The XX Factor: What women really think.

India and China's Missing Girls

The New York Times Magazine published a special issue yesterday devoted to women in developing countries. The entire issue is extremely well done, but I was particularly intrigued by an article about the "daughter deficit" in India. The gender imbalance in China and India—due to cultural preferences for sons that caused parents to abort daughters and even resort to infanticide—is something that's been written about for several years. But contrary to popular assumptions, the "daughter deficit" is more the fault of the rich than of the poor. What's more, when women are given more power, they sometimes use it to favor boys ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

Hillary's Gestural M.O.

Hanna, what did you make of Anne Applebaum's take on Hillary's so-practical-it's-just-short-of-cynical diplomatic style in today's Washington Post? It was kind of a grudging shout-out, too, although I thought Applebaum didn't give Hillary quite enough credit. Amnesty International, I understand, was "disappointed" that Clinton failed to adequately whine about human rights abuses to the Chinese government, but I really liked that she replaced the ritualized righteous complaints with simple frank talk. Applebaum did praise Hillary, though, for comprehending the power of gesture over words:. "In China, a country where religious believers are harassed, all prominent visiting Americans should make a point of going to church—as Clinton did," she wrote, suggesting another potentially galvanizing gesture Hillary could make: "In Russia, a country that is ambivalent about its repressive past, all prominent visiting Americans should make a point of visiting a memorial to the victims of Stalin." 

Hillary's church visit apparently hit a real nerve in China. I like this fledgling model for a secretary-of-state-ship, one that emphasizes gestural actions over endless diplomatic gabfests. And I like it all the more for the way it gently flips the gender stereotype that all women like to do is talk.

Hillary Kissinger

A little shout-out for our new secretary of state, who, this past week, has been carving out her own brand of so-practical-it's-just-short-of-cynical diplomacy in China and elsewhere. Clinton was criticized for not publicly sticking it to Chinese leaders, like her husband did when he declared they were on the "wrong side of history." But what she's doing is much more interesting, and potentially effective. Clinton is giving up on the grandstanding because she knows it doesn't work. She didn't lecture Chinese leaders about human rights because "we pretty much know what they're going to say," Clinton said (candidly), causing all manner of diplomat to spill his scotch and soda in alarm. Chinese leaders have never responded to public scolding, so it's no use trying again. What she did instead is meet with a group of women involved in grass-roots and mildly subversive activism. This is strategic scolding of the kind Chinese leaders are sure to notice. And it gives a boost to the people who can actually make something happen in China. Clinton also spoke freely about Burma and North Korea in a way American diplomats never do. This is exactly why Obama chose her. She is the muscle behind his "negotiate with anyone" strategy. Sure, we'll negotiate, but only if it will work.

The Cat Restaurant Next Door That Sabotaged My Relationships With Pets

Today at the deli while waiting for my egg-and-cheese I found myself speaking in affectionate tones to the obese white cat that resides by the cleaning products. It was a strange moment, because for the first thirty years of my life I had a sort of borderline autism (Catberger syndrome?) regarding my relationship with pets. I've lived with many, but never, I am not proud to report, really loved them, even during the three years I didn't eat meat (for environmental reasons, but mostly because of a boyfriend.) Reading today's Washington Post story on the Chinese protests over the cat meat smuggling trade it finally dawned on me why that was: 

"Cats have a strong flavor. Dogs taste much better, but if you really want cat meat, I can have it delivered by tomorrow," said the butcher, who gave only her surname, Huang.

It was just this attitude that outraged about 40 cat lovers who unfurled banners in a tearful protest outside the Guangdong government office in Beijing. Many were retirees who care for stray felines they said were being rounded up by dealers.

 It is not uncommon for people (like myself) who once lived in China to read news stories about modern-day China that describes a nation that strikes them as thoroughly unrecognizable, but still: when I lived in Guangzhou as a kid in the early nineties I lived next door to a cat restaurant. We knew it was a cat restaurant because the window was adorned with a large cartoon of a cat in a frying pan. I found this kind of gross at first, but having never had pets (allergies) the idea of eating cats did not bother me on a level much more visceral than the idea of eating bird vomit or tripe, especially once I started learning about the innumerable tragedies (see, for instance, here)  that had befallen the Chinese people. Well…

The protest was the latest clash between age-old traditions and the new sensibilities made possible by China's growing affluence. Pet ownership was once rare because the Communist Party condemned it as bourgeois and most people simply couldn't afford a cat or dog.

Well what do you know? I guess the Chinese Communist Party succeeded in indoctrinating at least one expatriate kid with the notion that pets were for the bourgeois. (Admittedly at ten I was, myself, a little bourgeois.) Because it still mystifies me a little to know that the cat protest story will drive a few hundred times more internet traffic than, say, Tuesday's story about the much larger (and um, arguably more important?) protest movement in China targeted at getting the government to rein in exploitative employers and crippling inflation.

Although, to be sure, I suppose their concerns are pretty bourgeois as well:

Drivers shared plans for the strike by text message and word of mouth. Taxi driver Liu Mingsheng said the purpose of the strike "spoke to my heart."

"With my salary, I can have an ordinary life. I can buy books, toys and have medical treatment when I need it. But I can no longer have money to pay the bills and to go to dinner and drinks with friends," said Liu, 38, who used to work as a chauffeur for a state-owned company.

 Break my bourgeois heart! You know how I feel about drinking with friends. And come to think of it, the last time I got really drunk I ended the night practically spooning a friend's dog. There's a bestseller in there somewhere.