Beijing’s Feminist Theater

Thirty years after the landmark 1995 Beijing Declaration, the world’s attention turns back to Beijing in October 2025. But rather than marking a triumph of gender equality, the upcoming UN summit exposes a more complicated narrative—one in which China insists on celebrating progress even while silencing the very voices that would contest it. Sarah Brooks’ piece for The Diplomat dissects how China is using this anniversary as both stage and smokescreen. The Diplomat

From the outset, Beijing positions itself at the center of global women’s rights, promoting “historic achievements in women’s development” and casting its governance style as a model to follow. Yet, Brooks argues, the optics mask a more troubling reality: key voices from China’s feminist movement are absent—some jailed, others intimidated into exile. Within China and abroad, there is growing unease among women who observe how the state is narrowing the space for independent activism.

China’s narrative is aggressively exported via state media, diplomatic channels, and curated English-language compilations of Xi Jinping speeches, aiming to influence debates from Africa to Latin America. But despite its soft power push, the regime’s internal record tells a contrasting story. Over the past decade, the government has progressively criminalized feminist organizing, revoked legal credentials for women’s rights lawyers, and applied vague charges—“inciting subversion,” “picking quarrels”—against activists. Among the most prominent are #MeToo journalist-activist Huang Xueqin and others like Li Qiaochu, Chen Jianfang, Xu Yan, and Zhang Zhan, many of whom now languish in prison or house arrest.

Brooks recounts troubling local cases that highlight the disconnect between China’s proclaimed progress and on-the-ground gender injustices. The 2023 “Chained Woman” case, in which a victim of human trafficking was found bound and abused, is especially emblematic: authorities prosecuted only lower-level perpetrators, while officials with potential responsibility escaped scrutiny. Meanwhile, protections such as the Anti-Domestic Violence Law, meant to provide recourse, are unevenly enforced as courts prioritize political loyalty over legal fairness.

What becomes clear is that China’s posture on women’s issues is tied intimately to its conception of regime security. Public dissent—even framed as gender advocacy—is framed as a threat to state stability. Brooks notes that key legal tools—such as the 2015 Foreign NGO Management Law and strict online censorship—are used to throttle civil society, especially feminist voices. On social media, platforms dedicated to feminist causes are repeatedly shut down; offline, women defenders face harassment, eviction, restriction of movement, and detention.

Throughout the article, Brooks stresses that symbolic dialogues or diplomatic pageantry should not be mistaken for genuine reform. China may celebrate anti-discrimination laws or elevate women’s participation in select sectors, but without autonomous civic spaces, those measures remain superficial. The aspiration of the original Beijing Declaration—of empowering women as political, social, and economic agents—requires more than display. Brooks concludes that, if China truly intends to honor that spirit, it must allow its own women’s voices to lead, not suppress them.