Starting around 2012, a feminist activist youth movement began to emerge in Chinese society, collectively known as the “Young Feminist Activists.” Most were once ordinary students in colleges and universities, and many used performance art to publicly call for gender equality. They actively involved themselves in current events and were experts at attracting media attention. At the same time, they held government agencies and corporations accountable, educated and connected with the public, and, by promoting gender equality, used women’s rights to strive for equal societal resources and civil rights. Today, some of them are still active in feminist circles and many are well-known: Xiao Meili, Zheng Churan (AKA Datu), Liang Xiaomen, Li Maizi, Zhang Leilei, Zhu Xixi, Xiong Jing... Under their influence, a new generation of young feminists are growing up in China and abroad. The birth of China’s young feminist activist movement can be traced back to 1995––to the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, where Chinese feminists witnessed for themselves feminists from every country and were deeply inspired by their thoughts, topics of concern, methods for action, and the visions put forward. This rare opportunity for mentorship broadened the horizons for China's earliest feminist activists, strengthened their confidence, and hardened their resolve. Lü Pin, who was working at the time at China Women's Daily in Beijing, also reported the Fourth World Conference on Women. In Lü Pin’s speech, “Twenty Years of Witnessing China's Women's Rights,” she pointed out not only the many important junctures she experienced as a feminist activist, but also that the Fourth World Conference on Women was a starting point for her participation in the rights movement: "That meeting was actually about the process of China still hoping to break through the diplomatic barrier after 1989 and even more-wanting to join the global community, become a citizen of the world, embrace globalization, and tell a story of China’s pursuit of globalization. It is a story of feminism. It is a story of the connection between China and global feminism, but it is also a story of China’s pursuit of globalization." The changes in this environment also brought an awakening of individual consciousness. Lü Pin mentioned that for her a genuine turning point was one day in 1998: "Feng Yuan, China's earliest social gender expert, a pioneer who conducted some of the earliest societal gender training, and also happens to be my colleague who has worked with me for more than 20 years, gave a group of female journalists some training that International Women’s Day, and I was one of them. During the training, Feng Yuan asked everyone one question: Who are you? The answer that I gave at the time was that I was a journalist. Then Feng Yuan shared her answer: Female journalist. The difference in our two answers really touched me emotionally. This was a turning point that made me realize that my gender, my identity as a woman, is important for my life, my work, and my understanding of society. I think this was the crystallizing moment when I became a feminist." Before all of that, since the start of the economic reforms which began opening China up to the world, most of China’s fragmented feminist groups rose from within the system, some of them Women’s Federation cadres or scholars who taught women’s or gender studies in colleges and universities. Some Western feminist theories were brought to China through these scholarly exchanges, and the 1995 World Conference on Women gave birth to the first wave of China’s civil women’s organizations. According to Lü Pin, the well-known law firm in the field of women’s rights protection today and was formerly known as the Peking University Women’s Legal Research and Service Center, Qianqian Law Firm ran by lawyer Guo Jianmei, was established in December 1995. There is also the Maple Women’s Hotline, established in 1998. It was the first women’s psychological counseling service hotline in China and has been in service over 20 years. The early scholar-led women's movement also received funding from several international foundations, including the Ford Foundation for countering domestic violence. The Anti-Domestic Violence Network, established in 2000, was once China’s largest women's alliance ever, with 77 groups and more than 120 individual members from various professional backgrounds in 28 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. However, as a reporter at that time, Lü Pin was always marginalized within the feminist movement within the system. During her involvement, she grew confused and resentful––the movement was limited to dialogue within an elite circle and was far too academic. It did not connect with the public, and didn’t give young people a central role. In 2009, during a period when Chinese civil society was extremely active, the Deng Yujiao trial was held [a highly publicized case involving a woman, Deng Yujiao, who claimed self-defense when she killed a man who attempted to rape her. Police arrested her for murder but outraged netizens calling for justice eventually led to her being tried on a lesser offense]. It was a public sensation. Lü Pin tried to participate in public discussions from the perspective of women’s rights, but found that no one paid attention, making her realize that her previous work had little influence on public opinion in China. “We have maintained that mainstream society doesn’t care about us or women’s issues. In fact, we have never been able to effectively get involved in Chinese society. In the development of Chinese public discourse, which was rapidly rising at the time, this incident made me realize, actually made me deeply suspicious of the Chinese women's movement that I had been participating in and investing myself in. This also spurred my departure, which is why I founded the Voice of Feminism. I wanted to use a new way to explore and promote the women’s movement in China." After that, the feminists that Lü Pin represented began to leave the confines of the system, bring feminism to the general public, and actively get involved in social events, giving rise to a wide range of social changes. In 1996, Lü Pin and her friends established the Women’s Media Monitoring Network, focusing on media and gender. In 2004, Lü Pin resigned from the China Women’s Daily and became a freelancer. In 2009, under the auspices of the Women’s Media Monitoring Network, she founded the Women’s Voices e-newsletter It was later renamed Feminist Voices on Sina Weibo in 2011, positioning it as a “feminist standpoint, civic vision, and action orientation.” Until the Voice of Women's Rights was blocked online on Mar. 9, 2018, it was the most influential feminist dissemination and advocacy platform in China, providing important support and guidance for China's civil feminist activities. Through her work at Feminist Voices, Lü Pin pushed critical feminist thinking to an unprecedented level—that is, recognizing that the state is the originator of women's problems. Prior to this, the patriarchal nature of the country was veiled by scholars within the system. "While I continued advancing my thinking about feminism and continued to encounter problems between women and the state, I realized that I must take it one step further and treat the country not only as an authority, but also as a responsible party or a party to help solve the problem—it is the initiator and creator of these problems. For me this was a breakthrough. It was a critique that took wing from deep within my heart, the process of self-liberation to break the censorship of speech. We were going to go out and identify the role of the state as the greatest loudspeaker of the patriarchy and its role of creating women’s problems." Afterwards, Lü Pin quickly realized that women’s rights could not rely on publicity alone to promote Chinese feminist rights. Communication can indeed create knowledge, but communication cannot become an organization. Therefore, she began to devote herself to developing local activist organizations and letting young people take on central roles in the movement. Lü Pin called the joining of feminism and youth “a brand-new stage in China's feminist movement.” Because "young people have energy that has not yet been woven into the system and have energy that has not yet been woven into their families and occupations. They are genuine fans of, and participants in, social change.” In July 2011, Lü Pin established the Yiyuan Commune in Feminist Voices’ Beijing office. This space may have only been 30 square meters, but it was open seven days a week and organized various lectures and seminars. By providing a gathering space for young people who fled the system, she created conditions ripe for the formation of the Young Feminist Activists. It was also in that Feminist Voices’ office where she met Xiao Meili, who was a college student at the time. Zhang Hongping's 2015 article in The Paper [a Shanghai-based newspaper] titled "Don't Stigmatize ‘Feminist Activists’: They Represent the Direction of Chinese Women's Rights" also mentioned the young people in the Yiyuan Commune: "Many young people (mostly women and primarily female college students) were awakened and profoundly changed by the various feminist activities organized by the Yiyuan Commune. This was around 2011 and was the beginning of the Young Feminist Action Group entering feminism. They were all young people who had just graduated from university and profoundly felt at a loss about their future prospects and modern Chinese society. They all had heard and witnessed the discrimination, injustice, and harm against women in society, but they didn’t know how to protest. Feminist ideology made them resolute, confident, and gave them weapons to resist and to adopt a zero-tolerance attitude and made them determined to end sexism and harm in their generation. This is the difference between their generation and the previous generation and even the generation before that. They live in a more open and tolerant era, with less restraint, and the ability to move faster. They live in the Internet era, have greater mobility, and don’t need to enter the system. They understand more diversified ideas and lifestyles, and their concepts are fresh. They can choose a freer lifestyle that they are willing to accept." At the beginning of 2012, with the support of Lü Pin, the Young Feminist Activist Group began to act in public spaces. These public actions, such as “Occupy the Men's Room," "Bloody Brides," and "Bald Heads Protesting Against Educational Inequality," have attracted unprecedented attention to feminist demands, attracted much mainstream media attention, advanced some policy changes, and influenced some difficult women's rights cases. The above-mentioned protests by the Young Feminist Action Group are very different from previous feminist movement practices. They show distinctive characteristics of civil right movements, but their spiritual core is consistent. Li Sipan commented on this: "The previous feminist movement wave paid more attention to cooperating with the state, while this wave pays more attention to the state’s accountability has also a different relationship with the state. On the other hand, their relationship with the public is also different. The previous wave of feminists hoped that through methods like proposing bills, legislation, etc., to the National People’s Congress and bringing up academic arguments they could change the thinking of leaders. But the current wave of feminism is much closer to the public and very active in mobilizing the media." When the Young Feminist Activists got involved in social issues in a very “flashy” way causing public controversy , Zhang Hongping praised them for their commitment and bravery, and affirmed their status as the new generation of feminists: "It is not an easy task to engage in work for the public good. Spending all her time and energy on serving people and society, instead of making money for herself, buying a house, buying a car, and living a prosperous life, this requires a real conviction. Not everyone can do it without hesitation. They have to take risks and must pay the price. In the end, they may not even be well-known; more likely they will grow old and have no one to support them. Therefore, everyone should have a respectful, protective, and tolerant attitude toward them. “Now they have become the backbone, direction, and most visible part of feminism. All the feminists who identify with them stand around and behind them. They are the spiritual children of the previous generation of feminists. They have become the torch bearers of feminism in the new era.” However, when these activists mobilize the public to hold the government accountable and continue to identify the role of the state as the primary cause of problems, the relationship between feminists and the state is pushed to the edge of crisis and rupture. The risks and consequences are borne by the activists. Around 2014, with the rapid tightening of the domestic and public opinion environment and a low ebb in civil society, activist involvement declined significantly. In March 2015, the famous Five Sisters of Feminism case erupted. Lü Pin had just left Beijing to attend a United Nations conference in New York. On the day she arrived in New York, five young women's rights activists in China were arrested. After that, although the five activists were released under an outcry of widespread global protests, they completely lost their ability to act on the streets. Domestic feminist activism began to occur more on social media, and feminist thoughts and words began rapidly spreading and then fading on major internet platforms. Lü Pin, who was forced to live in the United States on a temporary visa. talked about her life after that day and often felt “I lost everything.” However, she did not give up on opening up new possibilities for the Chinese feminist movement: "The best way, and a commonly used method, to extinguish a social movement is to constantly remove its organizers from the scene. There is a Chinese idiom called ‘pulling the carpet out from somebody.’ If a movement is not well-organized and is without its organizers, the movement will wither and be extinguished. This seems to be a reason why activists and organizers are removed and forced to leave. The question is, how to continue to be where the action is? For me, for a feminist activist, how to continue being part of the action? There are two methods: one is to maintain a presence in the field; the other method is to create a new field entirely." So far, Lü Pin has been in the United States for six years. Under the organization and continuous advocacy of Lü Pin, Liang Xiaomen, and many more transnational activists, more Chinese feminist movements have been launched overseas, actively connecting and influencing international student groups. A new generation of young feminists has grown up from within the movement and has contributed its own strength to the MeToo movement.
