Cai Chang

Not to be confused withCai Cheng.

In thisChinese name,thefamily nameisCai.

Cai Chang
Born	(1900-05-14)14 May 1900 China
Died	11 September 1990(1990-09-11)(aged 90)
Nationality	Chinese
Known for	First leader of theAll-China Women's Federation
Political party	Chinese Communist Party
Spouse	Li Fuchun
Relatives	Cai Hesen(brother) Xiang Jingyu(sister-in-law)
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	TháiSướng
Simplified Chinese	TháiSướng
Hanyu Pinyin	Cài Chàng
Wade–Giles	Tsʻai4Chʻang4

Cai Chang(Chinese:Thái sướng;pinyin:Cài Chàng;EFEO:Ts'ai Tch'ang;14 May 1900 – 11 September 1990)was a Chinese politician andwomen's rightsactivist who was the first chair of theAll-China Women's Federation,a Chinese women's rights organization.

Early life

Cai Chang was born in 1900 to alower middle classfamily inChina.Her mother left her husband, and enabled her children to attend school by selling her belongings. Cai believed strongly in women's education, and spurned the idea of marriage in favor of a vow ofcelibacy.Her mother aided her in this by avoiding anarranged marriagefor Cai. Cai attended the Zhounan Girls' Middle School atChangshauntil 1916. In the winter of 1917–1918, she became one of the first women to join theNew People's Study Society,awork studyprogram put in place byMao Zedongand Cai's brother,Cai Hesen.This group advocated for women to create their own self-help groups and to become active in politics.

Cai, her mother, Cai Hesen, and Cai Hesen's future wifeXiang Jingyuwent to Europe, where Cai was a factory worker. She studiedanarchism,Marxism,andLeninismalongside other Chinese socialist feminist scholars, including at theCommunist University of the Toilers of the EastinMoscow.

In 1922, Cai marriedLi Fuchun,a prominent communist.

Career

In 1921, Cai returned to China, where she studied to become aphysical educationteacher. She taught for four years at the Zhounan Girls' School, which she had attended several years earlier. During this time, she joined theChinese Communist Party(CCP).

Cai left her teaching job to work for the Central Women's Department in theKuomintangin 1925. Two years later, she joined the Central Women's Committee, leading it in Xiang Jingyu's absence. She helped to create the Marriage Decree of 1930, which declared that "free choice must be the basic principle of every marriage."She also helped write the Provisional Constitution of 1931. From 1934 to 1935, she joined her husband Li Fuchun on theLong March.

Cai was well known in China after 1949, where she led theAll-China Women's Federation(ACWF) under thePeople's Republic of China.Part of her work in the ACWF included creating a strategy to help privileged women take a leading role in scientific and cultural improvements. This earned her criticism, however, as it supported the CCP's views that emphasized technological and economic improvement over women's liberation and advantaged only powerful women; it did not help lower-class women, but rather returned them to their pre-war roles.

See also

• Historical Museum of French-Chinese Friendship