China’s Feminist Five

China’s younger generation of feminists pose a unique threat to the Communist Party. By celebrating single, queer, and often child-free women, they are challenging government edicts that marriage and families are the foundation of the country’s political stability. Li Maizi is one of five women arrested in early March 2015 for planning to commemorate International Women’s Day by handing out stickers about sexual harassment on public transportation in the Chinese capital of Beijing, the southern city of Guangzhou, and the eastern city of Hangzhou. When Chinese police detained feminist activist Li Maizi on the night of March 6, 2015, they held her in a small, unheated room of a Beijing police station, with the temperature falling to below freezing. The interrogations began immediately. News of the arrest of the Feminist Five spread swiftly around the world through the hashtag campaign #FreeTheFive, which went viral on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. On the thirty-seventh evening of detention, faced with tremendous global diplomatic and social media pressure, authorities finally released all five women on bail.