One of the distinctive patterns of backlash is its strategy of making false concessions. Its rhetoric will generally admit that there was at one point a problem; that at some point in the bad old days, women really did have to worry about inequality. Then the backlash posits that the problem has been solved well before it actually has been. “The anti-feminist backlash has been set off not by women’s achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it,” says Faludi. “It is a preemptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finish line.”

This has sparked a new wave of attention on China’s labor politics since the pandemic and provoked some response among overseas Chinese communities, though less prominent for now than the global diaspora mobilization in solidarity with the protester in Beijing’s Sitong Bridge last month. It provides a telling background to the broader social uprising in China sparked by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

However, upon closer inspection, we argue that the law reforms achieved were ones the state views as congruous with its wider identity-making project for citizens. Consequently, issues at odds with entrenched values imposed on citizens by dominant state narratives become difficult to reconcile, resulting in roadblocks and stalled progress.