ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on the three Chinese Society for Women’s Studies (CSWS) collaborative projects in China. The first CSWS collaborative project was envisioned in 1992, when the conference ‘Women, Gender and the State’ was held in Boston, cosponsored by the Harvard Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies and Wellesley College. The success of this first collaborative project infused mutual understanding, trust, and confidence between CSWS members and their colleagues in China. It was this understanding, trust and confidence that compelled them to engage in future collaboration. As in 1993, Chinese scholars and activists on both sides of the Pacific collaborated in the fund-raising process and in developing a viable programme for the meeting. The CSWS collaborative project was the society’s first attempt to extend its network beyond scholarly circles in China. In challenging ethnic inequalities in the country, participants at the workshop also explored the prospects for inter-ethnic collaboration in women’s studies and ethnic studies in China.
