The Fourth United Nations Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 marked a watershed in the history of Chinese feminism. But so far, little has been written, either in Chinese or in English, about significant changes in contemporary Chinese feminism. (1) In this article we examine how, since the early 1990s, Chinese feminists have enthusiastically embraced the global feminist concept of gender and used it innovatively to create local practices of "gender training." Crucial to this process has been the dynamic relationship between the rise of feminist nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in China and the transformation of Chinese state feminism as embodied in the Communist Party-led All-China Women's Federation, a state-sponsored hierarchical organization with national headquarters in Beijing. Drawing on interviews of Chinese feminists produced by the Global Feminisms Project (GFP), (2) we illuminate feminist conceptual, organizational, and social transformations in China. These have unfolded in conjunction with transnational feminist movements during a period when China has become a global capitalist giant. Locating Chinese feminism at the intersection of local and global processes, we contribute to understanding the dynamics between locally grounded feminist strategies and the global circulation of feminist concepts and practices.

Although a new cohort Chinese feminists had been in communication with feminists outside China since the 1980s, it was the 1995 UN conference that provided crucial "transnational opportunity structures" enabling Chinese feminists to generate dramatic changes. (3) First, the conference provided an opportunity for Chinese feminists to legitimate NGOs in China. Second, it provided conceptual frameworks for Chinese feminist activists eager to break away from or transform a Marxist theory of "equality between men and women" that had dominated Chinese state socialism.

In the early 1990s, in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, the Chinese government curtailed spontaneously organized activism outside of government-sponsored organizations. Feminists used the opportunity of the UN conference and the accompanying NGO Forum to popularize the concept of the NGO in China for the first time. Chinese feminists published numerous articles in the mainstream media, especially in the Women's Federation's newspaper Chinese Women's Daily , introducing women's NGOs from around the world and carefully putting forth the argument that NGOs are not antigovernment organizations. Presented by Chinese feminists as a common practice in both the international arena and developed countries, the concept of the NGO served as a lever for Chinese feminists to pry open social spaces for Chinese citizens' spontaneous activism. Taking advantage of the government's eagerness to find ways for China to "re-enter" the world and to join capitalist globalization, Chinese feminists, including many of the GFP interviewees, successfully pitched the formation of Chinese women's NGOs as one of the mechanisms to "connect [China's] tracks with the world." (4)

Since the mid-1980s, Chinese feminists had been eagerly looking for new analytical tools that would enable them to break away from the constraints of a Marxist understanding of "women's problems." During the socialist period, a Marxist theory of women's liberation had provided the grounding for a "state feminism" that held a...