China Hosts a Summit on Women’s Rights, While Stifling Activism

Asia Pacific|China Hosts a Summit on Women’s Rights, While Stifling Activism

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, pledged unwavering support for women’s rights as he stood on a stage in Beijing, against a backdrop of national flags from around the world. He praised the achievements of women in sports, technology and entrepreneurship. He hailed how China had supported them to lift up “half the sky,” as Mao Zedong famously said.

Mr. Xi was speaking at the 2025 Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women, an event on Monday marking the 30th anniversary of a groundbreaking United Nations conference on women’s rights that was held in Beijing in 1995. During that conference, representatives of 189 countries promised to end violence against women and promote the participation of women in politics and business.

Mr. Xi described Monday’s gathering as a celebration of how China had delivered on those promises. “Chinese women in the new era are participating in the entire process of national and social governance with unprecedented confidence and vigor,” he said. “In China’s new journey of modernization, every woman is a protagonist.”

But beneath the pageantry, the fight for women’s rights in China has in some ways become more difficult in recent years, activists say.

While the 1995 conference was a landmark moment for Chinese feminists, spurring the creation of new, independent groups working on women’s rights, those groups have largely been decimated as Mr. Xi has overseen a crackdown on civil society.

The party sees any independently organized movement as a possible threat to its authority. Women’s issues in particular have shown the potential to mobilize huge numbers of people to both online and even offline action, as recent high-profile incidents of violence against women have shown.