The Faulty Logic of China’s Most Radical Experiment

On Oct. 29, 2015, the Chinese government announced that it was moving away from the one-child policy it had enacted more than 35 years before. After nearly four decades of mandatory sterilizations, forced abortions, skewed sex ratios, abandoned children and fines for those who violated the family-planning regulations, the policy had worked—too well. China might […]

Holding Up the Entire Sky

When Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party took control of the country in 1949, they promised to change everything. Communism would eliminate “feudalism,” a term particularly identified with the plight of women, who were imagined to live housebound, male-dominated lives. In the New China, Mao and his cadre announced, a new age of gender […]