If you read the Global Times, an English-language daily owned by China’s Communist Party, you will catch stories about the forward-thinking gender politics of the People’s Liberation Army. Just last year (2/21/23), readers found out that the PLA is recruiting “female carrier-based aircraft pilots for the first time,” and before that (4/9/19), the paper bragged that women in the PLA are “showing valor and fortitude no less than men.”
The paper (7/15/19) hailed “10 women who hurdled the training as operators of the country’s most advanced tank,” reporting that internet commentators called them “modern-day Mulans.” It even ran a photo spread (12/19/13) of the “Beautiful Female Soldiers of the PLA” with the help of China’s state wire service, Xinhua.
In the West, articles like these tend to be disregarded as government advertising that sugarcoats the country’s military expansion by portraying it as some kind of social progress. Because the paper is party-owned, and China ranks 179 out of 180 on Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index, it’s hard not to be skeptical of these pieces’ intentions.
Hellbound and Down 