![]() “There’s definitely a very robust feminist awakening among Chinese female readers,” she says. Zhang Yueran, an author who teaches literary studies at Renmin University of China, says Rooney’s popularity is part of this wave. A 2021 study by Fan Yang, a lecturer at the Hangzhou Normal University in Zhejiang, found that the number of feminist podcasts increased from eight to 35 in under two years. ![]() Instead of taking to the streets, there is anecdotal evidence that young women are turning to novels, podcasts and feminist nonfiction to learn more about feminism in private. ![]() In 2022, President Xi Jinping appointed an all-male politburo for the first time since 1997 (previously there had been, at most, two female members). Words related to feminism are censored online, and although rhyming terms have sprung up to replace them – feminists may be called “women’s fists”, which sounds like “women’s rights” in Chinese – the crackdown by authorities led to women self-censor. Since 2017, something else has been happening in China: the government has cracked down on feminist movements, seeing them as a subversion of the idea that communism has already liberated women. A bestselling Chinese novel is considered anything that sells more than 50,000 copies. Chinese readers have since bought 150,000 copies of Rooney’s novels, a high number for any author – for translated fiction, anything over 30,000 is considered a bestseller. ![]() In 2019, Conversations with Friends, Rooney’s first novel, was published in China. ![]()
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