Why China is better than India for women

Chairman Mao famously said that women hold up half the sky. And he was not even a bra burning feminist of the seventies. Just a man who understood the importance of women in the growth of a society.

Historically, Chinese women were among some of the most oppressed in the world. From foot-binding, child marriage, illiteracy to forced prostitution. They were kept at the lowest rung of society for the longest time.

But women in modern China for most parts do not even closely resemble their counterparts of the past.  Implementation of equal rights for women in Chinese society affected fundamental emancipation of women in all aspects of political, economic, social and family life. And this single-handedly transformed the story of contemporary China.

 62 years after Mao’s revolution China has become a force to reckon with and after 64 years of Indian independence we are still struggling to provide basic rights for women who constitute almost half the population of India!

I have been contemplating writing this piece for a while, but in a completely different context. About why I like living in China, with all problems ensuing. I still prefer this place because I do not have to look over my shoulder and watch out for which pervert on the road is looking to have his share of fun. Like every other girl/woman who has grown up in India, I have had my share of being groped, eve teased, bullied and what not. I guess in India it is your right to passage as a woman to undergo this demeaning ritual.

And I’m not the only Indian woman in China to state personal safety as a reason for their love for China. It just tops the list among other important parameters. We constantly compare ourselves to  China in terms of our GDP, strength of our economies, savings rates, trade and investment etc. Therefore it only seems fair to compare ourselves to China with regard to safety of women, especially after the Guwahati and Mangalore incidents. By that I don’t mean to make little the hundreds of rapes, molestations, sexual assaults and domestic sexual violence that happens India, every single day.

I am constantly appalled at the gross negligence and the sheer brutality that women are subjected to in our country. What I want for Indian women is to be as safe as safe as I am in China. Why can a country that a lot of Indians look at with disdain protect its women better?

Why is it that I can go out at 11 in the night to look for a cake for a friend’s birthday in the company of two other women and be dropped back by a cab driver that happens to be a woman and not be frightened about how late in the night it is. I can be drunk as a skunk and hail a cab back home at any time of the night and be sure that I would reach home safe without any male escort. I can wear whatever I please and not get stared at whistled at or even eve teased.

The answer lies in China’s laws and their implementation of them. Committing rape in China may result in sentencing of a fixed-term imprisonment from three years to ten years, and if one of a list of “serious circumstances” spelt out in The PRC Criminal Law happens, a fixed-term imprisonment from ten years up to the death penalty may be imposed. And the death penalty is often used to act as a deterrent. Let me be clear. I oppose the death sentence in principle. But here in China, it is routinely handed out in rape cases and it is highly-publicized by the state media which puts the fear of god in potential offenders.

There are high conviction rates in crimes against women which is one of the biggest differences between India and China. There is of course a tremendous fear of the law. Then, there’s also surveillance. If someone tries to eve-tease or molest you in any public transport in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, all you need to do is call the police hotline and before you know it, the cops will be there at the next available stop. It’s as fast and simple as that. And unlike in India, they take the side of the victim not accuse you in turn.

But here is what baffles me. Despite the extraordinary progress of women in China, the country’s body politic has far fewer women than men. And it gets fewer as you go to the top. In the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament, about 20 percent of all members are female. One step above that, in the CPC Central Committee, only 13 of the 204 members are women. That’s less than 10 percent. And in the all-powerful politburo, there are no women at all. Contrast that with India. We just had a woman President, have had a really powerful woman Prime Minister in the past, and today, for all practical purposes, the country is run by a woman. The tragedy is none of these women in powerful places have made the lot of womankind in India any better.

The success of a country depends on how well it treats its women and in that regard India will always come up short.

Why chinese women fare better # Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%), 2007-2010*, female -99 # Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%), 2005-2010*, female -99% #Women make up 49% of China's population and 46% of its labour force, a higher proportion than in many Western countries.  # China has over 29m female entrepreneurs. That's a quarter of the national total according to All-China Women's Federation.

Learning Chinese

Learning was the last thing on my mind! I thought I was done, but living in China is not easy without knowing the language. I know we have all heard that the Chinese are all learning English, some 300 million of them, but let me assure you it does not include EVERYONE.  There are about a BILLION that are not.  I constantly struggle at supermarkets, with taxi drivers, restaurants…basically for most things in everyday life. So learning the language, I thought would prove extremely useful for me. And I took inspiration from my Indian friends in Beijing who not only speak Chinese but can also read it!  They make me want to try at least.

I’m sure by now we all have that uncle or neighbour or distant relative who does business in China. And most of us have even heard that its one of the toughest languages in the world! I completely agree. I am usually good with languages. But Chinese, is a wholly different ping-pong game altogether.

The difficulty in learning the language has mostly been my inability to unlearn what I know about languages in general. A lot of it does not make any sense when translated. The grammar is very different and sometimes non-existent. And not to mention different tones to words that are spelt the same in pinyin.

Then of course there is the slight matter of learning the language in Pinyin: this is the name given to the method of transcribing the Chinese characters into acceptable phonetics for Western learners. This system of learning became popular in the late 1950’s and is now widely accepted as the first step to learning Chinese. In fact, it also helps Chinese children learn pronunciation and the phonetic way of transliterating the characters. So most Chinese people know the character as well as its pinyin.

In pinyin the alphabets are in English with the respective tones: there are four tones in Chinese thus increasing the complexity of the language. I just have to learn to pronounce correctly depending on the tones and voila I will know Chinese. But to me it all sounds the same! For example, yí in 1^st tone means aunt, yī in 2^nd tone means one, yǐ in 3^rd tone means chair and yì in 4^th tone means hundred million. 

However, unlike other languages this is slightly easier to grasp because the grammar is simple and uncomplicated. There is only one form of the verb, which is so unlike English where we have is, as was, there, were… In Mandarin one verb does the job!  And the local Chinese folk are also very patient, so if you get the word right (without the tone, that is) the locals try and understand what you are saying. 

What I get asked frequently by my non-Chinese friends when I say am learning Chinese is, ‘so have you learnt the alphabets?’ There are no such things as alphabets in Chinese. Each word has a character and the average Chinese person knows about three thousand characters. Which is not much. Back in the day you were considered a scholar only if you knew about ten thousand characters.  And your handwriting or calligraphy had to be very good!

And here I am struggling to learn a few thousand words. My biggest hurdle has been memorising the words and their meaning. Memorising was never my forte.  But that’s the only way to learn. And learning pinyin is far easier than learning the characters as you have to memorise the characters and there are about 1400 basic characters. Think about it this way: you have to memorise 1400 diagrams!

Here is what takes the cake though. The Chinese have their own words for everything from names of countries, their currencies and even some world famous personalities. So much so a Chinese friend of mine argued with me that the fastest man on the planet is some freak called You Sai En Bo Er Te. Turns out, that is Usain Bolt’s Chinese name. Well at least in India, America is just Amrika or AAmaereeka depending on which part of India you come from. So for the Chinese, I am Yindu ren, from Xin Deli and our currency is the Lubi!    

Dog and the bone

     Shopping in local markets in China is quite a delight. Most of the so-called local markets are actually these huge air-conditioned multi-storeyed buildings, not like the crowded and dingy by-lanes of Janpath or Sarojini.  And they’re organised floor wise. So you have an entire 40 or 50 thousand square feet of just bags, shoes, clothes and other trinkets! What more can a shopper ask for? The one thing that’s common with markets back home is the colour and noise, with the collections nicely displayed to tempt an avid shopper like me.

But here is the cool part! Guys enjoy shopping here more! Surprise, surprise! The pretty Chinese sales girls are usually all over them, touching them, holding their hand and coaxing them to buy wares from their store.  Have to mention, it’s a definite plus if you are white and blue eyed! Infact it’s common to see sales girls hold your hand and guide you into their store. And boy, it’s a pretty strong hold. So much so, my first instinct when grabbed like that was to get angry and defensive. I guess after all these years of having lived in India and being grilled to be defensive if anyone as much as touches you, this comes as no surprise! It took a little getting used to smile politely and walk into the store till they loosen their grip and then I just flee for dear life!

An incident I witnessed while waiting for my husband and a friend to finish haggling over half a dozen shoes deserves a special mention. There was this white guy and his mom trying to buy shoes from the store right next to where we were buying from and the girl was fawning over him so much that if I were his mother, I would have been quite embarrassed. But to be fair, he was encouraging it in the hope of more discounts, I suppose. Letting a girl feel you up is a small price to pay, if it is one at all!   

A definite plus is the fact some of the best English speaking Chinese are in these markets. Here’s the weird part. You could walk into a real Louis Vuitton store and the sales girl wouldn’t know English, but walk into one that sells fakes, and the Queen’s English comes rattling out. I remember going into a high-end store to buy my husband a suit and we spent close to an hour trying to tell them that they need to make alterations. My husband and I tried our very best to make them understand in our broken Chinese English and not to mention a liberal use of charades. Finally we gave up and politely smiled and walked out while all four of the sales staff there breathed a sigh of relief. The only good thing to come out of all this: try beating us at dumb charades now!

But the best part of the shopping is yet to come, the thandav between the Indian and the Chinese. And to quote a prominent Chinese businessman it’s not a question of who is able to outsmart the other, but simply which one will give up in absolute frustration!! And after moving to China this is the only place I have seen the so called India-China rivalry. Otherwise I don’t think the Chinese particularly care!

The difference between the bargaining in India and China is that here they start their negotiation at astronomical prices.  For example in Janpath if you want a top which you think is no more than a hundred bucks worth, where will the shopkeeper start? 500, 1000, mebbe even 1500? Here in China it starts at something like 1800 yuan that is 12500 Indian rupees. You must be kidding me! You can buy whole of Palika Bazar for that kind of money! So yeah we finally end up paying like 30 yuan, but of course if you were American or British i guess 400-500 will sound like a good deal to you.

Moreover, if you can’t afford the Coach bags and Jimmy Choos just yet, the Chinese markets are there for your rescue. They make the best quality fakes I have ever seen. Even light them on fire to show you how good their quality is. But they don’t always put them on display, its usually hidden in their backrooms. But if you get chatty you can definitely find whatever you are looking for. I have to add they are bloody good at faking things.       

On one such visit to these markets we were shown fake i phones and the shopkeeper was proudly displaying the “Chinese i-phone 4”   as opposed to the Apple i-phone 4! He even had four different qualities of the i-phone 4.  And you could actually tell the quality difference, the most expensive being the very best. But, it’s still a steal compared to how much you have to shell out for a real I-phone. And also I-phones are a huge status symbol in China, so fake or real you need to seen to be owning an I-phone and not to forget drive a fancy car and own a nice apartment. That’s your ticket to China! Huānyíng nín dào zhōngguó!