This week’s new moon dawning on February 3 marks the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rabbit.In China, the New Year has traditionally been celebrated as a time of family reunions and thanksgiving highlighted by a religious ceremony given in honor of Heaven and Earth, the gods of the household, and the ancestors. Days before the New Year, families busy themselves with housecleaning, hoping to sweep away all the ill-fortune there may have been in the family to make way for incoming good luck.
How telling, then, that the U.S. visit of President Hu Jintao occurred in the run up to the New Year during this traditional period of housecleaning.
Thirty years of dramatic reforms have transformed China from a proverbial sinkhole of poverty into the world’s third largest economy, one projecting to bank a $280 billion trade surplus this year. Decades of massive profits have made Beijing the U.S.’ biggest creditor and have enabled China to gain a formidable foothold in economies of many sub-Saharan African countries and nations of vital significance to the U.S., such as Pakistan. Astonishingly, China is poised to keep growing at a time when its peers struggle to keep their trousers from slipping to their ankles.
Yet, while China’s international profile and economic clout grow and grow, the country continues to draw international ire for policies and practices that run roughshod over civil and political rights. Among the long list of human rights abuses, persistent gender-related discrimination figures prominently.
Socialized to believe that they have little control over their own bodies and lives and no voice in their communities or the wider nation, few Chinese women know their rights. Rural women, especially, suffer under traditional gender roles that exclude them from decision-making and constrain their educational and economic opportunities. A staggering 70 million Chinese women – more than the entire population of France – lack basic literacy skills. Held up against voluminous research demonstrating that education proves among the most expeditious pathways out of poverty, poor health, and exploitation, this error of omission offers cause for ire.
