Wu Qing (politician)
| Wu Qing | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1937 (age 79–80) Beijing, China |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| Occupation | Human rights activist, legislator and professor |
| Parent(s) | Wu Wenzao, Bing Xin |
Wu Qing (Chinese: 吴青; born 9 November 1937) is a Chinese feminist activist, English language professor, and a seven-term district-level congress member. In this capacity she not only sought to uphold the rule of law as per the Chinese constitution, but also promoted women's rights in China, particularly in rural areas. She said, "China is still a Third World country. To change China, you've got to change the countryside. To do that, you've got to change the status of the women there. If you educate a woman, it's like educating a whole family, even several generations of the family. If you educate a man, you are only educating one person." She is actively involved in running a school for rural women sponsored by the Xie Lihua's Rural Woman magazine, educates and persuades women to stand for village elections. In China, she is considered a model person for the Chinese women and politicians.
In 2001, Wu won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, which has been called "Asia's Nobel Prize"; she was the first Chinese woman to receive this honour. Her active role in women's welfare ensured that the Chinese women were represented at the 1995 UN Conference on Women held in Beijing.
Wu Qing continues to be involved with the Bing Xin Children's Literature Award (named after her mother). She was selected as a member of the jury for the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2016, being the Chinese jury member for the award. Together with her husband, she translated Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit books into Chinese.
Wu was born in 1937 in China, the daughter of the famous woman novelist Bing Xin and the pioneering sociologist Wu Wenzao. She received her primary education at Chongqing during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the early 1940s. While studying in the first grade her mother had encouraged her to raise funds for the soldiers wounded in the war. She was also told to share and be helpful to others. Her father was a sociologist who had founded the theory of sociology as relevant to China and encouraged students to do research in this field. After the war, he was posted as the Head of the Guomindang Chinese Diplomatic Mission to Japan. Christianity also influenced her as she studied in the International School of Sacred Heart in Tokyo from 1949 to 1951. While still a student, on her return from Japan, the books which influenced her were: Serve the people heart and soul by Mao Zedong and the Russian novels such as Zoya, Shura and the Gadfly and many books on history and sociology. Premier Zhou Enlai was her father's friend and her role model, and he encouraged her to learn English as it provided a link to the outside world. As her family was democratic she was outspoken from a young age. She was the Communist Youth League secretary of her class. In 1957, her college education was at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute (now known as Beijing Foreign Studies University). She was very bright in her studies and also got involved with tree-planting initiative in the hills and tile making as part of rural service, which first exposed her to rural life. After her studies, from 1960 she joined the institute as an English teacher.
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