China’s New-style First Lady and Old-style Fears

BEIJING â€" When Peng Liyuan, China’s glamorous, new first lady, stepped out of the Air China airplane in Moscow next to her husband on his inaugural trip abroad, an old fear stepped out too: as a woman close to power might she bring disaster on the country

It sounds far-fetched, but China has traditionally viewed women and power as mixing badly, a sign of deeply patriarchal traditions that hold that only men can handle it.

“Chinese tradition is just too fierce,” sighed Li Huiying, a feminist scholar at the Central Party School in Beijing, when I asked her about the issue. “Let’s judge her at face value.”

Indeed. But the topic is hard to avoid entirely. Last Friday, the very day Mr. Xi and Ms. Peng (Chinese women do not change their surname when they marry) landed in Moscow, an online discussion sprang up on a forum called Hupu, asking: “Is it true that when the harem meddles in politics it’s a sign of chaos for the nation” (The site is in Chinese.)

The post went on to list what it said were examples of mixing empresses or concubines and power that had ended badly for China, including that of Cixi, the dowager empress during the Qing dynasty (China’s last imperial dynasty that ended in 1911), and women in the Han and Tang dynasties, about 2,200 and about 1,400 years ago.

It seemed a pointed question to be posing on that day. Commentators picked up on it.

“Looking at the news headlines these two days, what are the evil intentions of the person who started this thread” asked a person with the online name Yangliu Dongfengshu.

“What is the initiator trying to do” asked Lushan631980.

Others pooh-poohed the comparison, saying the women in question had handled power pretty well.

As I explore in my Female Factor column this week, Ms. Peng’s greater role as a first lady is connected to China’s concerns that it has a poor international image. A glamorous, kind-seeming wife at the side of its new leader, exercising soft power with a smile, will help, advisers believe. It seems like a safe bet. But knowing about these old patriarchal fears underscores what a profound cultural shift it is for China to engage in “first ladyism;” that is, to have a first lady behaving pretty much like a first lady anywhere else.