중국 1953년 혼인자유 캠페인의 안과 밖: 관철방식과 냉전하 문화적 재구성

Abstract

This article explores the dual nature of the Marriage Law in China during the Cold War period. The Law was supposed to help women become freer. However, I argue that there was a duality in the law's implementation. The Campaign(1953) in an attempt to uncover the complex process of women's liberation. Through analyzing government documents and female magazines, I have concluded that even though in appearance the law proclaimed a woman's freedom to choose her own husband, the basic purpose of the Law was to make women join the labor force for the sake of country's economic and political systems. As a result, most women did not gain freedom in marriage. The results were both positive and negative, but mostly negative. While the concept of a official labor-based economy forced housewives to work, unmarried women were criticized for doing so rather than getting married. The state used local officials to enforce the law. Therefore, the Law Campaign was successful in the urban areas where local officials were less patriarchal than those in rural areas, where the campaign failed. Unfortunately, this law encouraged women to regard their “freedom” as a gift from the socialist state, so they were grateful the state, because they lacked the concept of personal human rights and true freedom. This paper will conclude that the Marriage Law Campaign, as a tool for women's liberation in socialist China, did not take women's perspectives into account.