{"id":6529,"date":"2026-04-15T15:36:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T14:36:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/mandarinchinese\/?page_id=6529"},"modified":"2026-04-21T13:38:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T12:38:56","slug":"cct-liu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/mandarinchinese\/chinese\/ccp\/ccp2026\/cct-liu\/","title":{"rendered":"CCT-Liu"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From the Inner Quarters to Parliament: Western Ideals, Confucianism, and Feminist Struggles in Semi-Colonial China (1840\u20131912)
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Monday 20 April 2026
13:00-14:00 (*there will be a short celebration of UN Chinese Language Day after the talk)
PFC-03-017, Queen’s University Belfast<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Speaker<\/strong>:
Ningning LIU<\/strong> is a PhD candidate in Law at Queen\u2019s University Belfast. Her doctoral project, \u2018Political Participation in Modern China \u2013 Shanghai (1840-1949): Lessons for Women\u2019s Empowerment,\u2019 funded by a Department for the Economy Scholarship, explores the evolution, challenges, and impact of women\u2019s political participation in modern Chinese history. Ningning has published in peer-reviewed journals and has contributed to teaching at Queen\u2019s. She holds a BA in German Language and Literature and a Juris Master\u2019s degree, and received her legal training through a joint programme between Fudan University and the University of Cologne. Before her PhD, she practised as an international lawyer in Shanghai and served as a consultant at the OECD in Paris. Her work bridges feminist law, legal history, human rights, and advocacy for girls\u2019 rights. She is currently co-authoring a legal literacy handbook for girls in partnership with an NGO \u2018StandByHer\u2019 in China.

Abstract<\/strong>:
This talk examines the early debates over women\u2019s right to political participation in China between 1840 and 1912, a period marked by significant legal and political upheavals, foreign invasions, the collapse of China\u2019s last imperial dynasty, semi-colonial exploitation, and intensive reformist experimentation. These challenges also gave rise to evolving discourses on human rights and women\u2019s emancipation. Against the backdrop of national crises and exposure to Western liberal thought, reformers such as Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Jin Tianhe began to link women\u2019s liberation to national revitalisation. Yet their support was often instrumental and portrayed women primarily as mothers and moral guardians of citizens rather than political actors in their own right. At the same time, Chinese women themselves were not passive recipients: they articulated their own visions of political equality that went beyond reformist instrumentalism, from Lu Cui\u2019s calls for female representation in government to the collective protests that culminated in the 1912 \u201cstorming of the Senate\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on legal texts, reformist essays, feminist writings, and petitions, this talk employs socio-legal and gendered analysis to trace how rights language was reimagined and reinterpreted in early twentieth-century China and how reformist and feminist voices engaged with Western suffrage arguments within China\u2019s shifting legal-political order. It examines both the anti-suffrage backlash and the feminist rebuttals and demonstrates how debates over citizenship, gender equality, and political inclusion were shaped by tensions between Confucian patriarchy, Western political thought, nationalist imperatives, and transnational suffrage discourses. By situating these perspectives within China\u2019s modernisation efforts and broader global histories of rights and legal reform, this paper illustrates that gender was central to the making of modern legal subjecthood in China. It contributes to feminist legal historiography by recovering women\u2019s agency in shaping political and legal modernity, while also challenging Euro-American centred accounts of international legal history. In doing so, it highlights the value of bringing diverse feminist struggles into view for rethinking the historical foundations of gender and international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CCP2026 Homepage<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Registration closed<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photos<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n