The First Chinese Marriage Law was a civil marriage law passed in the People's Republic of China on May 1, 1950. It was transformative because the Marriage Law was a radical change from existing patriarchal Chinese marriage traditions. It was also highly political because it sharply reflected ideologies about class struggle, land reform, Marx and Leninism, which were prevalent in the Chinese Revolution. The New Marriage Law with its revision of family relations did not happen in one night, but through a long process. According to Neil Jeffrey Diamant, in 1931, "Marriage Regulations" was promulgated in the party's embattled "soviet" in the rural province of Jiangxi, provided Article 1 a totalistic condemnation of the "feudal" Chinese family; The 1934 Marriage Law was employed as a means to mobilize women to support the revolutionary cause. The basic idea of abolishing the "feudal" family system still remained unchanged. It was not until 1949 when the CCP (Chinese Communist Part) took control of the state that they started to implement the new vision of family structure and relationships. The 1950 New Marriage Law was a revised version of the Marriage Law that had been used in Jiangxi Soviet and the northern borders.[1] This new law continued calling for the "abolishment" of the feudal marriages, and for the first time promoted the idea of monogamy, love, free choice, the willingness of two parties, and equal rights for both sexes. The formulation and implementation of Chinese Marriage are the two complicated questions that I want to dig into more. I wonder how the New Marriage Law was influenced by the May Fourth Movement and the Chinese Nationalist Party, the Soviet Union, and Chinese revolutionary legacy. In this project, I hope to figure out what the New Marriage Law is, find out each strategy for each question, and figure out the 1950 New Marriage Law's position and significance in Chinese history.

Explores the social and cultural significance of Chinese communist legal practice in constructing marriage and gender relations in the turbulent period from 1940 to 1960

China has become accessible to the west in the last twenty years in a way that was not possible in the previous thirty. The number of westerners travelling to China to study, for business or for tourism has increased dramatically and there has been a corresponding increase in interest in Chinese culture, society and economy and increasing coverage of contemporary China in the media. Our understanding of China’s history has also been evolving. The study of history in the People’s Republic of China during the Mao Zedong period was strictly regulated and primary sources were rarely available to westerners or even to most Chinese historians. Now that the Chinese archives are open to researchers, there is a growing body of academic expertise on history in China that is open to western analysis and historical methods. This has in many ways changed the way that Chinese history, particularly the modern period, is viewed. The Encyclopedia of Chinese History covers the entire span of Chinese history from the period known primarily through archaeology to the present day. Treating Chinese history in the broadest sense, the Encyclopedia includes coverage of the frontier regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet that have played such an important role in the history of China Proper and will also include material on Taiwan, and on the Chinese diaspora. In A-Z format with entries written by experts in the field of Chinese Studies, the Encyclopedia will be an invaluable resource for students of Chinese history, politics and culture.

Intolerable Cruelty thoughtfully explores key issues in modern Chinese history, including state-society relations, social transformation, and gender relations in the context of the Republican Chinese experiment with liberal modernity. Investigating both the codification process and the subsequent implementation of the Republican Civil Code of 1929–1930, Margaret Kuo reconsiders the dominant narratives of the 1930s and 1940s as “dark years” for Chinese women. Instead, she convincingly recasts the history of these years from the perspective of women who actively and successfully engaged the law to improve their lives.

The Encyclopedia of Women in World History captures the experiences of women throughout world history in a comprehensive, 4-volume work. Although there has been extensive research on women in history by region, no text or reference work has comprehensively covered the role women have played throughout world history. The past thirty years have seen an explosion of research and effort to present the experiences and contributions of women not only in the Western world but across the globe. Historians have investigated womens daily lives in virtually every region and have researched the leadership roles women have filled across time and region. They have found and demonstrated that there is virtually no historical, social, or demographic change in which women have not been involved and by which their lives have not been affected. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History benefits greatly from these efforts and experiences, and illuminates how women worldwide have influenced and been influenced by these historical, social, and demographic changes. The Encyclopedia contains over 1,250 signed articles arranged in an A-Z format for ease of use. The entries cover six main areas: biographies; geography and history; comparative culture and society, including adoption, abortion, performing arts; organizations and movements, such as the Egyptian Uprising, and the Paris Commune; womens and gender studies; and topics in world history that include slave trade, globalization, and disease. With its rich and insightful entries by leading scholars and experts, this reference work is sure to be a valued, go-to resource for scholars, college and high school students, and general readers alike.