
Thus there is nothing that now holds women back
in their strivings for the betterment of their conditions.
Moreover, the new people's government will give
thoughtful consideration, to women's ,special problems
and difficulties. The Common Program has set forth
the following stipulations:
The special interests of the' juvenile and
women workers shall be protected Inspection of
industries and mines shall be carried out to im-
? prove their safety devices and sanitary facilities.
. ?
" ? ? ? Public health and medical work shall
? be expanded and attentiork shall. be paid to the pro-
tection . of the health of mothers, infants and
children:"
The emancipated status of Chinese women is not
merely a matter of a..-oew fine-sounding legalist phrases
embedded in documents, as so often the case in the
old-style bourgeois republics. China's women have al--
ready assumed their new responsibilities by taking up
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some of the top positions hi the people's government.
Soong Ching Ling (Madame Sun Yat-sen)-has become
one of the six vice-chairmen of the Central People's
Government. TwO women have been elected to the
Central People's Government Council. These are Ho
Hsiang Ning (Madame Liao Chung Kai), one of the
early revolutionary followers of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and
? Tsai Chang, who is concurrently a member of the Cen-
tral Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Nineteen women have been appointed to other key posts
in the new government such as Commission members,
ministers or vice-ministers, under the Government
Administration Council. Among the 662 delegates to
the Chinese People's PCC, which was empowered with
the responsibility of creating the new government,
there were 69 women.
At every level of popular government, from the
national level through the provincial and district levels
on down to the village level, women are taking up
administrative responsibilities in ever increasing num-
bers. To cite one of many similar examples, there
were 20 women delegates participating last July in the
first session the People's Representative Congress of
Shihchiachuan, a rail-center south of Peking. They
constituted 12.4 per cent of all the delegates. Further-
more, of the 25 members of the Shihchiachuan Muni-
cipal Council, two are women. One of these is Yen
? King Feng, a model girl worker of the city's Tahsin
Cotton Mill, whose life story has been presented
throughout Liberated China in the popular drarna
- entitled "Song of the Red Flag." ?
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There are now, quite a few villages, particularly in
the older Liberated Areas, where the entire staff of
the local government is composed of women, thus free-
ing the men cadres for front-line duties.
II
Chinese women did not acquire this new political
position by accident, nor was it a gift bestowed upon
them. Women's new status is the logical and inevitable
outcome of the bitter struggles which they have engag-
ed in for the last thirty years.
Many outstanding women leaplers have emerged
from the revolutionary movement to emancipate
women, to attain national independence and to achieve
a New Democratic society. Today the name of these
women are loved and revered by the broad masses
throughout the country. -
Soong Ching Ling, the first Chinese woman to hold
such an important,post as Vice-Chairman of the Cen-
tral People's Government, is not only nationally but also
internationally respected. She was one of Dr. Sun
Yat-sen's most valued assistants as well as a comrade
in his revolutionary life. Through the years of Kilo-
mintang white terror which followed Dr. Sun's death,
Soong Ching Ling remained steadfast and loyal to her
husband's three fundamental policies of alliance with
the Communists, alliance with the Soviet Union and
assistance to the peasants and workers ? policies
which were consistently betrayed by Chiang Kai-shek
and his ruling clique. It was also Soong Ching Ling
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who, with the help of international friends, sponsored
the "Associa#on for the Defence of Civil Rights" to
protect the * victims of Chiang Kai-shek's merciless
counter-revolutionary assault upon the people's rights.
She established the China Welfare Fund to care for
destitute and under-privileged children, and to the pre-
sent she personally supervises the many institutions
supported by this Fund which are training China's new
generation.' Soong Ching Ling's fund raising organ-
' ization has also supported eight large international
Peace Hospitals, each having from three to seven bran-
ches in the surrounding area, as well as five Bethune
Medical Colleges. Soong Ching Ling is not only p. great
patriot but also a great internationalist Since she has
always so staunchly advocated Sino-Soviet friendship
and has struggled so tirelessly in the interests of world
peace, it was only natural that she was elected vice-
chairman of the recently formed Sino-Soviet Friend-
ship Association.
Tsai Chang, acknowledged leader of the Chinese
women's movement, is a member of the CentralCom-
mittee of the Communist Party of China and Chairman
of the All-China Federation of Democratic Women.
'Tsai Chang was born in 1900 to a bankrupt small
landlord family in Honan province of Central China.
She could not afford to go to school until the age of
eleven, when her mother accumulated some tuition for
her by selling clothes and household articles. At 16,
she was graduated from the Honan Normal School.
Owing to her excellent scholastic records and indus-
triousness, she was offered the job of teachihg at the
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primary school which was affiliated with her alma
mater. Although she was quite young at that time,
she gave all her earnings for the support of her whole
family. 1/4
In 1918 she joined the "New People's Society"
which was organised by Mao Tse Tung and her brother
Tsai Ho Sheng. The next year Mao and her brother
organised a society of needy students to go to France
to work their way through schools. Tsai Chang and
one of her women comrades followed suit and organised
a group of Honan girls to go to France. Her activities
were considered very unusual in those feudal times
when 'girls were supposed to hide themselves in their
secluded chambers.
In France, she and other fellow students worked
. very hard to earn a living while they carried on their
studies.
? In 1922, she joined the Communist Youth Corps
and in the following year, the Communist Party of
China.
She studied for a short period in Moscow in 1925
and was called back to China to take part in revolu-
tionary activities. From 1925-8 she led the work of
women in Nanchang, Shanghai, and later continued
the same line of work in the Soviet Region of Kiangsi
province.
She participated in the 25,000 /i Long March
during the Red Army's evacuation from its base in
Kia,ngsi to the mountainous region of Yenan, in north-
ern Shensi province. There she continued to lead the
Women in their work for emancipation.
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She was elected chairman of the Preparatory
? Compittee of the Chinese Women's Association in the
Liberated Areas in 1946. She became :a council mem-
ber of the Women's International Democratic Federa-
tion in 1946. In 1948, she headed the Chinese De-
legation to the Second Session of WIDF in Buda-
? pest, and was elected vice-chairman of the Federation.
, She participated in the Chinese People's PCC as a
delegate representing Chinese women.
Teng Ying Chao, Vice-Chairman of the All-China
Federation Of Democratic Women and reserve member
of' the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
Party, has also a long record of revolutionary activi-
ties. .
Born in 1903 in Nanning, Kwangsi province, she
was the only? daughter of a bankrupt landlord. Her
father died when she was still a child. Her mother
taught primary school to earn a meager living. As a
child, she learned to hate social injustice and to dream
of an ideal society in which there is no distinction
between the rich and the poen
She participated in the May 4th Movement (known
to the foreign countries as the Chinese Renaissance)
which began in 1919, when she was a studeiii'of the
Hopei Normal School in Tientsin. She helped organise
the Tientsin Students' Association which assumed
leadership during the students' mOvement. - There she
met Chou En Lai, a fellow comrade, who later became
her htisband, and who is today the Premier and also
the Foreign Minister of the Chinese People's Republic.
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? In the few years following her graduation from
the normal school in 1920, she taught schools in Peiping
and Tientsin. Always a leader in the women's move-
Merit, she initiated the "Society of Progressive Women"
and published the Tientsin Women's Daily, a news-
paper dedicated to the welfare of women.
In 1924, she joined the Communist Youth Corps
of which she was one of the early members and leaders.
The next year, she became a member of the Chinese
Communist Party, and headed the women's department
of the Tientsin party, headquarters.
She was assigned to work in Canton at the end of
1925. There she met Soong Ching Ling and Ho Hsiang
Ning. She assisted Ho to organise the Kuomintang
Ministry of Women. It was also in the same year that
she married Chou En Lai in Canton.
From 1927 to 1932, she persisted in underground
work in Shanghai, a city raging with white terror.
She entered the Soviet Region in 1934 and, despite of
her pbor health, joined the 25,000 /i Long March. to
Yenan.
During the war against the Japanese, she devoted
most ci lig,time aria energy to work for unity between
the Commtmist Party and the Kuomintang so as to
continue the, war of resistance. She was a member of
the Communist 7-meinbier delegation to the Political
Consultation Council representing the united front in
the anti-Japanese war.
After the Japanese surrender, a Political Consulta-
tive Conference was called in Chungking to settle
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China's internal problems Tong was a member of the
Colnmunist elegation to that Conference.
Together with Tsai Chang, she was elected a
council member of the Women's International De-
mocratic Federation in 1946. In the recent years, she
actively participated in the work of land reform. She
was a delegate to. the Chinese People's PCC.
Sai Meng Chi, Chinese People's PCC delegate, is
another veteran revolutionist who spent most of her
time in the kuomintang-controlled areas doing under-
ground work. She was captured m 1932 by &wig
Iii.-shek's henchmen. , They employed all sorts of
torture to force her to betray Party secrets, even
beating her so ferociously that her legs and one rib-
bone were broken. They poured peppered water into
her nostrils, eyes and ears. Her blood dyed the ground
red, stainifig the hands and tools of her torturers --
yet the relentless butchers could do nothing to break
the revolutionary will-power of this resolute faithful
Communist. And now her sufferings have been re-
warded 'by the joy of living to see the revolution
achieve basic victory. She has been appointed a 'mem-
ber of the People's Supervisory Committee which is
under the Government Administration Council.
Li Cheng, a Chinese People's PCC d6legate, who
represented the First. Field Army cif the People's
Liberation Army (PLA), is head of that Army's poli-
tical department. In 1926, she threw herself into work
for the Great Revolution. She never left the battle-
field throughout the ten years' civil war, the anti-
Japanese wir, and the War of People's Liberation.
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Throughout these years, she faced constar4 hardships
and dangers. Now that the First Field Army is march-
ing swiftly toward the vast areas of southwest China,
she is still at her post helping to liberate the whole of
her cpuntry.
The young woman worker Fan Hsiao Feng,' a de-
legate to the Chinese People's PCC, is also one of the
most tested and steeled women. She began to earn
her own living at the age of 12., One of the first
lessons she learned in her life was, the, ,hideousness of
the imperialist system, for in Shanghai she worked in
Britished-owned factories, and then. in Japanese-own-
ed factories and finally, in Kuomintang factories which
were as bad as those run by the imperialists'. Always
an oppressed and persecuted employee, she nourished
an intense hatred for -Ole imperialists and Chiang kai-
shek'$ gang. She became a, leader of the workers in
the fight against their common eneinies. 'the enemies
employed all sorts of high-handed measures to subdue
workers -- but none were successful. Workers like
Fan Hsiao Feng only became all the more cautious and
resolute in their fight. At last Shanghai was liberated.
The whole body of Shanghai workers elected Fan Hsiao
Feng as one of their delegates to the Chinese People's
pCC.
Li Hsiu Cheng, one of the delegates to the Chinese
People's PCC, who represented the peasants of the
Liberated Areas, is a: typical rural woman with little
schooling. During the anti-Japanese war she joined
the Communist Party in her native village ? a remote
village in Hwa County, Shantung province. During
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the years of life-and-death struggle with the Japanese,
she successfully led the masses in organizing resistance
to the "Mopping-Up Campaign." She also mobilized
her fellow-yillagers to participate energetically in pro-
duction work, thus rendering enormous help to the
Communist Eighth Route Army, and later to the huge
modernized People's Liberation Army.
She was an expert at espionage too. She used to
sneak into the Japanese rear to investigate military
? conditions for the Eighth Route Army. In carrying
out such tasks, she often had to climb high mountains
at night or even during raging storms.
Li Hsiu, Cheng sent her only son to join the PLA:
4 good son of the 'Chinese people, the young man
fought bravely on the battlefield and sacrified his life
in the glorious struggle.
' The above are only a few of the women leaders
Who are known to the broad masses of China. Yet
behind them stand countless heroines whose names are
unknown. It is the combined efforts of those hundreds
of thousands of heroines that make victory possible.
.It i also their efforts that have brought about the
presentinew status of women.
,
Ill
? Women's support to the war in 1949 ha's been a
significant element in the climatic victories which have
? brought liberation to almost the whole of China. This
1,4'1ri the tradition of all-out aid for the front which
China's women established during the War of Re-
1i,
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sistanee and continued throughout the People's War
of Liberation.
Take one district in north Kiangsu as an example.
In support of the campaign of crossing the Yangtze
River, the 800,000 women in that area made 621,514
,
pairs of "crossing-river" shoes and milled 10,521,210
catties of grain for the army. When their household
duties occupied too much of their time, they worked
for the army at night, often by moonlight.
Women have distinguiShed themselves in direct
combat too During the crossing of the Yangtze River,'
,many boatwomen refusal to go ashore as advised.
They insisted on transporting the soldiers across the
river. The whole nation has heard the story about
Yeh Tah-sao (Sister-in-law (eh). A bound-foot
woman about forty years of age, eh Ta Sao steered
a fully loaded sailing junk across the Yangtze, straight
into the storm of enemy cannon shells which lashed
the water on all sides of her wooden craft. Her boat
was the 'first one to reach the opposite shore.
There is also the story of Wang Feng Ying, a
young girl of seventeen, who scornfully rejected her
brother's advice to remain ashore. She kept on send-
ing shiploads of soldiers across the river despite the
shells and bullets. On the third night of the Yangtze
crossings, her boat was partly damaged by the enemy's
fire. Wang quickly regained her hold of the helm.
While the boat was brought back under control, she
shouted to the soldiers : "Don't be afraid of anything.
You will be safe as long as I am here."
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Tending spindles at the Tientsin Woolen Yarn Factory
0040003-5
Busily occupied at the production front. Women peasanti tiveughout the
Liberated Areas have been playing an active role in agricultural production
so as to produce more in support of the front, and to relieve mo-,7n men.
to fight their enemies.
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She hardly flnished her words when our enemy
warships headed toward her boat to encircle it. She
veered her ship off to the east when the attack came
from the wet, and to west when it came from the
east. Finally she succeeded in dexterously breaking
through the encirclement, and she victoriously com-
pleted her mission of landing the troops safely on the
south shore.
The soldiers were so,grateful to her that they
reported her heroism to the higher command. Later
the PLA headquarters, as a token of its appreciation,
presented her with a banner on which were written
these words: "Crossing-the-River Heroine Wang
Feng Ying."
*Sup Nai Ying, another woman sailor, rowed a
vessel across the river twenty times in one night at a
point where the River Was six ii wide.
It is the revolutionary heroism of countless women
like these that helped to win nationwide victory for
all the people.
-Iv
Women's contribution has been as great on the
production front as on the military front Before
city was liberated, it was the men and women workers
who looked after the factories and kept them from
being plundered by the Kuomintang bandits. After
a city was liberated, it was again the men and women
workers who quickly put these factories back to full
operation. In these struggles, women workers have
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. been as active and brave as the men workers, at whose
side they fought.
In Shanghai, the largest center of light industries
in China, women textile workers comprise 75% to
80%, of all the workers of the industry. Before the
liberation of Shanghai in May, 1949, these workers
organised themselves to protect the plants from de-
molition. In the No. 1 Mill of the China Textile In-
dustries Inc., women workers led the underground
factory-protecting movement. All the workers were
organised into varioue squads to stand constant Watch.
They managed to prevent the Kuomintang retreating
bandits from sabotaging, their plant. Thus produc-
tion in this factory was quickly resumed after Shang-
hai's liberation. ?
In the Liberated Areas, enthusiasm to learn higher
industrial techniques is unprecedentedly high among
the women workers. During the past when the
factories belonged to the exploiters, they worked only
for their meager existence and nothing more. But
now, the women workers know that they are working
for a brighter future for themselves and their children.
Therefore they are anxious to study in order to im-
prove their work.
Chi Kwei Ty, a woman turner, can serve as good
illustration of woman's zeal in the mastery of techni-
que. Chi Kvirei Tze started her apprenticeship in a
railway factory in the Northeast. Her tutor, believing
in the old-fashioned concept that women are naturally
inferior, was reluctant to teach a girl. She was very
much hurt by her tutor's cold reception, but still she
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would not give up studying. She rose early and re-
tire late, spending every minute of her time by the
side of the engines. When her teacher refused to in-
struct her, she tried to learn from diagrams and photo-
graphic illustrations. Whenever she coulcl not figure
something out herself, she softly asked other fellow
workers for an explanation. Her spirit finally moved
the conservative tutor, and he began to teach her
e
seriously.
Three months later, Chi Kwei Te had become an
expert turner. Now she has become a tutor too, always
doing her best to help her apprentices. Her achieve-
ments greatly raised her status at the factory. She
has been elected a model worker and was present at
the Manchurian labour heroes conference.
"Follow the example of Chi Kwei Tze" has now
become popular expression Of encouragement among
the women workers.
V
?
A great revolution has taken place in the rural
districts of China. The Basic Program of Agrarian
Law, wliich set? forth the fun dainental principles of
China's land reform, specified that women are entitled
to the same allotment of land as. men. In return for
this right, the rural women have voluntarily taken up
the task of producting more in support of the front.
Now that victory is at #hand, the rural women are
working just as hard in response to the call for national
economic reconstruction.
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This year in North China, it is estimated that 80%
or more of the women- peasants are engaged in agricul-
tural production. In some areas, women took up the
job of growing cotton, a badly needed material for
China's textile industry. The acreage planted, four
times that of last year, covers almost 25% of all the
arable land in those areas.
Women peasants, having gained their new status,
are now acquiring the new concept that labour is a
great honor. Now that they have attained the pos-
sibility of becoming economically independent, they are
overcoming the old idea that only by marrying a man
can one be clothed and fed.
'VI
Along with women's new opportunities nave come
a number of new responsibilities.
As Chairman Mao Tse Tung pointed out, the
victory of the war is but "one step in a ten-thousand-/i
march." The Chinese people are confronting the more
difficult and even bigger task of national economic
construction. To fulfill this task, the liberated women
must take their share of the responsibilities.
Many great cities have been liberated in 1949,
such as Tientsin,-Peking, Nanking, Shanghai, Hankow
and Canton. - This has shifted the main emphasis of
China's revolution from rural to urban areas. It has
provided the conditions necessary for transforming
China from a backward agricultural nation to a
modern industrial one. In conformity with this new
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China s _Liberated women workers are taking fall advantage of the
opportunity to learn higher technical skills. Here are two girls
who now work in the Chinese-Chan.gchun.g Railway Factory in
Manchuria, having recently learned to operate a lathe.
???
Tho war against illiteracy. Village women can usually spare only
one hour a day for classes. However, they write the now characters
out on E3latos which they take home to memorize while they carry
on their household work.
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situation, the Chinese women's movement has also
shifted its main emphasis from the countryside to the
cities, while still, naturally, continuing to maintain its
work in the villages.
The basic task today is the organisation of all
urban women, including industrial workers, students
and professionals, so that they can. integrate their
efforts better with the new task of reconstructing
China's national economy.
This involve the major task of raising the cultural
standard of women industrial workers. There are
roughly 424,000 women industrial workers in China's
leading cities. Most of them could not obtain any
education whatsoever under the old society. After
liberation, one of the first demands of women workers
was for greater opportunities to educate themselves.
The All-China Women's Federation, in conjunction
with the All-China Federation of Labour, is exerting
every effort to satisfy these demands by increasing the
educationarfacilities that are geared to workers' needs.
Considerable results along these lines have already
been achieved. In Dairen and Port Arthur, for in-
stance, more than-128,000 women workers and peasants
have joined the movement of "wiping out illiteracy
within two years." Most of. the women workers of
the Dairen Textile Factory, have already learned to
read at the workers' night school, although formerly
almost all of them were illiterate.
Then there is also the important task of ideological
remoulding among urban women in order to equip
them for ?their new role in the new society. Women
from intellectual circles in particular need help in
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reiorming their old concepts so that they can begin
to work for the people instead of for their own limited
interests. ,
Many women intellectuals have enrolled in the
various revolutionary universities set up to provide
such ideological retraining. In the North China Re-
volutionary People's University near Peking, 30 per
cent of the present student body of 7,000 are women.
Many of these students were formerly professional
women who now want to learn how to serve the people's
interests. By the end of the first term this year, over
60 per cent of these women students had joined either
the Chinese Communist Party or the New Democratic
Youth League.
Many of the women students have already
graduated from short-term courses provided by these
universities. They have since been appointed to posts
in all parts of liberated China. Some have followed
the rapidly advancing PLA to join in the work of
taking over newly liberated cities and areas. Others
have gone. into factories to help with the mobilization
alid education of the workers. Still others have gone
deep into the rural areas to take up all types of mass
work among the peasantry, as well as to fill administra-
tive posts.
Those women who have remained at their old
professional jobs have also undergone drastic changes
in their attitude toward work. They are endeavour-
ing to improve their business capabilities and are en-
thusiastically studying revolutionary theory in the dis-
cussion groups that have been widely organised in all
liberated institutions and enterprises.
18
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4
Children are having Fswell time at a nursary for women workers in
Peking. Women workers work much more efficiently when their children
are well taken care of. It is the objective of the All-Ohina Democratic
Wornen.'s Federation to set up nurseries for all urban and rural mothers
whcu. facilities and personnel are available.
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Another important task confronting the women's
movement is that of setting up more nurseries, health
centers and sanitation stations. Mothers are able to
work better when they have the assurance that their
children are being well cared for. As evidence, one
may cite the case of Hsu Fong Ying, a worker of the
Dairen Fish Net Factory. When her children were
living with her, she could only weave 30 nets a day.
Now that her children have been placed in a nursery
for workers children, her daily output has increased
to 80 nets, and sometimes rises to 100 nets per day.
Altogether 81 new nurseries have been established
this year in Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai and Nanking
since the liberation of these cities. These nurseries
are now caring for 3,646 children of professional
women and women workers, and they are planning to
expand, as soon as additional staff and facilities be-
come available.
The All-China Democratic Women's Federation
is also devoting a great deal of attention to
the problem of teaching rural mothers more
scientific and hygienic methods of rearing their
children. This is done with the twin aims of
relieving peasant mothers from unnecessary burdens
of child-care, while ensuring a healthier young genera-
tion. Old-fashioned village midwives are being sent to
local sanitation stations and to medical centers for
retraining in modern methods of delivery. There they
learn to sterilize their instruments and to take,other
necessary precautions to safeguard the health of
women in child-birth. Midwifery schools are also
being set tip in the cities to train additional medical
19
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workers for future service in both rural and urban
areas-.
VII
Numerous and tremendous as their present tasks
are, the Chinese women are confident that they can
victoriously accomplish their mission. Their rich ex-
periences in overcoming difficulties will serve as guid-
ance in the future. Moreover, they have been organised
under a unified, nationwide organisation which will
give them better leadership than they have ever had
before.
In March, 1949, All China Federation of Demo-
cratic Women was formed in Peking with Tsai Chang
as Chairman, and Li Teh Chuan (Madame Feng Yu
Hsiang), Teng Ying Chao and Hsu Kwang Ping (wife
of the late great writer Lu Hsun) as Vice-Chairmen.
Its founding signified the great unity of democratic
women of various geographical regions, of different
professions and trades and of all social strata. It is
the first time that China has such a nationwide
women's organisation.
This Federation has been built up on a solid
foundation. It has its roots among the great mass of
women in the Liberated Areas, who, for years, have
been solidly organised under the leadership of the
Women's Union of the Chinese Liberated Areas. At
the First Session of the All-China Women Congress,
held in Peking in March, 1949, at which the Federa-
tion was created, it was estimated that already 22,600,-
01)0 women have been organised into various women's
organisations. With the rapid expansion of Liberated
go?
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Approved
0608364560,#
wor c peace.
Poking Women's
Association pre-
senti a banner to
the Chinese-Soviet
Friendship As-
sociation..
The opening session of tho Womon.'s Congress bold in Poking
in March, 1049. The All-China Federation. of Democratic Women was
created at this conference.
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China, the number of organised women has expanded
so rApidly that it is impossible to give an accurate
estimation at the present moment.
The Federation has branches in all the provinces,
and leading municipalities. And the provincial
organisations have under them the county branches.
It is expected that units will be set up in all the villages
in the future. The Federation accepts group member-
ship only.
The All-China Federation of Democratic Women
retiresents the interest Of all the Chinese women, and
it directs the women's nriovement throughout the entire
country. "Women of New China," a semi-monthly
magazine published by the Federation, plays an impor-
tant role in coordinating aird -guiding the nationwide
movement. If also serves as a medium for women to
exchange their experiences.
?
The Federation, together with democratic women's
organisations in other countries, is striving for lasting
world peace and for a people's democracy. It is per-
meated with the spirit of internationalism. Through
it, the Chinesoowomen will learn the valuable ex-
periences of their sisters in the Soviet Union and other
people's Democracies. Through it, the Chinese women
will be. able to coordinate their efforts effectively with
the demoCratic women the world over, for it is a mem-
ber of the WIDF.
VIII
Chinese women have taken up a firm stand in the
ranks of the forces defending world peace. They have
played an important role in the overthrow of imperial-
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ism in China, thus contributing greatly to the cause of
world Peace. Their efforts will further consolidate
the world pep re camp in the great struggle against
Early this year, Tsai Chang and Li Teh Chuan
initiated the "sign your name" campaign in support
of world peace. The great mass of the Chinese womei
responded ardently. The long list of signatures so
gathered is a good display of women's determination
to defend world peace.
Furthermore, now that a new China has taken its
place in the world family of nations, the Chinese women
will be able to work more efficiently in co-operation
with their international sisters. They participated in
the Second Session of WIDF held in Budapest last
year. They sent delegates to this year's meeting of
the Federation of World Democratic Youth. In the
chines delegation to Congress for World Peace, there
were, outstanding women writers.
Now the Asian Women's Conference is to be
held in Peking. This conference signifies a major step
in the great struggle for peace and freedom.
Hail the success of the Asian Women's Confer-
ence!
Long live the great uni,ty of Asian women!
Long live the great unity of democratic women
all over the world!
22
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THE GRT STRUGGLE FOR
1,113RATION
? This article describes briefly the Chinese
? women's inferior status under the traditional
- feudal system, their bitter sufferings under
the Kuomintang tyrannical rule, their heroic
struggle for freedom and emancipation, and
their new life in the Liberated Areas. Al-
,. though rapid changes have taken place since
this 'article ,was written-,in autumn, 1948, it
still serves to arm light on the vital role of
the Chinese women in the 'great people's
struggle for liberation.
W011,1 AND WAR
China's women follow, with anxious eyes, the
outcome of each battle in the ,civil war. They suffer
thost fieavily from the war which Chiang Kai-shek
launched un the Chinese people, but they have also the
most to, gain from democratic advance.
Each victory of the People's Liberation Army
means not only more women freed from the brutal de-
gradation of feudal reaction it also means the consolida-
tion of this new, free life in the present Liberated
Ara, it mops that days of peace and dem6cratic
recon*Struction are nearer.
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When Chiang Kai-shek unleashed the all-out civil
war in July 1946, he possessed, as he thought, all the
means for achieving swift victory.
? Four million men under arms, control of almost
every city and of a population of 300 million; the sur-
rendered military equipthent of a million Japanese
troops and the continuous military and financialtaid
of the Wall Street tycoons, aiming to colonise China
by means of their Kuomintang servants: here were
all the ingredients for restoring throughout China the
old rule of feudalism compounded with foreign con-
trolled capitalism and naked imperialism.
On the one side was ranged the Kuomintang Go-
vernment: a corrUpt dictatorShip, selling China's sove-
reignty.piecemeal in exchange for weapons with which
to maintain a tottering regime AS' the major-domo of
American imperialism in China; a regime of press-
ganged 'soldiery, worthless money, spies and concentra-
tion camps, of starvation for the masses and wanton
squandering by the few.
On the other side stood the common people of
China, with their homely aspirations: to eat enough;
to be well-clad; to be free from the lash, able to stand
erect as citizens of 'a free eountry. On the people's
side: the people's army of willing fighters, led by the
brilliant strategists ifrIVIad Tse Tung and Chu Teh;
carrying with it everywhere, democracy, education,
release from servitude.
The Kuomintang had everything -- and nothing,
for they lacked the support of the people. And the
people have wrested the foreign made arms from
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Chiang tai-sheles hands and turnect them against hint
By their own efforts they have produced food, created
a munitions industry, textiles, everything necessary to
equip their army. '
Hundreds of thousands of peasants, set free by the
land reform are flocking into the People's Army to
protect the land which they now own, leaving their
wives and neighbours to work their holdings and look
after their families.
From herded slaves-, the industrial workers have
become masters of the main industries and are pour-
ing out an ever swelling stream of goods _for the army
and the market.
The army has grown into a modern fighting force,
superbly brave, enduring and flexible, which is striking
heavier and heavier blows against the faint-hearted
conscripts whose lack of fighting will counterbalances
their modern American weapons.
Between July 1, 1947 and June 30, 1948, the Peo-
ple's Liberation Army knocked out 920 Kuomintang
regiments, a total of nearly three million men and
captured. collossal quantities of military equipment.
Now the Liberated Areas occupy over 2,355,000
square kilometres and a population of more than 168
million.* Among the elides (over 600) now controlled
by the People's Army, are many which were "perman-
ently fortified" Kuomintang strongpoints.
The shattering military blows which the Kuomin-
tang army suffered in the second year of the war and
* (These figures arc accurate to June 30, 1948).
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in the past months, with the taking of such bastions
as Tsinan, Chinchow and Changchun show that the
military situation has been completely transformed.
From the offensive, the Kuomintang army has
been checked, thrown on to the defensive and finally
reduced to a position of military passivity in which
the People's Army dictates the place and time of each
battle and can take any city at its will, no matter how
strongly held.
At the same time, the enthusiastic support of de-
mocratic Chinese organisations for the recent proposal
by the Communist Party to convene a Political Con-
sultative Conference of all democratic organisations
and progressive groups for the purpose of preparing
? for the formation of a democratic coalition government,
shows that the political dissolution of the Kuomintang
rule is keeping pace with its military and economic
crises.
At the same time the battle against Chiang Kai-
shek in his own rear is mounting in intensity. In
industry, strike follows strike, with over three million
workers taking part in 1947 alone. The student move-
nient againk the Kuomintang policy in relation to
Japan and against America's domination of the' govern-
ment has assumed massive proportions. Rice riots
against the speculative hoarding of grain while the
people starved, took place in 40 cities this May and
June. Deep in the Kuomintang rear, over half a mil-
lion. peasants are engaged in armed struggle and have
partially freed whole districts.
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Faced with imminent disaster, the Kuomintang
leaders are intensifying their efforts to maintain its ?
crumbling "little dynasty." They are selling to Ame-
rica ever larger spheres of influence in exchange for
evei smaller numbers of dollars while their U.S.
? masters are interf erring ever more blatantly in China's
affairs.
By fostering the revival of Japanese imperialism
? they hope to form an Asiatic Anti-Communist Alliance
? .and already the invasion of American and Japanese
goods into China is ruining national industry and
creating vast unemployment.
Even the much propagandised "currency reform"
recently was only the exchange, at disadvantageous
terms for the masses, of one piece of paper for a differ-
ent piece of paper. It has already led tO fiercer infla-
tion, higher prices, tighter hoarding and worse shor-
tages. Each day the sufferings of the people become
more intense, their hold on life more insecure.
All efforts to stave off doom are useless. ? The
people determined to be rid of the Kuomintang dictator-
ship and all that it stands for. The defeat of the
? Kuomintang and the victbry of the People's Liberation
Army are now equally certain.
The womenfolk of China have played a vital part
in creating this situation. Without their active support
it would not have been possible. Nor will it be pos-
sible.to win the final victory and build a new democratic
Chinese Republic without the still greater support and
participation in social affairs, government and produc-
tion by all China's women.
27
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And the women will play their "part, for in setting
China free they are at the same time achieving their
own emancipation.
TWENTIETH CENTURY DARKNESS
The Chinese were using such inventions as print-
ir g, paper, gunpowder, among others, before civilisa-
tin had dawned in most of Europe. Yet, today, "old"
China -- which now means the areas which are still
occupied by the Kuomintang remains sunk in
mediaeval darkness, illiteracy, squalor and poverty.
At the root of this backwardness lies the ponder-
ous system of feudal landlordism.
Except in the Liberated Areas, where sweeping
land reform has been carried through, about four-
fifths of all land is owned by approximately one tenth
of the rural population. The overwhelming mass of
the Chinese people either possess no land at all or
possess insufOient land to maintain life. They are
at the mercy of feudal landlord class ? who have no
mercy. Life for the millions consists of endless
poverty, grinding drudgery from birth to death, to
maintain the landlord class in luxury and idleness.
Their precarious grip on existence can be shattered
-by a single bad harvest.
One bad crop normally means that millions die
in sight of granaries which are bursting with the pro-
duce of their own toil.
Industrially, the development of China was dis-
torted and held back by foreign capital which penetrat-
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ed into the country at the point of foreign bayonets.
For a century China has been a Tom Tiddlers' ground
for any nation with 'a superior army and navy, and
in the joint exploitation of China's millions they found
the feudal ruling class to be willing lackeys.
From this traitorous combination was generated
the moribund compound of feudalism, a corrupt
capitalist bureaucracy and colonialism, which the Kuo-
mintang is trying to preserve on behalf of the ruling
classes of China and the imperialists of America.
To be born, in the Kuomintang areas, into a
peasant or working class family means to be born to
a life of indescribable poverty arid misery. But to
be born a girl, in these, circumstances is a calamity.
A girl child is burden on a family already over-
burdened beyond relief ,or hope. This is the basic
cause of the infanticide of girls, Which still occurs in
Kuomintang China.
Driven by poverty, parents have to sell their
daughters and sometimes their sons to the landlords
Or, in a bad year, when the land rent falls due and
cannot be paid, the landlord will demand a girl-child
in settlement. In afIandlord family, several slave girls
may be found ranging from the ages of six to fifteen
years.
These girls have no rights of any sort. They are
beaten and misused arid, if one dies under the inhuman ,
treatment of a sadistic master or mistress, nothing
will be done for the courts are staffed by landlords
or their sons.
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These girl-slaves are frequently sold later as con-
cubines or to brothel-keepers, usually at a good profit
to the master.
Feudal custom requires' that a heavy dowery shall
go with the daughter, on marriage. This means
saddling the family with debt for years.
Child betrothal is a common practice. Girls of
six to twelve years are sent to the home of a richer
family and are considered betrothed to one of the sons.
They become virtual slaves to the family.
The most fortunate women are those who marry
in the "normal" way an arranged marriage with a
man they have probably never seen before. He now
becomes her master and she goes to live with his
family to work and bear him male children. In the
West, the nagging mother-in-law is ?the subject of
jokes. ,In feudal China she is always there, a jealous,
malicious demon, rendering the conditions of the wife
a living hell.
Among the well-to-do, polygamy is common and
the poorer women may be, purchased as playthings or
to bear male children if the married wife is sterile or
only produces girls.
- Remarriage by widows is regarded as the most
heinous crime. In extreme cases, girls in their teens,
betrothed when children to men who have since died,
are made to marry the memorial tablets of their dead
fiances. They are widows when married and widowi
they must remain all their lives. Divorce of a man by
a woman is unheard of and for a woman to be divorced
by her husband is the ultimate, irrevocable shame,
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Women have no property rights; no right to go
and find work; illiteracy and mental obscurity are re-
garded as virtues. The lack of hygienic knowledge
is staggering and the only "medical" attention avail-
able are the witch doctors ? expert butchers of
women ? and midwives under whose filthy hands
gangrene runs riot through the newly-born and their
luckless _mothers.
In some newly-liberated areas where checks were
made, about '50 per cent of women were found to be
suffering from gynaecological disorders. In one case,
not a single one of a woman's sixteen children lived
above the age of three.
?
In the towns still held by the Kuomintang the
impact of foreign capital is felt in all its force. For-
eign goods, chiefly American, drive home-produced
commodities off' the shop-keepers' shelves, causipg
factories to close down and workers to be driven into
unemployment.
Runaway inflation has deprived the working class
familiq of any security. Even if there is work, house-
wives have to try to keep the family alive on an income
that is depreciating hourly and in face of shortages,
hoarding and the black market.
Many women, daughters and wives have to go to
work to share the burden of supporting the families.
Women are the cheapest and most viciously exploited
labour power, toiling as long as fifteen hours a day
for about two-thirds the wage of an unskilled worker
? and in Shanghai a skilled worker's wage is not en-
ough to keep him fed ana clothed, The conditions of
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girl children, in the textile trades, especially, trans-
cends the worst horrors of European capitalism in the
last century.
In most factories in the Kuomintang-occupied
areas, women are dismissed at the first sign of
pregnancy. Desperately they contrive, by every
possible means, to hide the signs of the coming baby
and if they succeed, find some excuse for a few- days
leave to bear the child and rush back to work, mostly
standing all day. Few such women escape gynaeco-
logical disease.
Any attempts to ease their working conditions
are opposed by the full force of the Kuomintang police
state. Trade unions are illegal and the factories
riddled with spies and secret agents.
Employers have the right to punish workers by
locking them in cells, or even in cages in which they
can neither sit, stand nor lie down. That is for slight
"misdemeanours." Any worker, man or women, who
becomes a "nuisance," that is, who takes any leading
part in trying to get a few extra dollars' wage or
better conditions can be removed as a "Communist."
Few such people are ever seen again. They mostly
die under torture or find their way to one of the Kuo-
mintang's many concentration camps where they are
"re-educated" among all the horrors of Buchenwald.
The struggle for a living wage is indeed a matter of
life and death.
In such an atmosphere, the fate of any girl who
resists the advances of an employer or secret agent
can ffiasily be imagined.
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encouraged by the sycophantic attitude of the
Kuomintang government and the contempt in which
women continue to be held in the Kuomintang areas,
American soldiers also regard it as their- right, under
? the Marshall Plan, to rape any Chinese woman - if
they find the opportunity. One Peiping University
? student, Miss Shen Tsung was raped by two GI's on
the main street. Recently during a dancing party in
? Hankow, personnel of the American Air Force turned
out the lights am4 raped the forty women present. The
Kuomintang government merely covered up the
scandal. No one was arrested.
The Kuomintang pays lip-service to the need for
topping such practises as slavery, concubinage, in-
fanticide and other horrible practises, but its every ,
action is an encouragement for their continuance.
Women in these unhappy areas have come to realize
that in the defeat of the Kuomintang by the People's
? Army lies their only hope of escape from their inhuman
conditions of bondage..
WOMEN IN THE LIBERATED AREAS
? The Dawn of Freedom
In the vast Liberated Areas, Chinese women have
freedoin for the first time. Their complete social equa-
lity with men is absolutely guaranteed by law.
But It does not follow from this that ingrained
habits of fifty centuries of feudal backwardness can
be wiped out in five minutes by a law. But the
? economic, political and legal basis? of the enslavement
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of women has been destroyed. What remains is to
help and lead the women themselves to complete their
own emancipation.
The women's organisations which developed in the
war zones, behind the enemy lines, during the anti-
Japanese war and latterly the Women's Union of the
Chinese Liberated Areas, under the leadership of the
Chinese Communist Party, have brought to millions of
women a consciousness of the decisive part which they
have to play in emancipating society and themselves.
The Women's Union is now the leading women's
organisation in the country, uniting 20,000,000 women
in its own ranks and exercising an influence on many
more millions. Under the general leadership of the
Communist Party and the democratic government, the
Union leads the women in the struggle for their
emancipation. It combines this with the practical task
of leading the women to give every support to the war
of liberation by mobilizing them to take part in pro-
duction dri'ves ; to pursue side-occupations in their
spare time, such as spinning and stitching shoe-soles;
to take a lea,ding part in the land reform movement
and in agricultural production. In this way the women
widen their knowledge and augment the family income.
The greater independence, which springs from their
enhanced economic position brings about a new con-
sciousness of their position in society.
Once this is achieved it is but a short step to
learning to read and write, taking part in social and
administrative work, studying politics, hygiene and
sanitation.
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Thus by easy and rapid stages, the women bring
themselves forward to take their true place in society.
Brilliant achievements have already been recorded
by the union in helping vast Masses of Chinese women
to tree themselves from feudal darkness and oppres-
sion, to help in creating a prosperous economy and tt)
play a conscious and essential part in the liberation of
the whole country.
_Women as Landowners
To China's peasant millions, land is life. Thet
Basic Programme on the Chinese Agrarian Law, pro-
mulgated by the Communist Party in October 047,
stipulated that land in rural, areas must be equally
distributed to the peasants irrespective of sex or age.
For the Peasants as a whole, this meant the end of
feudal oppression. For the women it meant, in addi-
tion, the ending of their dual enslavement as peasants
and as women.
The Women's Union encouraged and led the
wolficn to take a leading part in the m6vement to
redistribute the land and farming piroperties in the ?
country-side, to participate in all the meetings and
practical tasks associated with the land reform.
By last June, over 80 million peasants had received
land and additional land amounting in all to some 40
million acres and millions of women had played some
part in achieving this gigantic agrarian revolution,
When confronted with some wealthy tyrant at
whose hands they had suffered, their shyness vanished
and they spoke at meetings as readily as the men.
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Everywhere there was hot discussion on a variety
of questions affecting women: should engaged girls
have their land at their father's or their future
husband's place? what should a girl do with her land
011 marriage? how should land be distributed to
widows? should women have separate title deeds from
their husbands? and so on. Argument raged from
family to meeting and back again. A father would
choose one plot of land while his wife and daughter
preferred another. This had to be amicably settled.
At one meeting of the Peasant's Union in a village,
to which the Women's Union was not invited, it was
decided that girls below eighteen should not have a
share of land. The women drew attention to the, Basic
Programme and demanded a fresh discussion. The
decision was revoked.
In areas near the fronts, the women often carry out
the entire land reform; while the men support the
front, and they do not hesitate to take up rifles or
spears to prevent sabotage by armed gangs inspired
by the landlords.
The land reform and the surging popular move-
ment,which it called forth has utterly shattered feudal-
ism in the Liberated Areas and the achievements
of women in this movement have transformed their
domestic and social status. Victims of child marriage,
most bitterly oppressed of all in old society; receive
their share of land. Not a fe'tv of them take their
land and their freedom and return to their own
families. Those who remain have their own land and
with it their independenee. Now it is rare to hear
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anyone belittling women. Many bad old habits still
cling, especially among the older generations, but giant
strides have been made.
Encouraged by their women, peasants flock into
the People's Liberation Army to defend their newly-
won freedom and the women have to shoulder much of
the work.
Soldiers leave for the front with the confident
knowledge that, through the Peasant Union and the
Women's Union, their wives and families will be looked
after just as well as though they were there. This is
one of the reasons for the superb morale of the People's
Army fighters.
Between 50 and 70 percent of women now take
part in agricultural work so that agricultural produc-
tion, instead of declining, exceeds all previous records.
They raise livestock, rear silk-worms, weave mats,
spin and weave cloth and earn extra money in a variety
of spare time occupations.
In the Tai-hang Area a movement was launched
to spin and weave 5 million kilogrammes of cloth in
100 days for the army and the people in preparation.
for General Liu Po-chen's offensive to force the Yellow
River. Over 700,000 women, about 74 percent of the
female population of the area plunged into the task
with immense enthusiasm. Under the most difficult
technical conditions, using only _ hand and pedal
machines, the target was surpassed by a wide margin.
Women in Industry
?
Swift as the advances of women have been in the
countryside, their progress in the liberated towns is
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even faster. In contrast to the Kuomintang-occupied
areas, where the industrial workers are treated worse
than draught animals, the workers of the Liberated
Areas are the leading class in society. On them falls
the responsibility of directing and administering the
decisive state-controlled industries and of raising China
to the level of a first-class industrial power. This
means intensive self-training, self-education, the
solving of all the complex problems of modern industry.
Most industries in the past have been wrecked, often
seyeral times, by the Japanese and the Kuomintang,
and there is an acute shortage of technical and admini--
strativ7 personnel.
Conditions of women in industry were systematis-
ed for all the Liberated areas at the Sixth All China
Labour Congress in August this year. A. sign of the
new place of women in industry was the fact that 32
of the delegates were women, some of them elected by
organisations in which the majority of workers are
men, and one of whom travelled over 3,300 miles
through liberated territory to attend the congress.
The following basic conditions were stipulated for
women industrial workers:
1. . Equal pay for equal work with men.
2. The minimum wage, for an unskilled worker,
male or female, must be adequate to maintain
two persons. .Above this, payment is based
? on skill, responsibility or output depending on
the character of work.
Rigid restrictions were placed on overtime
working, the employment of women in un-
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suitable trades or on night woik. The normal
hours of labour to be a basic 8 hours rising to
,19 in certain trades. "
Pregnant women inust be given leave with
full pay for 45 days at the time of confinement,
and shorter leave with pay if a miscarriage
occurs.
? . The trade unions and the government or
employers, depending on whether the plant is
publicly or privately owned, are jointly
responsible for terms of employment, safety,
welfare, insurance, pensions, etc. (These
vary at present according to the possibilities
in the various Liberated Areas).
Adult education, both general and technical,
is primarily the responsibility of the trade
'unions in the case of adult workers. Factor-
ies must supply facilities such as classrooms,
blackboards, lighting etc., etc.
In general, the living standards of the workers in
the Liberated Areas are lower than those of employed
Workers in the more industrialised countries, but they
now have security and the tendency of real wages is
upward. By comparison with the past and with the
situation that persists in the Kuomintang areas their
conditions represent real prosperity.
Enhanced wages and working conditions, the new
social status of all industrial workers, the steady
? elimination of illiteracy and the growth of political
consciousness have all combined to draw great numbers
of women into industry and to take leading positions
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in the factory administrations. Enthusiasm for labour
and .for mastering technique has swept through the
working class, stimulating and being further stimulat-
ed by the mass movements to win merit ase,"model
workers" and "labour heroes." New heroines of labour
are constantly emerging. In the Antung Rubber Shoe
Works, where 500 of the 900 workers are women, a
three months' target to make 400,000 pairs of shoes
was completed in two and a half months, Ho Su Ching,
leader of the women's section was largely responsible
for this both by her example of intensive work and by
her 'technical creativeness. Apart from overfulfilling
the plan her improvements in technique, led to ,the
saving of nine drums of petrol and 3,500 kilogrammes
of rubber cloth in this period.
Labour heroine Li Feng Lian, a delegate from
Yenan to the Sixth All China Labour Congress told
how her uniform factory evacuated Yenan last year
taking their 50 sewing machines with them on mules,
handcarts and on their backs. Wherever they could,
even under fire, they set up temporary "factories" in
barns and under trees. By careful organisation of
work and travel they actually fulfilled their target of
making 40,000 uniforms during the retreat. Li Feng
Lien finished her speech by telling the women: "The
only way for women to win their freedom is to take
part in the revolution and in production."
Many women workers now participate in factory
management. In the Shihchiachuang Tahsin Textile
Mill, eight women hold high administrative posts. All
the directors, assistant directors and department heads
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of the Manchuria No. 1 and No. 2 Textile Mills are
women. The directors of two chemical plants are
women. Women are taking a leading place in trade
union activities. Half of Harbin's 8,000 women work-
ers are trade unionists and 361 of these hold official
positions.
Women at War
China is a *land of small-scale production and
primitive transport. In spite of this the People's
Liberation Army is waging a modern war of terrific
violence, on a modern scale and over the area of a whole
continent. This could not be done without the total
support of the people. During a battle period, almost
all the able-bodied men in the area will take part in
non-combatant war services, stretcher bearing, and so
on, often, walking long distances to do so. While they
are away, the women shoulder the man's work as well
as their own.
Similarly, poor transport means that when an
army .hundreds of thousands strong arrives in a place,
the major part of their provisions must be purchased
from the local people. Preparation of food is a tre-
mendous task.
During the battle of Laiwu, in Shantung, local
women prepared 5 million kilogrammes of provisions
for the front within a week. Each family, undertook
to make 15 kilogrammes of food ready. In Yiyuan
county town women prepared over 3 million kilogram-
mes of rice, flour and cakes in 72 hours, without taking
any sleep.
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For the most part, uniforms arid such equipment
are made in the homes of the masses, where women -
and children, spin and weave. The incentive is three-
fold: to help their army, to win the war and to -consoli-
date their freedom and land tenure, and to earn addi-
tional money for the family.
Field hospitals at the front get enormous help
from local peasant women who provide houses, borrow
furniture, help to nurse the wounded, prepare bandages
and wash clothes. On occasions when swift manceuvre
prevents their evacuation, the people will disperse the
wounded in their own homes, carefully protecting and
nursing them till they can rejoin their units.
'Young. women not only encourage their husbands
and fathers to join the Army, but also join in fighting
corps and guerilla detachments to fight the enemy.
themselves.
Chang En, chairwoman of a Women's Union group
near Hotze led a guerilla corps mainly composed of
women when the Kuomintang temporarily occupied the
area. A well-known and daring heroihe in East China,
Li Lan Ying has made herself so well hated by the Kuo-
mintang that they have put a high price on her head.
Girls of 15 to 25 normally join the Women's
Militia which cooperates with the men's militia in
mine-laying and similar work. Eighteen year-old Chen
Kuei Hsiang, leader of a women militia corps has per-
sonally killed 17 of the enemy. These young women's
corps also tackle agricultural production in an
organised way when the men go to the front, protect-
ing the harvest with their arms if attacked.
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Once, when the army had to cross the Wulung
River at night, at a point where there was no bridge,
the local women's militia started to build one. Most
of them stood barefooted in the icywater far into the
night, but they finished by the time the army arrived
and they crossed before dawn.
Outstanding among the heroic women workers
and fighters are the women -medical workers and
nurses. Their slogans are "high mobility" and "the
greatest possible number of cures." In pursuit of
these they train themselves to run, negotiate obstacles,
jump streams and keep up the marching pace of the
- People's Army.
Li Lan Ting is only 24, but she has had 7 years
of gruelling training in warfare and is the head of her
medical group. In Kiangsu, she once had charge of
500 wounded during a retreat. There was a great
?
shortage of medicine, not enough stretcher-bearers.
The Kuomintang planes were strafing and the enemy
were treading on their heels. Li worked like a dynamo,
mobilised peasant women to carry stretchers and her-
self carried the first one. By skilful rnanceuvring she
extricated the whole of 500 men. Woman doctor
Chiang Nan Ping, although herself wounded in the
right arm, Stayed on the battlefield for two days and
nights Without rest, to tend the wounded.
All the myriad examples of women's heroism in
the people's war for liberation can never be told. What
c4n be said is that they constitute an indispensable
strength in defeating the enemy.
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Women in Government
In the Kuomintang areas of China the role of the
tiny handful of women in government positions is pure-
ly decorative ? aimed to deceive the public at home
and abroad. Any entry by women into administrative
work on a large scale would undermine the whole
ramshackle, feudal structure that is being so carefully,
and with such difficulty, propped up _by the Kuomin-
tang and Wall Street.
But, in the Liberated areas, the only question is
that of ability. Whatever the job may be, if a woman
can do it, that job is here. As a result, women are
flocking into government positions.
Harbin's Chief Justice is a woman whose penetrat-
ing shrewdness and kindly justice is admired even by
convicted criminals.
In the Lingyi and Shangito counties more than
800 women are in government service, of whom 260
are village heads,
Figures, Which are unfortunately incomplete,
covering seven Manchurian provinces show that there
_ are more than 105 women holding the rank of county
magistrate, 13 holding top provincial positions, 290
holding the rank of district heads, 3,629 of village
heads and 2,484 women in various official posts. This
is apart -from women industrial administrators.
The picture is not an even one throughout the
Liberated Areas, but the tendency can be clearly seen.
by the fact that in, the older stabilized Liberated Areas
the percentage of women in public positions is vastly
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higher than in the comparatively newly-liberated,areas.
Women in China have not been slow in seizing their
opportunities. These are but a few examples of a
process which is taking place everywhere in the
Liberated Areas. China's women workers have their
feet firmly on the road to emancipation. They have
a long way still to go, but there will be no turning back.
Education and Culture
Women in the Liberated Areas now have not only
freedom but also the right to study and are encouraged
to do so. New schools are opening as fast as possible
and girls are enrolling in great numbers. Middle-aged
and old women attend winter classes in the evenings
and learn to read and write. They are usually the
majority of pupils at such classes.
Manchuria, as might be expected, shows the best
record in education. In ten of its provinces there are
now 17,716 primary schools with 1,688,446 pupils and
125 middle schools with 59,481 pupils. The ten
universities and technical colleges have an enrollment
of over 10,900 students. This cannot be called an ideal
situation in a population of some 40 million but when
it is remembered that three years ago, under the
? puppet Manchukuo regime, Harbin only possessed one
middle school which accepted 500 girls, the advance
is startling, for it now has seven, and a quarter of all
pupils are girls. Today co-education is in force in all
schools and in primary schools girls constitute 40 per
cent of the pupils while they form 28 per cent in middle
schools. In the North China University, the North-
east Science Institute and Reconstruction University
30 per cent of students are girls.
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A survey conducted as long ags, as 1946 showed
that in Wihsiang and Tsochuan counties in the North
China Liberated Area, all grown girls could read and
write and two-thirds of the middle-aged women have
some degree of literacy.
Many women are doing valuable literary and
artistic work and novels by sevaral women writers
have wide popularity. Drama groups abound, most
big factories and every brigade of the army having
its own group, of which about a third of all members
are girls. In the villages, participation by women in
dramatic groups is doing much to eradicate the false
shyness imposed by feudal custom.
New Life for Children
The treatment of children in China's old society
and today in the areas held by the Kuomintang is an
indelible stain on China's history. If for no other
reason, civilised society must condemn the Kuomintang
to extinction for the torture of the helpless young.
The cause of infanticide, of the sale of children
is poverty. For every child throttled before its eyes
are opened, for every little girl sold into a life of con-
cubinage, or the noisome routine of a seaport brothel,
there are tens and hundreds of cases of near starva-
tion and actual starvation of the ,young; of rickets and
famine swollen bellies; every imaginable disease of
persistent food deficiency; deformed bones; stunted
bodies; warped and twisted frames. The scale of this
vast butchery of the young can be judged by the fact
that' in .one city ? in Shanghai alone 2? last winter,
6,500 babies were abandoned on the streets by their
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? tormented mothers. How many in that one town Were
sold, died of starvation, went through that winter with,
never a full meal, will never be known; nor how many
were flung into factories at the age of eight to toil for
twelve or fourteen hours a day.
The cause is poverty and the cause of China's
poverty is the dead hand of the semi-feudal, semi-
colonial social structure that is now being steadily
smashed down by the brilliant victories of the People's
Army.
Now in the town and countryside of the Liberated
Areas the common people are their own masters. At
a stroke the root cause of all the suffering- of children
has been swept away. Slavery, child sales, the ex-
ploitation of child labour are illegal but more import-
ant, the economic necessity for all these crimes has
gone with the uprooting of feudalism.
Every possible effort is being made to improve
child-care. As a result of the increasing drive for
education, mothers in the Liberated Areas are ac-
quiring the rudiments of hygienic knowledge, child-
care, sanitation, sane feeding. Medical teams are being
sent into the villages and campaigns launched to
develop preventive measures against epidemic disease.
The witch doctor is losing his clientele. Already there
is a distinct improvement in the mortality rate among
infants and mothers.
Increhsing prosperity among the peasants and
workers means better feeding. Emphasis on the im-
portance of study is making all parents eager to send
their children to school and schools are being opened
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as rapidly as possible, though all too slowly to cope
with the rising demand.
Child labour in factories is prohibited though it
cannot yet be entirely prevented in rural areas especial-
ly in busy seasons. A beginning has been made in
setting up nurseries in factories, where working
mothers may leave their babies and retire to feed them.
In other cases the Women's Union have organised
women to undertake the care of children for working
mothers for payment and thus ensuring that children
are not left alone to sob their hearts out in dark rooms
all day.
These are only the beginnings. Ensuring a
? healthy, hygienic, well-fed, happy life for all China's
children from conception to adulthood is a stupendous
task which will take many years to 'achieve. The war
itself, the blockade, the famines that a fedual land
system invariably creates, floods caused by the Kuo-
min-tang's ruthless bombing of river dykes have created
millions of orphans and have broken tip families. It
was recently estimated that in six Liberated Areas over
10 million children needed relief. These children are
all in newly-liberated areas or areas which have re-
cently been affected by the war and attendant destruc-
tion by the Kuomintang armies. There is moreover a
desperate shortage of personnel trained in maternal
and child wolfare. But such problems, which have
always existed in China, are being seriously tackled
for the first time and, in the Liberated Areas, children
now have a chance in life and parents have the economic
means to be good parents. ?
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The Collapse of the Marriage Market
? Polygamy, concubinage, prostitution, the sale of
women, marriages arranged by, parents without the,
voluntaryagreement ?of the two parties are all now
illegal in the Liberated Areas. Land reform, giving
all women their share of land, equal pay for women
and men industrial workers have svvept away the
' economic bases of these backward customs. But cus-
toms cling and especially the custom of parents select-
ing a daughter's husband or a son's bride. The general
spread of enlightenment and the dawning of indepen-
dence among the younger people, especially young
women, however, is making marriage by parental selec-
tion increasingly rare. Marriage by free choice is na-
turally conducive to greater mutual respect by husband
and wife and reduces the basis for contempt of women.
Among older people, the feudal horror at remar-
riage by a widow still exists, but among the younger
generation it has little hold.
Women and men now have equal right in divorce.
A reasonable desire by either party to annul a mar-
riage is legal grounds for the granting of a divorce
in the simple common-sense, people's courts. Freedom
to divorce has released many women from marriages
into which they were forced by their parents under
the degrading marriage system of the past.
!,j, The Women's Union has played a great part in
helping unhappily married women and in spreading
the influence of marriage by free choice.
Simpler, less costly marriage ceremonies have gone
bide by side with the more enlightened marriage laws.
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Government regulations only demand that there shall
be two witnesses to a marriage and that it shall be
registered with the local government, which issues
certificate to each partner. Usually the bride will
now ride to her wedding party in a decorated cart while
her friends dance "yangko" ?popular folk dance and
song ? to send her off. Most weddings now have this
simple form.
? WOMEN IN KMT-CONTROLLED AREAS
Chiang Kai-shek may not be appearing in the light
of a great military strategist when fighting the men
of the People's Liberation Army but he sometimes has
at least temporary successes in war against unarmed
women.
In the Sheng Hsin Textile Mill, Shanghai, there
are 7,500 workers, of whom over 6,000 are women.
Last February, driven to desperation by the mounting
inflation and many-sided oppression of the Kuomin-
tang, the workers shut the factory gates and struck
work againSt the management; who had "squeezed"
(the polite Chinese phrase for official robbery) part of
their already _insufficient rice ration. For three days
the management "negotiated" with the workers, while
outside preparations were made for the only sort of
war in which the Kuomintang really excels. Then
5,000 gendarmes and secret police surrounded the fac-
tory by order of the government and management,
armed with U.S. sub-machine guns, soft-nosed bullets,
tear gas, armoured can, 141-tha APA cavalry.
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Shuen Tieh Wu, then Kuomintang garrison com-
mander, ordered the armoured cars to attack. Bare-
handed the men and women workers tried to hold the
gates but several were run over by the heavy, steel-
plated cars. As the third gate began to give, a worker
leapt into one of the factory trucks and through a hail
of bullets, drove it at the arrnoured cars, temporarily
repulsing the attack.
Pressed back into the factory buildings, the
workers fought from floor to floor, the women using
broken bowls,' chairs and tables as weapons. By the
evening the battle had reached the third floor and the
Kuomintang authorities ordered an "all-out offensive."
Many women workers were killed but they did not
give up. One young heroine, wounded in the foot, still
kept her waVer hose aimed at the gendarmes. She was
finally caught and dragged, still fighting, down to the
ground floor before she was beaten into insensibility.
This brave woman was fighting for a little food for
her child, born 34 days before.
Finally the workers were defeated by sheer weight
of arms. All women with soiled hands were arrested
and special agents, in masks, went along rows of others,
arbitrarily picking out their victims. These were taken
away to the Kuomintang's cells, to be tortured into
confessing that' they had been led into this action by
"Communists" for political reasons and to betray the
leaders of their underground trade unions. Whatever
else in Chiang Kai-shek's China may be backward, his
torture chambers are equipped with the latest modern
equipment for extracting "confessions" including var-
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ions types. of electrical devices, used by the Gestapo.
But his torturers are also well-versed in the use of the
more old-fashioned methods.: bone crushing, running
splinters under the nails, red-hot irons, boiling water,
forced filling of the victims with water till her internal
organs are bursting, and the rest. But not a single
worker of the Sheng Ilsin Mill betrayed her fellows.
A young woman leader of a picket squad had all
her finger nails ripped out but, with blood streaming
from her torn finger-tips she only said: "We? shall be
revenged."
After this strike the Kuomintang took away all
the corpses and disposed of them and blockaded all
news of this massacre to the outside world.
This is an example of the bitterness of the strug-
gles which the workers must wage for a few grains of
rice.- But, in spite of the terror, the tide of strikes is
mounting and the women are playing a powerful part,
at work and at home, in the growing opposition that is
now shaking the rear of the Kuomintang armies.
The women's struggle in China has a strong tradi-
tion. In 1940, on International Women's Day, many
thousands of women demonstrated throughout the Kuo-
mintang areas to demand woman's participation in the
government and the withdrawal of American troops
from China. In Shanghai, 50,000 women marched on
that .day, led by Madame 118u Kuang Ping, widow of
the leading Chinese literary figure, Lu Shun. A Kuo-
mintang counter-demonstration mustered 180 women.
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This year the patriotic movements ot the students,
always a signpost of political direction in China, have
reached new heights. The students in the Kuomintang
areas have bitterly opposed Chiang Kai-shek's policies
of selling China's independence to America and ac-
quiescing in the rebirth of Japanese imperial power.
They have faced armed police and soldiers to make
their voices heard and many have died, been wounded
and have gone to gaol as a result of bloody Kuomin-
tang reprisals against the youth. Eye-witnesses tell
of the outstanding courage of the girl students in these
struggles. ?
Throughout the rural districts in the Kuomintang
rear, the people are learning more and more about the
free happy life in the Liberated Areas.
Hundreds of thousands of ex-Kuomintang soldiers,
captured and later released by the People's Army are
making their way back to their homes and telling what
they have seen of the land reform, the industrial prorn
gress, the emancipation and well-to-do lives of the men
and women under democratic government. People in
some rural districts remember the times when the Com-
munist-led armies set free large areas in the south and
are longing for the return of those days. ?
As the Kuomintang regime reels under the mill-
? tau blows of the People's Army its economic and
political crisis grows even deeper. The Kuomintang's
only answer is to sell still more of China to the
American imperialists and to try to grind still more
wealth from the suffering millions. As a result, the
opposition in the rural areas is assuming, for the Kuo-
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mintang, alarming proportions. When the army press-
gangs visit the countryside to lead more men away
in ropes, they often find only women in the villages.
The men, urged on by their women folk have disappear-
ed into the hills, from where they harry the -press-
gangs and the landlords' bandit troops. In many places
in the south there are large and well-organised guerrilla
armies, controlling or partly controlling big tracts of
countryside, with the men and women sharing alike
the hazards of guerrilla liar.
Men and women delegates to the Sixth All China
labour Congress from the Kuomintang areas, told of
the great longing among the people for the arrival of
the Liberation Army and promised to make its way
smooth and to protect the factories and social services
? to be handed over in good order to the democratic gov-
ernment.
There are no idle boasts. When Tsinan, the long
encircled capital of Shantung Province fell to the
People's Liberation Army in September, 1948, the
postal service was running smoothly in four days,
restoring the mail routes between the town and the
surrounding liberated province. The bank workers had
preserved all documents and cash intact and resumed
work at once under democratic control. Within five
days, a municipal government had been set up, con-
sisting of represZntatives of various democratic bodies,
and a daily newspaper was appearing.
Different Lives One Aim
No sharper contrast could be found than that be-
tween the lives of the people in the two areas of China.
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But the people in both areas have the same desires
? and aims. They want enough to eat and to wear; a
place to live in; the right to stand erect and determine
their own way of life; to be free of the degrading
oppression of feudal serfdom and foreign capital to
? take their place as a free people among the nations
of the, world : to live in democracy and peace.
The great masses of the Chinese people recognise
that these things can only be realised by the final defeat
? of the Kuomintang and the ending of American
privileges in China, by the formation of a genuine
? coalition government and the founding of a new de-
mocratic Chinese republic which will take its place
among the progressive nations Of the world. '
In this giantic movement, China's Women,
especially in the Liberated Areas, are playing a proud
part and in doing so are finally breaking the chains
that have bound them for thousands of years.
They are destined to play a still bigger part as
? the Chinese democratic revolution unfolds and the
complete victory of the people dawns over this vast
country.
?
?
4
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