China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, pledged unwavering support for women’s rights as he stood on a stage in Beijing, against a backdrop of national flags from around the world. He praised the achievements of women in sports, technology and entrepreneurship. He hailed how China had supported them to lift up “half the sky,” as Mao Zedong famously said.

中国最高领导人习近平站在北京一个以世界各国国旗为背景的演讲台上发表讲话，承诺坚定不移支持妇女权利。他高度赞扬了女性在体育、技术和创业领域取得的成就。他还引用毛泽东的名言，称中国帮助女性顶起“半边天”。

Mr. Xi was speaking at the 2025 Global Leaders’ Meeting on Women, an event on Monday marking the 30th anniversary of a groundbreaking United Nations conference on women’s rights that was held in Beijing in 1995. During that conference, representatives of 189 countries promised to end violence against women and promote the participation of women in politics and business.

习近平是在2025年的全球妇女峰会上发表这番讲话的。峰会于周一开幕，是为了纪念1995年在北京举行的具有里程碑意义的联合国妇女权利大会30周年。在那次会议上，189个国家的代表曾承诺结束针对妇女的暴力，促进妇女参与政治和商业。

Mr. Xi described Monday’s gathering as a celebration of how China had delivered on those promises. “Chinese women in the new era are participating in the entire process of national and social governance with unprecedented confidence and vigor,” he said. “In China’s new journey of modernization, every woman is a protagonist.”

习近平把周一的峰会描述为对中国兑现了这些承诺的庆祝。“新时代的中国女性正在以前所未有的自信和活力参与国家和社会治理全过程，”他说。“中国式现代化新征程上，每一位妇女都是主角！”

But beneath the pageantry, the fight for women’s rights in China has in some ways become more difficult in recent years, activists say.

但在这场盛况的背后，活动人士指出，中国女性争取权利的斗争近年来已在某种程度上变得更加艰难。

While the 1995 conference was a landmark moment for Chinese feminists, spurring the creation of new, independent groups working on women’s rights, those groups have largely been decimated as Mr. Xi has overseen a crackdown on civil society.

虽然1995年的世界妇女大会对中国女权主义者来说是一个里程碑式的时刻，推动了一批新的独立妇女权益组织的诞生，但这些团体如今已在习近平主导的对公民社会的打压中几乎被摧毁殆尽。

The party sees any independently organized movement as a possible threat to its authority. Women’s issues in particular have shown the potential to mobilize huge numbers of people to both online and even offline action, as recent high-profile incidents of violence against women have shown.

中共把任何独立组织的运动视为对其权威的潜在威胁。尤其是女性相关议题，它们展现出能够动员大量民众形成网络声浪乃至现实行动的潜力，正如近年来一些备受瞩目的针对女性的暴力事件所表明的那样。

Women’s rights activists have been arrested. Feminist social media accounts have been shut down. State media outlets have warned against “extreme feminism” and said that it is a foreign ideology intended to weaken China.

多名女权活动人士被逮捕。女权相关的社交媒体账号被关闭。官媒警告人们警惕“极端女权主义”，称其为一种旨在削弱中国的外来意识形态。

北京附近的一个公园，一块刻有描绘胎儿发育全过程图像的石影壁。

Mr. Xi has also repeatedly exhorted women to embrace the value of marriage and childbearing, as the government tries to reverse China’s falling birth rate. Local government officials have embraced increasingly invasive tactics to push women to start families.

随着政府试图扭转中国生育率下降的趋势，习近平也已多次劝诫女性接受婚姻和生育的价值观。地方政府官员也采取越来越侵入性的手段，推动女性建立家庭。

Monday’s meeting was a testament to the rigidly controlled version of women’s advancement that China has tried to promote instead. In the run-up to the event, Chinese publishers released two books of English translations of speeches and articles by Mr. Xi about women’s issues, in which he exhorted Chinese women’s groups not to blindly subscribe to Western ideas of equality.

周一的会议显示了中国试图推广其僵硬控制下的女性进步。在会议召开前夕，中国的出版商出版了两本书，它们是收录了习近平关于妇女问题的讲话和文章的英译本。习近平在这些文章和讲话中敦促中国的妇女团体不要盲目追随西方的平等观念。

The government also released a report on China’s achievements on women’s rights, in which it said the first step toward continued progress was “upholding the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China.”

政府还发布了一份关于中国妇女权利成就的报告，报告称迈向继续取得进步的第一步是“坚持党对一切工作的领导”。

(Even within the party’s carefully choreographed hierarchy, though, the rise of women has stalled. There are no women in the current Politburo, the Communist Party’s executive policymaking body, for the first time in two decades.)

（即使在中共精心设计的权力层级内部，女性的上升也已经停顿。中共的政策决策机构——中共中央政治局20年来第一次没有女性成员。）

Lu Pin, an activist who moved to the United States after a prominent online platform for feminist issues that she founded was shut down, said that Monday’s conference showed how little the government was willing to do beyond lip service to women’s rights. After the 1995 conference, activists could take advantage of the government’s rhetoric, and its desire to win global standing, to push for real advances, she said. But as the government had grown more confident in its stature, that was no longer possible.

活动人士吕频曾创办了一个讨论女性问题的知名线上平台，该平台被关闭后，她移居美国。她说，周一的会议表明，政府除了在妇女权利问题上开些空头支票外，几乎没有实际作为。她说，1995年世界妇女大会后，活动人士还能借助政府口头上说的东西以及它想在全球享有地位的愿望，来推动实质性进步。但这已不再可能，因为政府对自己的地位越来越自信。

“The party-state is so confident in its legitimacy that it’s unwilling and doesn’t need to justify itself domestically or internationally by granting women rights,” she wrote in a message. “The state has largely closed the door to negotiation.”

“党国对自己的正当性相当自信了，不愿也不需要通过给予妇女权利来对国内和国际自证，”她在一条信息中写道。“今天国家基本关闭协商的大门，”

北京大学的学生为拍照做准备，摄于今年5月。30年前，女生仅占中国大学生人数的三分之一，如今在大学读书的女生数量已超了男生。

By many measures, Chinese women are far better off today than three decades ago. In 1995, they made up only a third of university students; now they outnumber men in enrollment. As the country has grown wealthier, the rates of maternal mortality and poverty have fallen steeply.

从许多方面来看，中国女性现在的境况比30年前好得多。1995年，女性在大学生中仅占总数的三分之一；而如今，读大学的女性人数已超过了男性。随着国家变得越来越富裕，孕产妇死亡率和贫困率已大幅下降。

But Chinese feminists said the biggest accomplishment was changing societal attitudes. Divorce, once taboo, has become more accepted. Female authors, comedians and directors have won acclaim by calling out sexism.

但中国女权主义者称，最大的成就是社会观念的转变。离婚曾是一大忌，现在已变得更加为人所接受。公开讨论性别歧视问题的女性作家、女性喜剧演员和女性导演赢得了赞誉。

Those changing attitudes have also translated into legal victories. In 2016, the government enacted a landmark anti-domestic violence law, though enforcement remains spotty.

社会观念的转变也推动了法律层面的进步。2016年，政府颁布了具有里程碑意义的反家庭暴力法，尽管执行力度仍参差不齐。

The credit for such achievements lies mostly with Chinese women, who have continued demanding equality despite increasing official pressure against their advocacy, said a Beijing-based feminist activist who also participated in the 1995 conference, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.

一名曾经参加了1995年世界妇女大会的北京女权活动人士说，这些成就主要归功于中国女性持续争取平等权利的努力，尽管她们的倡导活动面临着越来越大的官方压力。由于担心遭到政府报复，这名活动人士要求不具名。

An official from the government-run All-China Women’s Federation made clear the government’s disapproval of certain forms of feminism at a recent news briefing.

中华全国妇女联合会的一名官员在最近的新闻发布会上明确表示，政府不认可某些形式的女权主义。

A reporter from People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece, asked how China should respond to countries that use feminism for “political maneuvering” — the accusation that state media often lobs at critics of China’s record on women’s rights.

中共官方喉舌《人民日报》的一名记者提了个问题：中国应该如何回应那些利用女权主义进行“政治操纵”的国家——这是中国官媒经常用来指责在中国女权问题上持批评态度者的说法。

The official, Guo Ye, said: “I deeply resent these voices and people.”

一位名叫郭晔的官员说：“对这些声音和人，我其实从内心非常的痛恨。”

She continued: “Those who wield the banner of feminism, and especially extremism in feminism, their goal is to disrupt this country.”

她继续说道：“打着女权主义，特别是女权中的极端主义这种旗号的人，他们的目的是要把这个国家搞乱。”