This week your State Council Information Office released its “white paper” on gender equality and women’s development to mark the 20th anniversary of the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. My daughter was born and abandoned in a farming town in Jiangsu province exactly one year after that global conference took place in Beijing. Xinhua, the news outlet your government controls, reported the claim made in the White Paper — that China “has always upheld the constitutional principle of equality between men and women.”
Many in China have good reason to disagree with that statement. Yet, women who have done so publicly have been jailed, while the words of others are censored, for speaking about their unequal treatment.
Many of my experiences as girl growing up in 1960s and 1970s America resemble those my daughter would have grown up with in China had she not been adopted and raised in America. I’m sharing here similarities and differences I see between my life as a girl and young woman in America and the life experiences of girls and young women in my daughter’s generation in China.
Sincerely, Melissa Ludtke
[For more of this story, written by Melissa Ludtke, go to https://medium.com/@melissaludtke_70103/dear-xi-jinping-b0df07cba899]
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