Integrating the Feminist and Worker’s Movement: The Case of Xiang Jingyu

INTEGRATING THE FEMINIST AND WORKER'S MOVEMENT: THE CASE OF XIANG JINGYU by Catherine Gipoulon Little is known at this point about the role that Chinese women have played in the different stages of the life of their country. Against this backdrop of historical uncertainty Xiang Jingyu (18951928 ) emerges as the most important female figure of the Chinese Communist Party, from ita beginnings in 1921 to the time of the break with the Guomindang in 1927.[1] During this short period, Xiang Jingyu confronted directly what Chen Duxiu[2] took to be the two greatest problems in contemporary China: the liberation of women and of the urban workers. She died for the revolution in 1928. The current official hagiography makes much of her moral qualities and of her unfailing devotion to the worker's cause and to that of women. Yet much remains unclear about her place within the CCP. Was she indeed a member of the Central Committee of the Party starting in 1922? If so, when did she fail to be reelected, and why? What was her position on collaboration with the Guomindang? Did she fully willingly accompany her husband to the USSR in 1925? What was the actual importance of her responsibilities within the Party after her return from the Soviet Union, just before her arrest in 1928? A similar lack of information exists about her political involvement with workers and with women. What was the actual nature of her activities with the working class? What was her position on questions regarding women? This article does not purport to answer all these questions. The "thesis" that I propose is this: judging from a certain body of texts and biographical materials, it seems that Xiang Jingyu directed a good deal of her energy as a propagandist towards what, for the sake of convenience, will be called "bourgeois feminists." She persistently tried to integrate them into the worker's movement, up until her departure for the Soviet Union in 1925. This interest in bringing these "class enemies" over to the right cause testifies to a certain open-mindednesa and shows an absence of scorn for educated bourgeois women. Indeed, one finds elements of a feminist stamp in her writings that are somewhat unorthodox for a classical Marxist. Who Was Xiang Jingyu? Spiritual daughter of the first Chinese women to have been involved in the feminist cause, she was sixteen years old when the Republic was installed in 1911. Family, geography, and historical 29 circumstance contributed to making her a part of that educated elite which worked for the creation of a New China and whose last members are only just now passing away. Xiang Jingyu was born in 1895 in Hunan province, in a little village near the provincial capital. This province had a firmly anchored tradition of modernism, most notably in the area of education. Xiang was the ninth child in a family of ten children. Her father, a former peddlar who had made it rich, took care that his children were educated. It was a sign of the times that one of the brothers went to Japan to complete his education; when he returned to his native soil, he taught in a Normal School for primary school teachers. From 1912 to 1916, Xiang .Tingyu lived in Changsha, the provincial capital. During the first two years she was enrolled in the Hunan Normal School for girls. In 1914 the principal of the school was fired because of her progressive ideas, and Xiang Jingyu followed the principal to another normal school, Zhounan nuxiao, where she finished her studies. Graduated in 1916, she followed the advice of her principal and returned to her native village Xupu to open a primary school. The school was coeducational, a revolutionary step for that period. She taught in the school for three years, at the same time keeping abreast of what was happening politically in the capital.[3] During the time of her studies in Changsha, she was a friend of Cai Chang whose brother Cai Hesen had close ties with Mao Zedong. In April 1918, the two men founded a progressive organization the New People's Study Society (xinmin xuehui, which had among...