Book Launch: Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China

On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, the Chinese government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for 37 days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre, with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf, and activists inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Feminist Five are only symbols of a much larger movement of university students, civil rights lawyers, labor activists, performance artists and online warriors that is prompting an unprecedented awakening among China’s urban, educated women. In Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China, journalist and scholar Leta Hong Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based women’s rights movement poses a unique challenge to China’s authoritarian regime today. Tracing the rise of a new feminist consciousness now finding expression through the #MeToo movement, and describing how the Communist regime has suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Betraying Big Brother is a story of how the movement against patriarchy could reconfigure China and the world.

Join us on Thursday, October 18 for a discussion on Betraying Big Brother and China's feminist movement. The discussion will feature author Leta Hong Fincher and New America's Mei Fong, moderated by CSIS's Bonnie Glaser.

Leta Hong Fincher is a scholar, journalist and author of Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China (Verso 2018). Her first book was the critically acclaimed Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China (Zed 2014). Leta has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Dissent Magazine, Ms. Magazine, BBC, CNN and others. She is the first American to receive a Ph.D. from Tsinghua University’s Department of Sociology in Beijing, and also has a master’s degree from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree with high honors from Harvard University. Leta was a Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia University and recently moved to New York

Mei Fong is a journalist and author of One Child: Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, winner of non-fiction award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She was formerly China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal where she won several journalism awards, including a shared Pulitzer for International Reporting. She is a fellow at DC think tank New America and was named one of Top 50 influencers on US-China relations by Foreign Policy magazine. She holds a B.A. (Hons) in English Literature from the National University of Singapore and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.

This event is made possible by general support to CSIS.