Gender and sexuality as analytical and political tools: expanding the scope of knowledge production about Chinese feminism for transnational solidarity

This article serves as a call for critical interventions into the polarized academic discourses on Chinese feminism and gender issues, often framed within the restrictive “China-versus-the-West” paradigm. Our aim is to invoke new ways to engage with marginalized subjects caught in the crossfire of the West–China inter-imperial rivalry and to broaden the scope of solidarity for resistance to abusive power in transnational settings. We first examine the migration of the Western conceptions of gender and sexuality to illustrate how nebulous applications of these categories create the conditions for ongoing debates over the relevance of Western feminist and gender theories in China. It becomes evident that more attention should be paid to the lived realities of marginalized groups struggling with the heightened level of social control as China ascends as a hegemonic power in the international community. Gender and sexuality serve as pivotal analytical and political tools, enhancing our comprehension of the governing practices employed by the Chinese state to reshape vulnerable subjects to facilitate China’s neoliberal transition and invigorate its integration into the global economy. The examples that we present underscore that many Chinese feminist scholars and activists have developed strategies to contest gendered and sexualized forms of exploitation, tailoring their engagements to context-specific needs rather than uncritically adopting Western concerns and activities. Expanding the scope of Chinese feminist studies, we propose the development of an enhanced political sensibility to foster space for scholarly and activist engagements that extend beyond a singular analytical emphasis on Western imperial domination and unveil more complicated mechanisms of marginalization intrinsic to the multi-modality of imperialisms and their intersections.