ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, international feminist activists proclaimed that women’s rights were human rights, a perspective incorporated into official UN documents. Both then and now, in China and beyond, the association between these two terms has created both tensions and opportunities for activism. The Chinese government has consistently sought to make “human rights” a matter that circulates largely in the sphere of “foreign affairs,” sometimes penalizing those who bring debates over rights into the domestic arena. Because official policies on equality have given activists and scholars working on women some leeway to pursue their work, many have avoided the “human rights” label. Drawing on participant observation, the chapter explores women’s rights activism at two moments: the 1995 UN conference and at the 2014 review of China’s report on implementation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. The chapter examines the making of boundaries between the national and the transnational by looking at how terms such as “human rights” and “feminism” have been used and understood by activists and state actors in China. It deploys the concept of “cultural politics” as contested meaning-making to understand this discursive boundary-making and its effects, pointing to potential missed opportunities that can arise if feminism is not seen as always already part of contemporary Chinese social and political life, as well as integrated into long-standing transnational struggles for social justice. It argues that radical and connected histories which are not part of official scholarly and state canons can be a crucial resource in such endeavours.
