A research project about changes in family life over three generations has found that traditional values still play a key role in sexual relations in China, and women often struggle amid tensions between old and new.
One of the areas of conflict is what researcher Liu Jieyu has called a “virginity battle”.
Influenced by Western liberal attitudes, many younger Chinese men are open to premarital sex, and they often pressure their girlfriends to have sex while dating, according to Liu’s new book, Embedded Generations: Family Life and Social Change in Contemporary China, published on November 25.
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On the other hand, men still want their brides to be virgins. Coupled with the expectations of older generations who shun premarital sex, many younger Chinese women find themselves facing a dilemma when it comes to sex.
“The decision over whether to lose their virginity during dating was a pivotal struggle among women of the one-child generation born during the 1980s, often becoming fiercely contested between women’s defensiveness and men’s persuasiveness,” Liu wrote in the book from Princeton University Press.
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The book records the findings of three years of research led by Liu, a professor of sociology and China studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
With funding from the European Research Council, Liu assembled a research team in 2016 for three years of intensive fieldwork in rural areas in Shandong, Hunan and Fujian provinces as well as urban areas including Tianjin, Guangzhou and Xian.