Chinese Women Organizing: Cadres, Feminists, Muslims, Queers (review)

Chinese Women Organizing is a pathbreaking volume on the study of women in contemporary China—and this is no small accomplishment in a field long characterized by exceptionally strong work. The editors have achieved this through a complex "dialogue of differences" (p. 243) expressed almost entirely through first-person practical accounts of and by women organizing in China in the 1980s and 1990s.

As the subtitle indicates, the range of organizing covered is comprehensive and current. There is due attention to the centrally positioned key institution of the Women's Federations, as well as to newer forms of organizing of a less-official nature, sometimes in the form of NGOs and often in association with international funding. Many forms of new popular organization are represented in the collection, including discussion of whether or how these might be conceptualized as feminist. The collection is unusual in also including an article on women's organizing in a religious context (Christian and Muslim), in which long-standing institutions are viewed according to the framework of contemporary women's organizing. It is even more unusual in also including a chapter on underground lesbian organizing in urban China. The scope of the book reflects one of the major themes in the organizational work itself: "The key is to expand existing space" (p. 243).

All of the contributions, with the exception of a joint introduction by the editors and a keynote essay by Elisabeth Croll, are presentations made by Chinese activists at an international workshop held at Oxford in the summer of 1999. Many international participants were present and active in the conference, including some representatives of international funding agencies supporting this work. The thematic sections of the volume are interspersed with excerpts of conference discussions from more participants than are represented by the contributions alone, and this indicates some of the substance and engagement of the workshop debate. Also included are a set of reflections offered after the conference. The resulting format allows a rich diversity of voices without becoming too diffuse. The overwhelming effect of the book is to convey the vigor of activist Chinese voices rooted in a dynamic and distinctive women's movement engaged with international feminism.

The volume is a cohesive one that focuses effectively on its explicit theme of "organizing," which is problematized effectively by grounding the discussion in case studies of actual and innovative organizing, as presented in each case by those who were among each initiative's prime organizers. The cases are fascinating in themselves for the concrete light they shed on the most recent era of women's organizing in China. Each chapter also includes substantive and critical reflection on what was accomplished and how, as well as on problems or issues that remain or have newly arisen. In some cases the authors give carefully informed advice on how to avoid pitfalls and develop similar organizations in other locations, as, for example, in the work of building women's studies in an effective and democratic manner.

Some of the most thoughtful pieces address the complex issues faced by women who stand between the Chinese women's movement and international feminism, especially in the work of the East Meets West Translation Group in Beijing, and in the work of Chinese women in diaspora through the Chinese Society for Women's Studies, based in the United States. These chapters critically address difficult issues of border crossing and of multiple identities and positionings in cross-cultural feminist work.

One section specifically addresses a central organizational issue in the Chinese women's movement: the current structure and role of the Women's Federations and their relation to international and Chinese concepts of NGO. This has been a hotly debated subject in China, and the volume succinctly raises many of the points of view and critiques the limits of the concepts of...