Fashioning Progressiveness: Representations of the Taiping Anti-Foot-Binding Campaign in Mainland China in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Abstract: This article examines the portrayals of the anti-foot-binding campaign under the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in twentieth-century China and beyond. By identifying key representations of the Taiping proscription against foot-binding from the early twentieth century onward, this article reveals three sets of binary oppositions: backwardness versus progressiveness, gender inequality versus equality, and barbarism versus civilization. These representations project the prolonged pursuit of modernity and social progress among Chinese intellectuals. However, they also exhibit substantial variation in terms of the assessment and position of the Taiping anti-foot-binding campaign along the diametrical positions of different regimes and institutional contexts over time. These dynamics are not solely contingent upon the initial historical conditions of the Taiping anti-foot-binding movement and the treatment of women in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Rather, they reflect the intricate interplay of shifting political circumstances, prevailing intellectual currents, and the historiography of the Taiping Rebellion.