Worried by the rising incidence of divorce in the Middle Kingdom, Chinese authorities passed a law preventing a divorcing spouse from seizing property obtained by the other spouse prior to marriage. The NY Times naturally took the feminist position and ran a sensationalist article suggesting that Chinese women will end up homeless as a result of the new rule.
What the Times failed to mention is that this law reflects the norm even in US family law. Even in community property states, property obtained before marriage is not generally considered community property. Nor is inheritance. In Washington state, for example, a man who purchases property before marriage can keep it, although the wife could claim half of the equity built up following the marriage. Of course, if a man buys a house after getting married, he is taking an enormous risk unless his wife is contributing equally to the mortgage, because in a divorce with children wives almost always keep the house (and men keep paying for it), but people are starting to catch on, which is one important reason young professionals do not favor homemaker wives these days, preferring instead that their wives work, too.
However, things have changed far more quickly in China than in the US. In the last twenty years the country has undergone a capitalist revolution, and modernization came about so quickly that customs and laws have not been able to keep up. In the current climate, Chinese women have leveraged their newly liberated status to the hilt, and generally refuse to marry a man who cannot provide the family with some real estate. Naturally, there will be plenty of mercenary Chinese women in a country of over a billion people, and seizing a house through divorce is a perfectly rational thing for self-interested types, which even the NY Times should concede exist in China. So, given the exploding divorce rate in China, a lot of men will be taken to the cleaners without some reform.
Therefore, Chinese authorities passed a perfectly reasonable and normal law – one that is on the books in many states in the US – and with the help of US media outlets Chinese feminists are throwing a tantrum. Here are a few choice quotes from outraged Chinese feminists:
“Feudal society is back again. How many hundreds of years will it take before women are free again?”
[...]
“That’s feudalism. We smashed that already. Broke it. For them to advocate traditional family structures is a joke!”
[...]
“Since the new marriage law came out, the equilibrium has been shattered in countless families. This stone has caused more than a thousand waves.”
There are a couple Chinese cultural references there that I ought to explain to the Western reader. The emphasis on “feudalism” is a relic of the Communist line that China has emerged from the “old society,” in which feudal land owners oppressed the peasants, women, workers, etc. The reference to the stone causing waves draws from Buddhism, which posits that all actions cause “waves” like a stone thrown in a pond.
Chinese are very lively online, so this kind of hyperbole is quite common, and it’s more than a bit dishonest for the Times to use strident online comments as an indication of general outrage. In fact, knowing the Chinese sense of propriety, the new law is probably considered a perfectly sensible measure, especially considering that so many Chinese parents provide their children with the means to purchase property. How could it be fair for some ungrateful wench to make off with half of a house her husband’s parents helped purchase for the express purpose of assisting their son in starting a family?
Nevertheless, it does appear that entitlement feminism has gained a strong foothold in China, and despite the traditional, conservative nature of Chinese this will be a major problem for many Chinese families. Of course, the NY Times cheers this development, and provides support by painting a lurid picture of Chinese damsels in distress for domestic American consumption.
To my fellow American men, I’d like to explain that this kind of underhanded propaganda is one of the most direct causes of anti-Americanism around the world. Not only are feminists causing trouble for Chinese men with their political support of the international sisterhood; they are breeding ill-will and resentment between American men and others around the world. Of course, feminists aren’t the only ones doing this, but in recent years they’ve become some of the most pernicious actors in this regard.
