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The following is part of Cornell 
Contemporary China Initiative lecture series  

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under the Cornell East Asia Program. 
The arguments and viewpoints of this  

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talk belong solely to the 
speaker. We hope you enjoy.

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So this is the Cornell Contemporary China 
Initiative lecture series, uh which is run  

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by the East Asia Program. Tonight, we have 
a couple of co-sponsors that I want to thank  

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for helping us bring our speaker here: 
the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies  

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department program has helped out as, as has the 
Society for the Humanities. So thanks to both  

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uh for helping make this possible. Our speaker 
today is uh Leta Hong Fincher, who uh in 2014 uh  

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published a book that has earned wide critical 
acclaim and/or gained lots of attention called 

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"Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender 
Inequality in China." Usually the thing after the  

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colon is smaller, but in this case, the difficult, 
it's huge right uh goes on and on and on. um  

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and uh She finished her Ph.D. uh in that 
same year at Tsinghua University in sociology  

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after completing a Bachelor's Degree at 
Harvard and a Master's degree at Stanford um  

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and I think that that alone was 
some, was in some respects harrowing  

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but then after completing that well 
before completing I think already had been  

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uh teaching in Hong Kong uh where she's 
been based for the last three years.  

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Currently, she is a visiting Mellon, Mellon 
professor yes at Columbia University,  

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so we were lucky to get her up here while she's 
close by, so please join me in welcoming her.

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I'd like to thank the Cornell Contemporary 
China Initiative and Professor Robin McNeal  

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for inviting me here today. It's really 
an honor to be here, um and it was great  

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that I could just get on the campus bus from 
Columbia. I'm usually based in Hong Kong, so  

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I'm really glad to be here in the U.S. 
I wanted to start by just pointing out  

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that today in China is International Women's 
Day, um and it's kind of interesting, I was  

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just looking at the news this morning, to note 
that the All-China Women's Federation is marking  

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International Women's Day with a fashion show, 
so um in the course of my talk today I'll kind  

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of give you a bit of context about why it is that 
the state feminist agency in China would be really  

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reinforcing these traditional feminine norms um 
and arguing that the Chinese government as a whole  

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is really pushing particularly urban-educated 
women into getting married and having babies.  

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So first of all, I want to just define 
this term leftover-women or sheng nü (剩女).  

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The term sheng nü (剩女), leftover woman, was 
defined by the All-China Women's Federation  

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in 2007 to mean an urban-educated woman 
over the age of 27 who is still single,  

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and that same year China's Ministry of Education 
adopted the term as part of its official lexicon,  

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and ever since then China's official state media, 
Xinhua News, um People's Daily, all sorts of  

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official media, have very aggressively pushed the 
term uh through news reports and commentaries,  

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columns, and cartoons, and I'm going to show you 
some examples from this very aggressive media  

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campaign, um and this is really quite uh directly 
linked as well to the end of the One-Child  

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Policy which, which some people argue is a real 
liberation for women, um because of course urban  

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women in particular were confined to having one 
child, but I also argue that we could be seeing  

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the beginning of, and in fact I've already seen 
the beginning of, some somewhat ominous propaganda  

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that's really pushing women, not only pushing 
them to get married and have a child early,  

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but pushing them to marry and have two children 
very early, but to begin with I want to just  

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start out by showing you some of the propaganda 
images that you saw in the early Communist era.  

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Now gender equality was a real rallying cry 
for the Communist revolution and of course  

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Mao Zedong said very famously that women 
hold up half the sky, and so you see  

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this philosophy really depicted in a lot of the 
propaganda images. This poster is from 1954, it  

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shows a woman extremely robust, um she's working 
in a position that would traditionally be seen as,  

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as a man's job and it says we're proud to 
participate in the founding, er yes in the  

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founding of our country's industrialization. 
So these images of very powerful women um were  

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propagated around the country um in order to 
just enlist women into the revolutionary project.  

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Um, the state assigned women jobs and so the 
urban labor force participation in particular  

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was really among the highest in the world, if 
not the very highest in the world, and in the  

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countryside women were expected to go and work 
in the fields alongside men. Now, this image is  

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a propaganda poster from 1971 during the Cultural 
Revolution with a very ideological slogan there,  

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the struggle against the landlord in capitalist 
classes but what's really striking is how muscular  

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and fierce that woman is, the, the central woman 
in this poster and if you look at all the women  

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in the background they're very enthusiastic, uh 
waving Chairman Mao's Little Red Book in support.

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So the final picture I want to show you from 
that early Communist era is particularly relevant  

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to the topic today, because the slogan 
here, and this is from the early 1970s,  

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is "Late Marriage is a Revolutionary 
Requirement." So in the early Communist era,  

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the Communist party really tried to encourage 
women to delay marriage so that they could stay in  

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the workforce for longer, contribute to building 
the country's economy, and delay having children.  

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Now, there's been a remarkable shift since the 
Market Reform era starting in 1980, which of  

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course also coincides with the implementation 
of the so-called One-Child Policy, um and just  

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as an aside the One-Child Policy really just 
refers to cities because in the countryside,  

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even throughout the 1980s, when that the family 
planning policies were at their most draconian,  

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people were routinely having two children 
or even more, so um so that's something  

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that's important to bear in mind, the 
importance of the urban population.  

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Now, in 2010, we started, uh well, actually the 
the term leftover women was first defined in 2007,  

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um but then the the media campaign was really 
ramped up in 2010 um with a nationwide survey  

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on attitudes to love and marriage, and in 2010 
the People's Daily ran a story with a headline:  

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"Which Category of Leftover Do You Belong To?" And 
not only did they begin to stigmatize women who  

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were over 27 and still single, as you can see 
here, they actually started their categories  

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with women aged 25, and they gave names to these 
sub-categories of so-called leftover women. So the  

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first sub-category you see here is women aged 25 
to 27 who are called "sheng dou shi" (剩斗士) or I  

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translate that as left over fighters. "These women 
still have the courage to fight for a partner."  

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That's a quote from the People's Daily. So if 
you look at the image here, you see these kinds  

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of themes picked up over and over again. 
The woman depicted here has a mortarboard,  

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indicating that she's graduated from university, 
perhaps she even has a master's degree or maybe  

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even a PhD. She's wearing these very thick rimmed 
glasses, and that suggests that she's really been  

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a bookworm, she's been focused very much on her 
studies, and so she's, she hasn't had any time  

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to think about finding the ideal marriage partner. 
So now, there she is wearing a white wedding gown  

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but note that underneath the wedding gown she's 
got these very sloppy jeans and sneakers and she's  

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running frantically trying to chase the 
winged cupid before time runs out for her.

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So here are a couple more images.  

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I draw your attention to the one on the right in 
particular. This woman here is celebrating her  

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27th birthday. She's got the candle for 27 and, 
and the candles are already melting on her cake.  

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She's all by herself, there's nobody celebrating 
with her, she's suggesting that she's very lonely,  

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and in fact cobwebs are growing around her and 
these objects are flying chaotically around her.  

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Again, she's got the very thick rimmed glasses on 
so she's been very focused on her studies, and so  

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the snow is gathering on top of her roof and this 
motif of being frozen appears quite often as well  

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as though these women are being frozen out of 
love, they're not going to find any love in their  

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their life, because they've left it till too late, 
and for those of you who know Chinese, if you look  

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at the smoke coming out of the chimney, it forms 
the character "jiong" (囧) which means extremely  

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frustrated or depressed, and then the caption up 
there actually says: "I barely feel as though I've  

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grown up, I wasn't paying attention but all of 
a sudden I've become conspicuously left over."  

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So this is the second subcategory of so-called 
leftover women that is uh was pushed in this  

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People's Daily article and keeps circulating 
a lot through other official media reports,  

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and the second sub-category of women is uh called 
"bi sheng ke" (必胜客) or the ones who must triumph,  

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and it's also a play on the term for Pizza Hut 
which is a popular chain throughout China as it  

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is here, maybe even more popular in China, so this 
refers to women aged 28 to 30, and the quote I  

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used was "Their careers leave them no time for the 
hunt." So it's pretty obvious, the message that  

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this is sending, the woman again is wearing the 
white wedding gown, um and she has a mortar board  

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on her head, so she's educated, she wants to get 
married, but there's no groom in the groom suit.

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Over and over again a lot of the news reports 
that you see send the message that these women,  

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the so-called leftover women, um have only themselves 
to blame for their lack of a marriage partner,  

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and um it's a really very judgmental, derogatory 
tone basically telling these women you shouldn't  

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be so picky in choosing your marriage partner, 
you should hurry up and find somebody to marry. So  

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this picture here shows a woman with a long line 
of very handsome eligible bachelors, all lining up  

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to propose marriage to her, but she's standing 
there very stubbornly with her arms closed  

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or crossed, and she says, "I want to find the 
perfect man." So these depictions of women  

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are that they're just, their standards 
are just too high and if they would  

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simply lower their standards, then they 
would be able to find a marriage partner.

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Now this was a column that was actually 
originally published in 2011 by Xinhua News,  

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and then it was reposted on the website 
of the All-China Women's Federation,  

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and it has the headline: "do 'leftover' 
women really deserve our sympathy?"  

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And this is really worth reading in full, just 
to see the kind of vocabulary that they use:  

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"Pretty girls don't need a lot of education 
to marry into a rich and powerful family,  

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but girls with an average or ugly 
appearance will find it difficult.  

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These kinds of girls hope to further 
their education in order to increase  

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their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't 
realize that as women age they're worth less and  

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less, so by the time they get their MA or PhD 
they're already old like yellowed pearls." So,  

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clearly the message is to try to dissuade women 
from being too serious about their educations  

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because, by the time they graduate, there 
will be no men left who want to marry them.  

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Um now this is the third sub-category of 
so-called leftover women, women aged 31 to 35,

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"dou zhan sheng fu" (斗战胜佛), or buddha of 
victorious battles, and that is really  

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a play on the ancient legend of the Monkey King. 
And the quote for this category of women is  

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"High-level 'leftover' women battle to survive 
in the cruel workplace but are still single."  

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So if you take a look at the image here 
this kind of layout is also very common,  

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where the women, the so-called leftover women, are 
placed high above the men. So they're kind of on  

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this pedestal, and they all have these binoculars 
looking for their ideal marriage partner, and the  

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woman in the middle is even looking way up above 
her, and if you note, at the bottom, if the women  

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were just to lower their gaze or their standards 
a little bit, they would find these masses of men  

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waiting to marry them, and um that pictorial 
representation of the masses of men is really  

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a reference to China's extreme sex ratio and 
balance, um so you're probably aware that  

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as a result of the strong cultural 
preference for sons, combined with  

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draconian family planning policies, and all 
sorts of other reasons and ultrasound technology,  

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China now has one of the worst sex ratio 
imbalances in the world. It's somewhat lower  

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this year, according to government statistics, 
it's about 114 boys born for every 100 girls, but  

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the latest figure from Xinhua News is that there 
are over 33 million more men than women in China,  

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and so this has been identified by the 
Chinese government as a serious threat  

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to social stability. Who is going to 
marry all of these millions of men?

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And if you look at the captions on this 
pedestal here, the first one on the top  

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says high income, and that's referring to 
these women the so-called leftover women.  

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High professional position, so these women 
tend to be rather successful, high earners,  

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and the last criterion there is high education. 
They've all gone to, at the very least,  

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college, and so they're very highly educated. 
Um if you look at the image on the left there,  

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um it shows, it's sort of a variation of the 
the woman presented very high above the man,  

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or the men, um and this woman is in this 
sort of tower, um and she's got the dark,  

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the thick rimmed glasses again. She's been very uh 
buried in her books her whole life and she says,  

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the caption reads, "Why has my Prince Charming 
not yet appeared? If I continue to wait, this Snow  

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White will turn into an old witch." So emblazoned 
on this castle of hers are again those three  

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criteria for the so-called leftover women: 
high education, high professional position,  

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and high income. And if you look at the very 
bottom there, you'll just be able to make out the  

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shadowy heads of masses of men in China, again an 
allusion to China's extreme sex ratio imbalance.  

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And that that image on the right is just 
another representation of the typical woman  

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who's very successful, um she's university 
educated, she's made piles of money,  

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she has some kind of senior professional 
position, and she looks pretty smug.

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So this is the final subcategory 
of so-called leftover women,  

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women 35 and older. And they are called "qi 
tian da sheng" (齐天大圣) or Great Sage Equal  

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of Heaven which is also taken from the ancient 
legend of the Monkey King when the Monkey King  

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attains the status of Buddhahood. And of these 
women, they say she has quote "a luxury apartment,  

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private car, and a company, so why 
did she become a leftover woman?"

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As you can see, this picture is also a variation 
of sorts with the woman placed high above the men,  

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but the woman in this case has actually brutally 
slayed all these men who lie dead and bloodied  

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at her feet, and if you look at her sword it's 
got blood, fresh blood still dripping off it.  

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It's a very macabre image. So she's so brutally 
ambitious in her climb to the top of the career  

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ladder that she's just slayed all these men 
not considering love and romance in any way,  

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um and so she has this paper-like crown on top 
of her head which says "sheng nü" (圣女) but the  

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character for sheng that they use, so "sheng," 
"sheng nü" usually uh would be sheng for left  

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over women, but in this case the character sheng 
means saintly or holy, so she's depicted as being  

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kind of like a virgin or a holy saint who 
doesn't get any sex and will certainly not  

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find a husband. Um and then over her chest she 
has the banner of "qi tian da sheng" (齐天大圣) which  

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is the highest category of the so-called 
leftover women, and if you can see the three  

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layers on her pedestal there, each have the 
names of the other subcategories of the so-called  

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leftover women that I outlined previously, 
that were defined by the People's Daily.

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So that quote at the top is just something 
that I took from one of the Xinhua News reports  

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referring to these women and how foolish they are 
in focusing so much on their educations and their  

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careers and not putting their attention where 
it should be, which is trying to find a good  

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man to marry. Quote "It is only when they have 
lost their youth and are kicked out by the man  

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that they decide to look for a life partner." 
So if you look at this, I'll, right over here,  

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if you look at this image on the left, the woman 
has just graduated, she's clutching her diploma,  

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um but she, rather than looking really happy about 
that, she has this rather terrified or frozen  

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expression on her face and her eyes are bulging, 
and you see she's being battered by this snow, the  

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blizzard blowing around her, so that theme of the 
snow and being frozen out of love reappears here,  

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and the snow is gathering on the pedestal that 
she's standing on, and the caption here on her  

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pedestal says "Urban Leftover Women [or woman] 
seeks marriage." But it's interesting to see,  

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at her feet are two men, and the men in contrast 
to her are very warmly dressed. They've got these  

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coats on, and hats, and gloves, and in fact 
they're so warm and cozy that their cheeks  

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are glowing, and the man on the left says she's 
too highly educated and the man on the right says  

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she's too capable. So they just out of hand reject 
her as a potential marriage partner, so she will,  

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it's implied, never be able to find a husband. And 
that image on the right is just a stereotypical  

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image of a very successful woman 
who's made it to the position of boss,  

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who's just yelling at her underlings, who, who 
happen to be men and are just cowering there.  

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So um so this kind of these are just a very small 
tiny sample of the kinds of very um derogatory,  

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really insulting images of women that are pushed 
extremely aggressively through the official media.  

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Um and I chose cartoons for the talk just 
because it's more entertaining to see that,  

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um but in fact most of the media, the 
stigmatization of these women, really comes in  

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in the form of commentaries and language in news 
reports. Um so why would the Chinese government  

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want to do something like this? why would they 
want to officially define this term and propagate  

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it so heavily? Well, when I looked into the 
origins of the term, um I discovered that,  

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first of all, it was officially defined in 
2007 by the All-China Women's Federation  

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in the spring of 2007. But just 
a couple of months before that,  

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I discovered that the Chinese state council issued 
a really important population decision, or a  

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family planning announcement, and um it said 
that this, this the country needed to address  

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quote "unprecedented population pressures" 
and, what were these kinds of pressures.  

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I'm quoting from the state council announcement in 
2007, "China," it said, "has a low quality of the  

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general population [low quality in Chinese is "di 
su zhi" (低素质)] so this idea that people inherently  

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have a certain quality um is really a kind of 
strain of eugenics that has long been a part of  

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China's population planning policy. And it went 
on to say that the low quality of the population  

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quote "makes it hard to meet the requirements 
of fierce competition for national strength."  

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So the government has long identified this so 
quote "low quality" of the population that tends  

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to be in the countryside, people who don't have 
a good education. That, that low-quality worker  

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is then going to make it very difficult for 
China to compete in the global marketplace.  

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And so the state council went on to say 
that a key goal for the country was to quote  

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"upgrade population quality" or ti gao ren kou su 
zhi (提高人口素质) and by, by that uh it didn't specify  

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exactly how the country was going to upgrade 
population quality, um but I argue that really one  

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of the main, one of the ways in which it was going 
to do that was through this propaganda campaign,  

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um creating this false category of leftover 
women who are really not left over at all,  

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but creating a sense of national crisis 
over all these unmarried, educated women  

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in the cities who are not getting married and 
not able to find a husband, um and one of the  

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features of the reporting was also that 
they said that 90 percent of Chinese men  

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say that a woman over the age of 27 will not be 
able to find a husband so there are all these  

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pseudo-scientific facts sort of being thrown 
into this, um this effort to stigmatize single  

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educated women and pressure them to get 
married. Now this is really linked with  

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what has been recently over the last decade and 
and a half a tremendous accomplishment of Chinese  

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women, which is that today in terms of education 
you have record numbers of Chinese women getting  

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a university degree, so Chinese women today are 
better educated than ever before in history. You  

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have more Chinese women enrolled at the bachelor's 
and master's degree level than men, and according  

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to official Chinese government statistics, 
these women are actually outperforming men,  

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and so there is a real backlash against the 
success of these Chinese women, and in fact  

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you see a lot of them at American universities 
here, and actually just the other day, a few  

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weeks ago, I'm teaching at Columbia University, 
um one of my students who's from the mainland  

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came to my office hours and she said she was 
really enjoying the course. She's 20 years old,  

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and she said she wanted to seek my advice 
because she would love to stay on and pursue  

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a graduate degree, but she came 
from a very large Chinese city,  

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but her mother said she can't do that, she has 
to go back as soon as she gets her bachelor's  

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degree and get married. Otherwise she's going 
to become a leftover woman. So um so the problem  

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appears to be not just confined to mainland 
Chinese women but even women who come abroad.

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So what are some of the other ways in which 
the government is really trying to urge or  

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push these women into getting married and having 
a baby? Well, the All-China Women's Federation and  

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the Ministry of Civil Affairs in several large 
cities including Shanghai are organizing mass  

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matchmaking festivals, and these mass matchmaking 
festivals are really targeted at uh people who  

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have university degrees, so the vast majority of 
them already have at least a bachelor's degree.  

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And there's also a lot of propaganda warning that 
women who don't have a baby before they turn 30  

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are going to have um birth defects, that their 
baby will be handicapped, and so this is one of  

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the big concerns as well. It's not just that women 
are being pressured into marrying in their 20s,  

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but they're also very concerned about missing 
out on their so-called best child-bearing years,  

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which according to um a lot of Chinese doctors, 
and and even professors, and certainly in the  

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media um the best child-bearing years are in your 
20s and you're supposed to have your baby before  

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you turn 30. So um these these kinds of messages 
well they started to be propagated very heavily in  

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2007, and here we are nine years later, uh and 
the propaganda is very much evolving uh along  

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with society, and so I've noticed that rather 
than targeting the young women in particular,  

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it tends to be targeting more the parents 
of the women, because the most of the direct  

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pressure on these women to get married 
really comes from their parents, and so  

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as long as the parents are watching CCTV, state 
television, or reading some of these state  

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00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:31,040
media reports, then the parents are the 
ones who will be exerting pressure on  

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on their daughters or on their nieces. And even 
parents who aren't putting the pressure on their  

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daughters will come under pressure from other 
relatives who who will tell them why aren't,  

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why are you letting your daughter run around, 
you know, she's already however old 27 or or 26  

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00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:54,240
and she really needs to get serious about getting 
married um and so there are all these different  

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00:32:55,200 --> 00:33:02,880
means of social engineering and, and tools at 
the disposal of the Communist Party to be all  

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mobilized with the goal of pushing these urban 
educated women into marrying and having children.  

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So how does this relate to the very 
recent ending of China's One Child Policy?  

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Well, of course the family planning policy was 
never intended to last forever, um so we had kind  

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of reached the point at which it really should be 
removed, but it's not really removed it's, it's  

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actually the beginning of an official two-child 
policy. So there are still very strict rules about  

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00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:56,000
who can get married, who can have a child, um 
and this is another tool it's still very firmly  

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pushing family planning, um, and it's not dropping 
the family planning restrictions in any way.  

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For example, single women are excluded from 
the two-child policy, by and large. So it's  

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extremely difficult for a single woman 
in China to have a child. Also, the whole  

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LGBTQ community communities completely barred from 
having children, and so I want to just show you,  

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I don't have, because the policy announcement was 
really just made, I haven't done a very thorough  

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00:34:34,240 --> 00:34:42,800
search of all the propaganda messages, but I did 
a little bit and um and I found some interesting,  

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somewhat troubling um things. For example, this 
uh is the image that they used that, that image  

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itself is very troubling, um but this was on the 
front page of the People's Daily, and and I found  

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00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:08,960
it on the website that I discovered that it was 
actually reproduced in a lot of other state media  

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00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:16,160
reports with the same image, and this is from 
December, so that was just a few months ago.  

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00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:23,360
It was actually right after China ended the 
One-Child Policy and announced this official new  

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00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:34,240
Two-Child Policy and the headline for this story 
was that "Female University Students with Babies"  

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face "Brighter Job Prospects," and the sub heading 
was "Student Moms [are] on the Rise" and then I  

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00:35:44,240 --> 00:35:50,880
read the report and it talked about how there's 
a lot of gender discrimination in the job market.  

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00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:57,200
I mean this is something that, well certainly a 
lot of women who are students, or fresh graduates  

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00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:02,880
are aware of, that it's very difficult to 
compete with men for the same kind of job.  

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00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:10,240
So the People's Daily article was taking this 
fact about widespread gender discrimination  

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00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:18,320
and saying well the best way to get around this is 
to recognize that you're going to be discriminated  

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00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:23,680
against. The first question employers are going 
to ask you is, when are you getting married,  

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00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:30,080
when are you having a child? So how do you get 
around that question? Well it's easy: have your  

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00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:36,960
two children while you're still in school. So and 
then, it gives some examples, it interviews some  

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00:36:36,960 --> 00:36:45,040
women who have had a child um in school, and 
and other women commenting about those women  

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00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:50,880
who have children saying oh so-and-so she had 
a child already I noticed she got an interview,  

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00:36:50,880 --> 00:37:00,000
and I didn't, um so but what is really interesting 
about this image is that, to me at least,  

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00:37:00,560 --> 00:37:08,800
um it's really reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's 
"Handmaid's Tale" if anybody has read that or  

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00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:15,280
seen the cover of the book. The Handmaid's 
Tale is this dystopian science fiction novel  

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which really depicts a universe in which women 
are reduced to their reproductive functions,  

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00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:31,040
and these women are, all they do is exist to 
breed, to produce babies, and they wear these  

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00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:39,040
austere uniforms, and I saw this image which 
is, well, that is supposed to be a mortar board  

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00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:45,920
showing that this woman has graduated from 
university, but um but it's really very ominous,  

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00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:52,880
the way that they've just covered her completely, 
and she's carrying the baby. So it kind of leads  

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00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:59,760
me to wonder if that was if the person designing 
that um actually was subtly trying to protest the  

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00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:05,120
policy or if i'm reading too much into it, but 
anyway um it's interesting to note the parallels.

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00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:13,200
So this is um these are some other 
examples of some other media reports  

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00:38:13,200 --> 00:38:18,240
that I found that are widely circulated 
in the state media on the internet,  

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00:38:20,720 --> 00:38:27,760
and this is one of the headlines that's 
very common: "post 90," post-90 refers  

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00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:35,120
to the generation of Chinese who were born after 
1990, so they're very young, they're in college,  

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00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:44,720
and a "Post-90 female student has 2nd child." 
That's actually referring to this woman here, and  

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00:38:44,720 --> 00:38:51,840
that's her second baby in college, so she had her 
second baby when she was still a junior, and there  

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00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:56,800
was this long feature of this woman, who happens 
to be very beautiful, so she's a really great  

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00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:03,600
role model or attractive woman, and then the 
subheading is: "Should women get pregnant in  

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00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:12,560
college?" Um and then there's a long discussion 
again of, oh her, her story of how happy she is  

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00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:22,560
having not just one but two children while she's 
still an undergraduate um so the picture on the  

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00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:34,320
left is actually from a different story that talks 
about graduate student moms on the rise, so that  

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00:39:34,320 --> 00:39:39,600
woman should be getting her master's degree 
but as you can see she had her first child is  

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00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:47,120
already a toddler and she's cradling her pregnant 
belly, so she's going to have a second child,  

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00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:53,200
so this is one of the concerns that a 
lot of people have, myself included,  

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00:39:54,400 --> 00:40:00,720
that this era of the Two-Child Policy is 
really going to generate uh another form  

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00:40:00,720 --> 00:40:09,840
of intense pressure, in many ways, for women 
who are educated or urban and professional,  

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00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,360
and really creating new pressure on them to marry  

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00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:25,680
and have not just one child but two children, um 
and of course that demographic of women actually  

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00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:33,760
very naturally wants to delay marriage, so we're 
just starting to see see statistics showing up,  

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00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:41,840
in large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, 
showing that university educated women in general  

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00:40:42,400 --> 00:40:51,280
are delaying marriage or significantly delaying 
marriage for the first time ever in China, and  

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00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:57,280
these kinds of patterns of educated women 
delaying marriage or not marrying at all  

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00:40:57,280 --> 00:41:04,800
have, how am I doing on time, I'll just wrap this 
up quickly, um, but you see these trends happening  

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00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:11,280
in all through East Asia and South Korea and 
Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, women have long been  

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00:41:11,840 --> 00:41:17,360
rejecting marriage, or at least really 
seriously delaying it, and you see the  

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00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:22,640
the average age at first marriage is, is 
much much higher than it was ten years ago,  

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00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:28,640
but now we're at a real turning point in China 
where you're starting to see the beginning of  

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00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:35,280
that kind of trend of women wanting to 
delay marriage and even reject marriage,  

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00:41:35,280 --> 00:41:40,960
and so um so over the next year or several 
years I think we're going to see a huge  

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00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:49,840
kind of clash between what women want to do, 
and the government trying to repress that  

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00:41:49,840 --> 00:41:58,800
um that natural desire, so why don't I just leave 
it there and open it up to questions, thank you.