The famous singer Peng Liyuan was more popular than her husband,the upcoming president Xi Jinping. She could use that popularity as China’s first lady, but author Zhang Lijia estimates those chances are limited, as women are not welcome in China’s power houses, she tells The National.
The National:
“It goes right back to the Empress Dowager (who ran China for the last 47 years of the Ching Dynasty), people think that if a women is given power there will be trouble,” say Zhang Lijia, a writer and social commentator in Beijing.
“There are still people who think that Mao’s wife Jiang Qing alone was responsible for the Cultural Revolution,” she said, referring to the violent anti-bourgeois and anti-intellectual campaigns unleashed by Mao and his wife in the late sixties.
Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speaker’ request form.
This week, on November 22, the China Weekly Hangout is about the future of nuclear power in China. You can register at our event page here. (Two weeks earlier we missed the change in daylight saving time in the US and had to cancel.) First part will focus on the resumption of building nuclear power stations, the second part of the chances NIMBY protests can derail this ambitious program. Planned participants: Richard Brubaker and Chris Brown.
You can access all editions here.
In September the China Weekly Hangout discussed why so many Chinese are leaving China. Including Isaac Mao, Richard Brubaker, Li Meixian and Fons Tuinstra.
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