THE WOMEN OF CHINA

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 110, 5 November 1927, Page 15

THE WOMEN OF CHINA

TWENTY YEARS' EXPERIENCE

"Chinese women are the backbone of the Chinese nation, and it is through them that China will eventually emerge from its present turmoil into ordered conditions and good government," said Miss M. Dineen addressing members of the Women's Political Association in Auckland. •

_Taking for her subject "Clinese Women," the lecturer, who has worked for 20 years as a'missionary in China, gave a most interesting account of the conditions under which the poorer class of Chinese live, and.of the work done by the missionary schools in combating some of the worst evils, such as infanticide, which account for the lives of thousands of girl babies every year. The respect paid to the mother of sons in China, she said, had always ensured for older women a position of much power. The desire to attain this status led to the evils of too early marriage and over-population. The harmony .within Chinese households, where the mother was the absolute head, and the son's wives were all taken home to live in a' position of subjection to her, was due, said the speaker,'to the perfect code of manners which necessity has evolved to meet such a condition. In China, said Miss Dineen, all children were spoilt, and the spoiled child psychology of the very young' men had a great deal to do with the revolution, and with the demonstration of the students. They were selfish, conceited, and impertinent. It was not until a Chinese man reached, the age of 30, by which time he was, of course, the head of a family, that he acquired stability. Family morality had always been of the highest, but under the baneful influences which had resulted in the revolution, and the free love propaganda of some of their Eussian teachers, conditions everywhere were in a state of flux, and the sanctity of the home was being undermined. The speaker also dealt with the failure of China's hope that the* Nationalist movement would bring forward an honest leader, instead of the .universal system of corruption and "graft," which made the whole political/and military system honeycombed with bribery. Concluding, Miss Dineen said that, although all the women who were now definitely striving to uplift China were not definitely Christian, yet the influence of Christian teaching and missionary schools was revealed in their ideals. She also paid a tribute to the impression made on the Chinese by.the British Christian patience during the Hankow riots. A vote of thanks was accorded to the speaker. During tho evening several members of the public speaking class of the association gave short addresses on a variety of subjects.