Standing on a grand stage in Beijing, flanked by national flags, China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping, declared his unwavering commitment to women’s rights. He lauded women’s triumphs in sports, technology, and entrepreneurship, echoing Mao Zedong’s famous declaration that China has empowered them to hold up “half the sky.”
Mr. Xi’s address took place at the 2025 Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women, a Monday event commemorating the 30th anniversary of a pivotal United Nations conference on women’s rights held in Beijing in 1995. That earlier gathering saw delegates from 189 nations pledge to eradicate gender-based violence and champion women’s involvement in politics and commerce.
He framed the recent meeting as a triumphant affirmation of China’s fulfillment of those 1995 commitments. “Chinese women in the new era are engaging in national and social governance with unparalleled confidence and dynamism,” he asserted, adding, “In China’s modernizing journey, every woman plays a leading role.”
However, many activists contend that beneath this polished facade, the struggle for women’s rights in China has actually grown more challenging in recent years.
The 1995 conference had initially sparked a wave of independent feminist organizations dedicated to women’s issues in China. Yet, under Mr. Xi’s stringent crackdown on civil society, these crucial groups have been largely dismantled.
The ruling party views any autonomous movement as a potential challenge to its power. Women’s issues, in particular, have demonstrated a capacity to rally significant numbers of people for both online and even offline action, as evidenced by recent prominent cases of gender-based violence have shown.
Numerous women’s rights activists have faced arrest. Feminist social media channels have been forcibly closed. State-controlled media frequently caution against “extreme feminism,” branding it as a foreign ideology designed to destabilize the nation.
Furthermore, Mr. Xi has consistently urged women to prioritize marriage and childbirth, as the government struggles to counteract a declining birth rate. Local authorities have even resorted to increasingly intrusive measures to pressure women into having families.
The recent summit underscored China’s preferred, strictly regulated narrative of women’s progress. Leading up to the event, Chinese publishers released two English-translated volumes of Mr. Xi’s speeches and writings on women’s topics, explicitly cautioning Chinese women’s organizations against uncritically adopting Western concepts of equality.
Additionally, the government issued a report detailing its accomplishments in women’s rights, emphasizing that the foundational step for ongoing progress is “upholding the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China.”
(Ironically, even within the party’s meticulously orchestrated power structure, women’s advancement has stagnated. For the first time in twenty years, the Communist Party’s executive policymaking body, the Politburo, contains no women.)
Lu Pin, an activist forced to relocate to the United States after the closure of a significant online platform for feminist discussions that she founded, observed that Monday’s conference revealed the government’s minimal commitment beyond mere rhetoric. She recalled how, following the 1995 conference, activists leveraged government statements and China’s aspirations for global recognition to achieve tangible progress. Now, with the government’s increased self-assurance, such opportunities have vanished.
“The party-state,” she explained in a message, “is so convinced of its own legitimacy that it neither desires nor feels compelled to validate itself, either internally or globally, by actually extending rights to women. The state has effectively shut down any avenue for dialogue.”
By many metrics, Chinese women have seen significant improvements over the last three decades. In 1995, only a third of university students were women; today, they constitute the majority of enrollees. As China’s prosperity has surged, maternal mortality and poverty rates have also experienced sharp declines.
However, Chinese feminists emphasize that the most profound achievement has been the transformation of societal attitudes. Divorce, once stigmatized, is now more widely accepted, and female authors, comedians, and directors have earned recognition for challenging sexism.
These evolving perspectives have also led to legislative wins. In 2016, the government passed a pivotal anti-domestic violence law, though its practical enforcement continues to be inconsistent.
The true credit for these advancements, according to a Beijing-based feminist activist who also attended the 1995 conference (and requested anonymity due to fears of government reprisal), belongs predominantly to Chinese women. They have relentlessly pursued equality, even in the face of escalating official hostility towards their advocacy.
During a recent news briefing, an official from the government-controlled All-China Women’s Federation explicitly voiced the government’s disdain for particular manifestations of feminism.
When a reporter from the People’s Daily, the party’s official publication, inquired about how China should react to nations employing feminism for “political maneuvering”— a common accusation state media levels against critics of China’s women’s rights record—
The official, Guo Ye, responded pointedly: “I deeply resent these voices and people.”
She elaborated, stating, “Those who champion the cause of feminism, especially its extremist forms, aim to destabilize this nation.”