ABSTRACT
Attempts at women's liberation were a significant and integral part of the May Fourth Movement, which ushered China into its modern history in 1919. The complex social and institutional history of China's "state feminism" still figures prominently in twenty-first century China, especially with regard to how contemporary Chinese society perceives and conceptualizes the relationship between women and men and between women's liberation and nationalist revolution. The chapter provides a stronger connection between Marxist inspired state feminism and gender theories that came out of the Western academic tradition. It presents a better and more cooperative relationship between the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF) and grassroots women's organizations in China. Chinese women's liberation arose in a particular moment when Western imperial powers and Japan were looming large, and the Chinese state, administered by the Qing, China's last imperial dynasty, was ridiculed as the "sick man of Asia.".
