A wonderful selfless woman that deserves many accolades.

She’d had a baby some time ago – I think I remember reading somewhere that her infant son was nine months old. He was being cared for (presumably, as usual while she’s at work) by his grandparents, in the province where she usually works. Whatever: her own baby was old enough to be able to cope with being bottle-fed and getting some solid food, and was in any case away from all the trouble and disaster being safe and cared for.

She may well have had some milk stored for him too– I always did. Being able to nurse other babies when she was away from him probably saved her some discomfort (though nine tops her up into heroism, indeed).

Anyway, it’s ridiculious that she wouldn’t be comended or that there is an issue with it. She was doing her best and saving lives. It probably pisses off the men that she could do something they couldn’t. If someone saved 9 babies using their penis, there would be a freaking parade.

You’re confused because of the American habit (hell, the Western habit) of breastfeeding a baby for only a few weeks and then giving up.

She’d had a baby some time ago – I think I remember reading somewhere that her infant son was nine months old. He was being cared for (presumably, as usual while she’s at work) by his grandparents, in the province where she usually works. Whatever: her own baby was old enough to be able to cope with being bottle-fed and getting some solid food, and was in any case away from all the trouble and disaster being safe and cared for.

I can’t help but think this is motivated more by collectivism than sexism. This is China after all, a communist country whose government has traditionally had a vested interest in combating individualism of any sort.

Though this may have been true before 1979, after Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms and especially after the late 1990′s when the reforms were accelerated and the seeds of the current Chinese economic boom started, China is arguably Communist in name only.

If anything, the current Chinese economy in many ways represents the chaotic laissez-faire ideal better than the US economy with its coherent commercial regulations to ensure no unfair trade practices, fraud, or endangerment of public safety along with the lack of adequate social-welfare programs for the indigent or those who fall on hard times.* In short, the US before Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” outraged middle/upper-class sensibilities enough to demand an agency to regulate the safety of our food and drugs and/or Great Britain during Charles Dickens’ time.

* To be fair, lot of this has to do with the fact the government is overwhelmed by the sheer scale and the fluidity of changes due to the accelerated economic reforms and the rapid social changes that came with it in a span of 2 decades.

In addition to the sexism, I detect a whiff of deep cynicism by many mainland Chinese people of anyone who volunteers “to serve society” like the police officer in question as a “tool of the party” along with a possible guilty conscience due to the widespread change of social orientation from volunteering “to serve society” that was genuinely believed in the first several years after the 1949 revolution to the more current society that arose from Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms that were accelerated in the late ’90′s and early 21st century where the current popular belief, especially among the middle/upper classes is to get rich as quickly as possible for oneself and one’s family. To them, altruism is regarded at best as something left to others and at most cynical, as an artifact of the discredited Marxist/Maoist legacy.

This cynicism towards altruism, especially by public officials rewarded by the government is one that originated from the results of accumulated experiences with institutional hypocrisy, incompetence, and oppression as demonstrated by the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Great Leap Forward, and especially the Cultural Revolution.

The last event not only caused many deemed “Capitalist roaders” to be abused, beaten, sent to rural work camps, and especially effectively shut down the nation’s educational, academic, and scientific research institutions for 10 years. This not only impaired China’s social and technological progress, but also disillusioned an entire generation who are now mostly in their 50′s and 60s. Some of that cynicism was passed down to their children who are either contemporaries of the younger co-hort of Gen X like myself…or older co-horts of Gen Y who are now young adults.

To be clear, the cynicism does not undermine the loyalty the CCP commands from the younger generations. If anything, the younger Chinese millennials are some of the most uncritical and vocally Pro-CCP among the mainland Chinese I’ve encountered. This is predicated, however, on the CCP maintaining the rising economic expectations of the aspiring middle/upper classes and not seen as buckling to foreign pressures on nationalist issues such as Taiwan as that could lead to the CCP being compared unfavorably to past leaders who knuckled under Western/Japanese colonialist pressures during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I can’t help but think this is motivated more by collectivism than sexism. This is China after all, a communist country whose government has traditionally had a vested interest in combating individualism of any sort.