Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T17:42:36.046Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Re-examining the Impact of the 1950 Marriage Law: State Improvisation, Local Initiative and Rural Family Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Neil J. Diamant
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Many peasants misunderstand the Marriage Law. They blindly emphasize that the Marriage Law “liberated” them. This is the case for some women in particular, who have become very unconventional and dissolute in their sexual relations. They have several partners at once, and often switch among them, choosing whichever man appeals to them on that particular day. They also recklessly flirt with many men.

We [provincial authorities] demand the basic-level cadres desist from monitoring adultery and sex, forcing confessions, humiliating and tying people up, hanging, beating, and organizing struggle sessions [against women seeking divorce].

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 161 , March 2000 , pp. 171 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Yunnan Provincial Archives (YNA) 87–1–82 (1953), p. 47.Google Scholar

2. YNA 103–1–45 (1952), p. 149.Google Scholar

3. Challenging “conventional wisdom” is always a difficult task given that it is rarely chronicled in same way as an argument associated with a particular individual. My argument that there is a conventional wisdom concerning the law is based on conversations with junior and senior faculty whose research had nothing to do with the Marriage Law, women or even rural society. Most mentioned the works to be discussed below.

4. See, for instance, Ann Anagnost's recommendations for books and articles for courses dealing with gender in China. Her list includes many of the “classics” on Chinese women by Andors, Croll, Diamond, Honig, Johnson, Stacey and Wolf, but does not mention books by Meijer or Yang. On the subject of “Women and Revolution,” she writes that “since the 1970s, a number of studies have used documentary evidence to evaluate the degree to which the Chinese revolution has fulfilled what Western feminists had always assumed to be its radical promise to women. These studies all focus on the issue of how patriarchal structures have been reproduced and even strengthened under socialism.” Oddly, Anagnost does not criticize these works for their Western bias, although they took as their starting point “what Western feminists had always assumed” about the revolution. See her “Transformation of gender in Modern China,” in Gender and Anthropology: Critical Reviews for Research and Teaching (Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, 1989), pp. 313–342.Google Scholar

5. Wolf, Margery, Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985), p. 25.Google Scholar

6. Stacey, Judith, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 181.Google Scholar

7. See for instance, Judd's, Ellen excellent study, Gender and Power in Rural North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 167, 213Google Scholar; Gilmartin, Christina, Hershatter, Gail, Rofel, Lisa and White, Tyrene (eds.), Engendering China: Women, Culture and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), introduction.Google Scholar

8. Johnson, Kay Anne, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983), pp. 115–17, 122–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Wolf, , Revolution Postponed, p. 260.Google Scholar

10. Johnson, , Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution, p. 224.Google Scholar

11. Ibid. p. 222.

12. Wolf, , Revolution Postponed, pp. 20, 25.Google Scholar

13. Johnson, , Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution, p. 222.Google Scholar

14. Wolf, , Revolution Postponed, p. 164.Google Scholar According to Judith Stacey, during the Marriage Law campaign “cadres sympathetic to the men handed down decisions that denied divorce to women, at time ordering them to be more enslaved to their marital homes than they had been before they petitioned for release” (p. 181).

15. Stacey, , Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, p. 181.Google Scholar

16. Wolf, , Revolution Postponed, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar Other scholars of women have made similar arguments. Susan Mann, for example, argues that, “Weak ritual ties with her natal family and the unacceptability of a return to her natal home forced the bride into near-complete dependency on her husband's family.” See “Widows in the kinship, class, and community structures of Qing Dynasty China,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.46, No. 1 (02 1987), p. 44Google Scholar

17. Johnson, , Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution, p. 125.Google Scholar Wolf's argument regarding the uterine family is in her Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

18. Johnson, , Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution, p. 55–56.Google Scholar

19. Ibid. p. 115.

20. Wolf, , Revolution Postponed, p. 19.Google Scholar

21. Stacey, , Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, p. 126.Google Scholar

22. Johnson, , Women, the Family, and Socialist Revolution, pp. 142, 145.Google Scholar

23. Ibid. pp. 147–48.

24. Parish, William L. and Whyte, Martin K., Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 159, 192.Google Scholar

25. Honig, Emily and Hershatter, Gail, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 206Google Scholar

26. Friedman, Edward, Pickowicz, Paul, and Selden, Mark, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 122, 153, 179.Google Scholar Similar arguments have been made about south China. See Sulamith, and Potter, Jack, China's Peasants: The Anthropology of a Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 263.Google Scholar

27. There is now extensive literature on the relationship between state law and popular practice in the Qing (less so in the Republican period) thanks to the research of Philip C.C. Huang, Kathyrn Bernhardt and their students at the University of California, Los Angeles. See Huang, Philip, Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Huang, and Bernhardt, (eds.), Civil Law in Qing and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar and Bernhardt, Kathryn, “Women and the law: divorce in Republican China,”Google Scholar in the above volume.

28. Rong, Li, “Hunyin shi bu shi ‘geren sishi'” (“Are marriage problems personal and private matters?”) Xinwen ribao, 23 11 1951.Google Scholar

29. See Mao, 's “Decree regarding marriage,” in Schram, Stuart (ed.), The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung (New York: Praeger, 1969), p. 337.Google Scholar

30. Johnson, , Women, the Family, and Socialist Revolution, p. 117.Google Scholar

31. Stacey, , Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, p. 155.Google Scholar

32. See, for instance, Oksenberg, Michel, “Local leaders in rural China, 1962–1965: individual attributes, bureaucratic positions and political recruitment,” in Barnett, A. Doak (ed.), Chinese Communist Politics in Action (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), pp. 155–215.Google Scholar

33. In the Shanghai suburbs, for example, 388 out of 505 (76%) Party secretaries in 1952 only had a primary school education. Shanghai xianzhi (Shanghai County Gazetteer) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1993), pp. 254–56.Google Scholar In villages the level was probably lower. Many gazetteers do not include data on age. Oksenberg estimates that the average age of village officials between 1955 and 1957 was 26. See, “Local leaders,” p. 181.Google Scholar

34. See Duara, Pransenjit, Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), ch. 6.Google Scholar

35. Tong County Archives (TCA) 1–2–31, p. 5Google Scholar; TCA 7–1–3, p. 128Google Scholar; Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) A71–2–1859, p. 43Google Scholar; SMA C32–1–4, p. 76Google Scholar; SMA A71–2–1864, p. 6Google Scholar; Qingpu County Archives (QPA) 11–2–1, p. 81.Google Scholar

36. QPA 11–2–1, p. 81.Google Scholar

37. Chuxiong Prefectural Archives (CXA) 11–4–14B–1, p. 141Google Scholar; CXA 11–4–14B–1, p. 126.Google Scholar

38. CXA 11–11–14B–1, pp. 104–105.Google Scholar

39. QPA 48–2–31, p.84.Google ScholarQPA 48–2–56, pp. 113, 115.Google Scholar

40. SMA A71–2–1859, p. 96.Google Scholar

41. On the 100% divorce approval rate see CXA 4–4–A1, p. 38.Google Scholar On the 12-fold increase see CXA 16–3–A1, p. 184. Chongming county court granted divorces in 96% of cases. For Chongming see Chongming xianzhi (Chongming County Gazetteer) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1989), p. 219Google Scholar; SMA C32–2–5, p. 5.Google Scholar

42. SMA C31–2–60, p. 7.Google Scholar

43. QPA 48–2–31, p. 93.Google Scholar

44. See for example CXA 4–4–A1, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

45. SMA A71–2–1863, p. 10.Google Scholar

46. Stacey, , Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, p. 186.Google Scholar

47. Beijing Municipal Archives (BMA) 84–3–21, p. 29.Google Scholar

48. BMA 84–3–21, p. 29.Google Scholar

49. Dongcheng District Archives (DCA) 1–1–194, p. 11.Google Scholar

50. DCA 1–1–194, p. 11–13.Google Scholar

51. BMA 84–3–21, p. 29.Google Scholar

52. DCA 1–1–194, p. 13.Google Scholar

53. See BMA 84–3–27, p. 7 (1955).Google Scholar

54. In Qingpu, for example, the campaigns lo suppress opium trafficking and the Three Antis (targeting Party corruption) happened within a month of each other in 1951.

55. CXA 16–3–A1, pp. 18–20Google Scholar; CXA 16–15–B1, p. 137.Google Scholar

56. CXA 16–15–B1, p. 138.Google Scholar

57. SMA A71–2–1859, p. 84.Google Scholar

58. BMA 84–1–32, p. 41.Google Scholar

59. TCA 7–1–4, pp. 108–109.Google Scholar

60. CXA 4–1–A1, p. 27.Google Scholar

61. SMA A71–2–1861.

62. BMA 84–1–32, p. 41.Google Scholar

63. CXA 4–2–A1, p. 80.Google Scholar

64. TCA 1–2–31, p. 14.Google Scholar

65. TCA 1–2–31, p. 10.Google Scholar

66. Yunnan wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui (Yunnan Province Historical Materials Committee), Yunnan minzu gongzuo huiyilu, Vol. 1 (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 1993), p. 209Google Scholar

67. SMA A71–2–1859, p. 143.Google Scholar

68. Ibid. p. 55.

69. Ibid. p. 6.

70. SMA E81–2–117, p. 90.Google Scholar

71. See, for instance, QPA 48–1–13, pp. 101–102Google Scholar; QPA 58–2–51.

72. Songjiang County Archives 8–1–32, p. 32.Google Scholar

73. YNA 89–1–55, p. 37.Google Scholar

74. Given that this report was written by officials in Beijing and is critical of collectivization (and the Marriage Law), it is tempting to suggest that it was intended to criticize proponants of rapid collectivization, Unfortunately, I do not know the politics leading to its compilation and publication.

75. QPA 48–2–59 (1955), p. 78.Google Scholar

76. Ibid.

77. Ibid. pp. 78–79.

78. Ibid. p. 81.

79. Yangxi, Li and Ye, Tian. “Hebei sheng nongcun minshi jiufen de diaocha” (“An investigation of rural civil disputes in Hebei provinces), Zhengfa yanjiu (Legal Research) Vol. 4 (03 1957), p. 33.Google Scholar

80. Information on exactly how common this was is not available at the moment. However, I would suggest that the existance of special reports on the subject (which requires investigation and the allocation of scarce state resources) attests to a growing problem in the countryside.

81. CXA 16–65–B1 (09 1958), p. 171.Google Scholar Emphasis mine.

82. Ibid. p. 172.

83. Ibid.

84. See, for instance, Anhui sheng gaoji renmin fayuan (Anhui Province Supreme Court) (ed.). Shenpan jishi (A Chronicle of Judgements)Google Scholar (Anhui renmin chubanshe, 1959)Google Scholar; Yuke, Fei, “Luetan chuli nongcun diqu hunyin wenti de tihui” (“A brief discussion of how marriage problems in rural areas are handled”), Zhengfa xuexi (Legal Studies), Vol. 5–6 (1958), pp. 56–58Google Scholar; Gu, Zhou, “Lun hunyin fa banbu hou jinian lai chuli lihun anjian de yuanzi” (“Principles for how divorce cases should be handled several years after the promulgation of the Marriage Law”), Zhengfa yanjiu, Vol. 5 (1956), pp. 42–45.Google Scholar

85. The literature on the PLA is vast, making full citation impossible. Representative works of this perspective are Joffe, Ellis, Party and Army: Professionalism and Political Control in the Chinese Officer Corps (Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jencks, Harlen, From Muskets to Missles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945–1981 (Boulder: Westview, 1982)Google Scholar; Harding, Harry, “The role of the military in Chinese politics,” in Falkenheim, Victor (ed.), Citizens and Groups in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1987), pp. 213–256.Google Scholar

86. CXA 16–27–A1, p. 30.Google Scholar

87. CXA 16–13–B1, p. 64.Google Scholar

88. CXA 16–12–B1, pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

89. CXA 11–77–14B–1, p. 22.Google Scholar

90. CXA 16–13–B1, p. 64.Google Scholar

91. Jiangsu Provincial Archives 35, p. 31.Google Scholar

92. CXA 11–77–14B–1, p. 23.Google Scholar

93. Ibid.

94. Ibid.

95. Jiangsu Provincial Archives 35, p. 31Google Scholar: CXA 16–13–B1, p. 61.Google Scholar

96. CXA 11–77–14B–1, p.23.Google Scholar

97. CXA 11–87–14B–1, p. 272.Google Scholar

98. SMA C31–2–979, p. 88.Google Scholar

99. SMA C31–2–984, p. 92.Google Scholar

100. See my Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).Google Scholar

101. China's Peasants, p. 263.Google Scholar