Chen Xiefen

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Chen Xiefen (1883–1923) was a Chinese journalist, feminist, and revolutionary who used the press to push for women’s rights during the late Qing dynasty. Born in Hengshan, Hunan, she grew up in Yanghu (now Changzhou, Jiangsu) in a gentry family. Her father, Chen Fan, ran the Subao newspaper in Shanghai, a progressive paper he helped reform.

In 1899, at sixteen, Chen Xiefen began publishing Nübao (Women's Journal) with her father’s help. The magazine urged women’s education, gender equality, and financial independence. After it was banned in 1903, she and her family fled to Tokyo, Japan, where Nübao continued under the new name Nüxuebao (Women’s Studies Journal). She wrote many editorials under the pseudonym Chu’nan nüzi, promoting women’s rights and criticizing oppression, such as foot binding and the lack of independence for women.

One of her early influential pieces, Duli pian (On Independence), argued that true freedom for women requires women to control their own money and lives. Another piece, Lun nüzi yi jiang tiyu (Women Should Discuss Physical Exercise), linked physical culture to emancipation and beauty, urging women to improve themselves.

In Tokyo, Chen Xiefen helped found Gong Ai Hui (Mutual Love Society), a group for Chinese women in exile, and worked with other revolutionaries like Qiu Jin. She also helped in education projects, including patriotic girls’ schools, and later started her own girls’ school near Nübao’s office.

She later joined Huang Xing’s revolutionary circle in 1905 and, after marrying Yang Jun, studied in the United States. Returning to China in 1911, she joined the Association of Chinese Women, which supported women’s suffrage as part of national reform. After 1911, little is known about her life. Chen Xiefen passed away in 1923 at about 39 or 40 years old.