Labour activist and Christian diplomat: Deng Yuzhi’s international thought

Seminar presented by Jenny Bond (UCL) as part of the SOAS History Seminar Series.

Abstract

This paper examines the diplomatic career and international thought of Cora Deng, or Deng Yuzhi 邓裕志 (1900-1996). Educated at Ginling College, Deng is best known for her work as a labour activist during the 1930s. A committed Christian-Socialist, she helped the CCP to contact women workers in Shanghai through the YWCA night schools and headed the Chinese YWCA after 1949. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews conducted by Emily Honig in 1985, Deng’s published writings, and archival sources from China, USA, Switzerland and UK, this paper shifts our focus to Deng’s international training and subsequent diplomatic career. What role did her international education, in China and abroad, play in shaping her thinking and career? How did Christianity influence her diplomacy after 1949 and how was this gendered? During the 1920-30s the YWCA sponsored Deng to study at the LSE, she later interned at the ILO, and during the Second Sino-Japanese War gained an MA from New York University. During the 1950s she became the international face of the YWCA of China and represented Chinese Christian women at international conferences across the Cold War divide. Her career offers a fascinating case study of the pathways to diplomacy that international organisations, such as the YWCA, opened to Chinese women. Analysing the mixture of Christianity, feminism, and communism in Deng’s writings and memories, the paper helps to uncover the history of Chinese women’s international thought and complicates neat binaries in the historiography of the international women’s movement. 

Speaker

Jenny Bond (UCL)

Organiser

School of History, Religion and Philosophies, SOAS History Seminar Series.

Image :Deng Yuzhi 邓裕志 via Wikimedia Commons