Xie Lihua, then 22, feeds pigs as part of her army duties. (Courtesy of Xie Lihua)

Fifth of five articles

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 18, 1998; Page A1

QIANXI, China—Two photographs of Xie Lihua, snapped nearly three decades apart, capture how oddly similar yet strikingly different this 46-year-old Chinese woman is today compared to the teenager she once was.

The first, circa 1972, shows Xie filled with the fervor of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – beaming, fresh-faced and clad in her Mao cap – as an army recruit throwing herself into the noble task of feeding hogs.

The second, taken here two months ago,

Xie Lihua participates in a recent conference in a village outside Beijing. (By Steven Mufson – The Washington Post)

also shows her with hogs. She still wears her enthusiastic smile. But now she is clad in a stylish two-piece black pantsuit, and instead of doling out feed to hogs she's doling out small loans to rural women and giving them advice on money-making investments, like buying swine.

Once the head of her secondary school Red Guard committee, Xie Lihua has been transformed into a crusading journalist, magazine editor, small-time banker and activist for the cause of downtrodden women in China. Still possessed by a missionary zeal, she has given up class struggle and thrown herself into "micro-credit" lending schemes, muckraking journalism and the promotion of Rural Women Knowing All, the profitable, fast-growing magazine she founded.

"I've always been a good organizer," Xie says. One admiring acquaintance says, "She's got the form of a Communist revolutionary of the 1960s with the substance of very current issues of the 1990s."

Xie Lihua is an example of a new kind of activist in China, neither Communist ideologue nor dissident but someone who is at once within the system and at odds with it. Still brimming with the type of hard-edged enthusiasm that must have once made her a frightening adversary in the Red Guards, she has taken up the cause of women who have been neglected by the urban elites who run the national Women's Federation. Xie's magazine has become an important outlet for rural women, as well as a successful business venture.

Xie has taken on some of Chinese women's worst – and until recently least discussed – problems. She is conducting a study on suicide among rural women, who kill themselves at rates that surpass almost any other group of people on earth. She has highlighted the problems of domestic abuse of wives and runs a women's hot line in Beijing. Qianxi is one of five villages where she is running a micro-credit program. She also runs an advice service for women who have been laid off, a growing problem.

Perhaps most unusual here in China, Xie has taken up the cause of the waidi,, literally "outsiders." These are rural migrants who come to cities in search of work. They are almost universally despised by city residents and blamed for crime and other ills. Xie has started a support group for migrant women in Beijing to meet, learn new skills and find jobs in hospitals that need laborers.

Influencing the Agenda

Although she is often at odds with the government, Xie has been able to influence the government agenda. There is no civil society in China as people know it in America or Europe. There are no independent nongovernmental organizations other than private businesses. Every group must find a Communist-controlled umbrella group. But by finding a niche tolerated within the national women's organization and becoming financially self-sufficient, Xie has grabbed attention for many of her causes. What was once a fringe obsession of one woman is becoming part of the official agenda.

"Like a lot of people in their late thirties and forties who try to do something innovative, they cannot persuade someone else to do it so they do it themselves," said a Western foundation representative familiar with Xie's work. "If it means they have to go around corners, without doing anything illegal, they figure it out. And they can become incredibly powerful units of advocacy."

The roots of that sort of determination lie in the Cultural Revolution, which broke out when Xie and her contemporaries were schoolchildren. Millions of young Chinese never recovered emotionally or educationally from that decade-long upheaval. But those who did possess a sense of purpose and resourcefulness that is unusual in China.

"This generation is a special generation," Xie said about herself and her contemporaries, who are now hitting the peaks of their careers. "We have a mission in our lives to fulfill our own values and also to do something to contribute to society."

Xie was only 14 when the Cultural Revolution broke out, a crucial time for most girls to be learning about themselves, boys and school textbooks. Xie became the leader of the Red Guards at one of Beijing's elite secondary schools. Only one book mattered – the Little Red Book of quotations from Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. A worn black-and-white photo in one of Xie's albums at home shows her waving the book in Tiananmen Square, with hundreds of thousands of identically dressed youths doing the same thing.

When in large crowds, Xie conceded, she did nothing – could do nothing, she said – to stop the excesses of the campaigns to root out "capitalist roaders" and people with bad class backgrounds. In one incident, in the middle of Beijing's icy winter, a student poured cold water over the bedding of a teacher with what was considered a bad class background. Xie says she and some other students secretly let the teacher stay in their dormitory room.

"We were so young," she said.

In 1969, she joined the army and went to the southwestern province of Yunnan. She spent 14 years in the army. Again, she excelled, this time becoming the head of her unit.

Xie finally returned to school in 1984, attending university part time while working at the Women's Daily in Beijing. She graduated in 1987.

While at the newspaper, Xie made her mark with an expose about a Henan woman who was fired in a dispute over $483 in unpaid wages. Her appeals to local officials, who were close to the company manager, went unheeded. Xie's article prompted an effort by the Henan company to get her demoted, and articles in the local papers defended the company manager. But Beijing stepped in to discipline five local officials and restore the woman to her job.

After that, a steady stream of mail to Xie about abuse of women became a flood. One of Xie's specialties became shattering myths about model women and families. One example held up at a conference she attended was about a woman who was married for eight years to a man paralyzed from the waist down. They were called a model family. Xie visited and found the woman miserable and longing for children.

"Maybe there are such people and women who choose lives like this, but I don't think they should be held up a models," Xie says.

Is Xie a role model for modern Chinese women?

Although concerned about the plight of poor women, she is not poor. She lives in a comfortable apartment with her husband, teenage daughter and cat. The apartment is equipped with modern TV, video and audio systems, and finished wood floors.

Her work and connections with overseas women's groups and foundations have made her well traveled. Because her work often takes her away from home, her success has been an issue in her marriage. Although an advocate for women's advancement, she once turned down an offer to become deputy mayor of one of China's cities. In an emotional interview for a television documentary a couple of years ago, Xie bemoaned the unhappy state of her marriage. Now she casts it in a more positive light.

"In the past, my husband has often wished for a normal family life," she says now. "But he gave up and lets me do my work. His friends and colleagues feel pity for him and ask him whether he feels miserable. But he depends on me."

In contrast to many modern Chinese women, Xie is reluctant to advise people to divorce. At the women's hot line, she usually encourages women to try to reconcile with their husbands.