'Dragon Lady' tale stops ambitious women - Paul French

Paul French

The emergence of Peng Liyuan, the popular singer, at the side of the next Chinese president, Xi Jinping, brings back the stories of earlier 'Dragon ladies'. Author and China veteran Paul French explains in SMH why she will will never become a first lady in US-style.

SMH:

Different because China hasn't had the easiest of relationships with women who've married into power. The most recent example being Gu Kailai, wife of former politician Bo Xilai. Her story is the stuff of soap opera: a beautiful and highly accomplished wife of one of the country's most charismatic "princelings" is found guilty of murdering a British businessman. According to writer Paul French, her story fits - perhaps too conveniently - into a form of misogyny called 'Dragon Ladies', "an all-too-familiar trope in Chinese history: A successful man achieves power, wealth, and the love of many before being brought low by an excessive ambition encouraged by his wife, a beautiful woman obsessed with money and power." 

French says 'Dragon Ladies' are characterised as being "married to a man but wedded to the throne". Whether it's Dowager Empress Cixi of the late 19th century, Soong Mei-ling, wife of Chaing Kai-shek, or actress Jiang Qing - better known as Madame Mao – they are framed as sexually promiscuous, power hungry wives whose ruthlessness and mismanagement single-handedly brings the country to the brink of disaster. Tales that according to French are preferable to exposing the reality of "a massive internal rupture in the halls of government."

More in SMH.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

This week, on November 22, the China Weekly Hangout is about the future of nuclear power in China. You can register at our event page here. (Two weeks earlier we missed the change in daylight saving time in the US and had to cancel.) First part will focus on the resumption of building nuclear power stations, the second part of the chances NIMBY protests can derail this ambitious program. Planned participants: Richard Brubaker and Chris Brown.

You can access all editions here.

In September the China Weekly Hangout discussed the position of foreigners in China, and why some of them are leaving the country. Including: Andrew Hupert, Richard Brubaker and Fons Tuinstra.

Related articles

• No women on board in China's power houses - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Food scares are not going away - Paul French (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• China consumer market is getting crowded - Paul French (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Starbucks: Symbol of wealth - Paul French (chinaherald.net)
• Fast food chains try to take on Chinese breakfast - Paul French (chinaherald.net)

No women on board of China's power houses - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

The famous singer Peng Liyuan was more popular than her husband,the upcoming president Xi Jinping. She could use that popularity as China's first lady, but author Zhang Lijia estimates those chances are limited, as women are not welcome in China's power houses, she tells The National. 

The National:

"It goes right back to the Empress Dowager (who ran China for the last 47 years of the Ching Dynasty), people think that if a women is given power there will be trouble," say Zhang Lijia, a writer and social commentator in Beijing. 

"There are still people who think that Mao's wife Jiang Qing alone was responsible for the Cultural Revolution," she said, referring to the violent anti-bourgeois and anti-intellectual campaigns unleashed by Mao and his wife in the late sixties.

More in The National.

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speaker' request form.

This week, on November 22, the China Weekly Hangout is about the future of nuclear power in China. You can register at our event page here. (Two weeks earlier we missed the change in daylight saving time in the US and had to cancel.) First part will focus on the resumption of building nuclear power stations, the second part of the chances NIMBY protests can derail this ambitious program. Planned participants: Richard Brubaker and Chris Brown.

You can access all editions here.

In September the China Weekly Hangout discussed why so many Chinese are leaving China. Including Isaac Mao, Richard Brubaker, Li Meixian and Fons Tuinstra.

Related articles

• No dramatic changes ahead - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Preparing two books on China prostitution - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)
• Is Xi Jinping ready for real change? - Zhang Lijia (chinaspeakersbureau.info)

China's dragon ladies - Paul French

Paul French

Gu Kailai, the wife of disposed leader Bo Xilai, was the last woman in a Chinese tradition of so-called dragon ladies. Historian and author Paul French puts her in that tradition together with empress Cixi, Jiang Qing and many others in Foreign Policy.

Paul French:

Most dragon ladies are married to a man but wedded to the throne. Soong Mei-ling, the wife of Chiang Kai-shek, China's ruler before Mao Zedong, was allegedly politically conniving, all-corrupting, sexually promiscuous, and self-enriching. After World War II, it became clear that the Chiang family had pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars of American aid intended for the war. She reputedly bedded 1940 U.S. Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie as part of her plan to see him become president so she "could rule the East and he the West" -- though no evidence of this exists. The communist-driven historical narrative, which formerly cast Chiang as a traitor,now views him as a "misguided patriot." Today, Madame Chiang is seen as a style icon -- her cheongsams with thigh-high slits are still popular -- and a consummate manipulator. Indeed, to follow the new, approved narrative of Chiang as a misguided one is to be encouraged to believe that Madame did a large amount of the misguiding... 

When the Bo scandal broke, enemies needed to be found fast -- Bo was a senior party member and thus could not be portrayed as a complete traitor. A sinister manipulator had to be found, and Gu fit the historical narrative perfectly. Ultimately, dragon ladies are sideshows, part of the sleight of hand to deflect from the real action. Demonizing Cixi allowed the state to avoid picking at the rot that ran through the Qing court; focusing on Madame Chiang's legs and looted wealth distracted from the failures of the war against Japan; the obsession with Madame Mao's power plays misdirected the blame due her husband, the real architect of the chaos. 

The Gu Kailai soap opera distracts as well. Did she have an affair with a suspicious foreigner? Did she amass a fortune through fear, intimidation, and political connections? Is she a murderess? Was she ultimately the power behind the throne in Chongqing and not her husband? Who knows -- the gossip is deafening; the evidence scant. 

What's for sure is that while too many of us have been obsessing over whether Dragon Lady Madame Gu killed Heywood using cyanide or not, we should be paying more attention to the Communist Party's unprecedented internal fight. History is written by the victors, and in China's case, that's a group of buttoned-up old men both scornful to and deathly afraid of their women.

More in Foreign Policy.

Paul French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Learning from China's Angelina Jolie - Shaun Rein

Li Lili

The name Li Lili might not be a household name for a Western audience, but - explains Shaun Rein in Forbes - for the Chinese she is a mixture of Julie Roberts and Angelina Jolie. Shaun Rein: "Along with Ruan Lingyu and Butterfly Wu, she ruled China's box offices in the 1930s and '40s." Rein re-called how nervous he was meeting her, since she would become his grandmother-in-law.

Shaun Rein:

"Sometimes you need to swim against the current," she told me. "Even if everyone is going in one direction in a bad way, you do what is right and moral. Even if that means going against everyone else.. Never forget that."

He retells her suffering from the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, and her special relationship with former colleague and now Mao's wife Jiang Qing.

Not only did Li Lili teach me always to stay optimistic and never to sacrifice morality despite facing evil; she also taught me to make sure to give back to one's homeland and to take care of the poor. Although she and her husband spent several years in the U.S. and Europe in the 1940s, she returned to China after the founding of the People's Republic, at Zhou Enlai's behest, to help rebuild the film industry...

Although Li Lili is most famous for her acting, I remember her for far more. She taught me never to sacrifice ideals and morality, even when the world around is crazy and evil reigns. If she could maintain her resolve to do the right thing and help people through torture and tragedy, then anyone can do so in less trying circumstances. It is our duty.

Commercial

Shaun Rein Fantake via Flickr

Shaun Rein is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Saving no longer tops China's agenda - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)
• Stress tests but no stress for bank sector - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)
• Inflation around the corner - Shaun Rein (chinaherald.net)