Not in my backyard: China's Xi Jinping pushes for women's rights on world stage but represses them back at home
President proclaims the importance of gender equality on the world stage, yet sends to jail those who seek the same at home
The furious reaction to US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton's criticism of Beijing's record on women's rights has highlighted the fragile nature of the relationship between the world's two most ideologically divided "frenemies".
The former first lady echoed the views of many rights groups in a tweet questioning President Xi Jinping 's role in co-hosting a UN women's rights conference in New York, after his state visit to Washington where he held a summit with US President Barack Obama.
"Xi hosting a meeting on women's rights at the UN while prosecuting feminists? Shameless," tweeted Clinton, referring to the mainland's arrest of five activists this year.
State media reacted with strongly worded editorials. The and other major media outlets accused Clinton of bashing China, like Republican candidate Donald Trump, to garner votes.
Clinton is making a second run at becoming the United States' first female president. She has made women's rights a cornerstone of her 2016 presidential campaign.
Her words are more for a domestic audience than a Chinese one, but Beijing must acknowledge it is imperative to improve women's rights in a country that has seen dramatic economic and social advancement in the last 30 years.
As party mouthpiece acknowledged, UN efforts to push women's rights represent an irreversible trend in human history.
Building upon the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action - a plan for expanding women's rights and opportunities that was adopted by 189 nations in the capital in 1995 - this week's UN summit was to work out specific actions to meet those goals.
At the summit, Xi pledged to promote "gender equality and women's development". He also invoked the famous Mao Zedong line that "women hold up half the sky".
But Beijing's women's rights record is regressing rather than progressing.
One example is the introduction of the one-child policy in the post-Mao age. There have been many horror stories of women's rights abuses - from forced abortions to men poisoning their baby daughters.
China is the only country in the world with such a policy, and it has led to at least one major social consequence - an estimated 40 million "excess" men in China.
Another area of concern is prostitution. Punitive laws and policing practices are leading to serious cases of abuse against sex workers, who are estimated to number 6 million and who are overwhelmingly female.
There have been reports of widespread police torture, beatings, physical assaults, arbitrary detentions and fines against sex workers, as well as a failure to investigate crimes against them by clients, bosses and the police.
Beijing has never upheld the rights of sex workers, seeing them as a social evil, even as the industry has boomed under China's post-Mao reforms.
Since he came to power in late 2012, Xi has overseen the country's most repressive policies for decades. There is a considerable distance to travel on the reform road before women's rights will see significant improvement. The arrest of five women for campaigning against sexual harassment on March 8, International Women's Day, is evidence of this.
Under Xi, China has drafted and enacted a series of restrictive and repressive laws: the National Security Law, the Counter-Terrorism Law, the Overseas NGO Management Law and the Internet Security Law. All aimed at legitimising restrictions on free speech and religion, and escalate the suppression of civil society and women's rights' advocates.
Xi has proclaimed the importance of women's rights on the world stage. But his repressive policies are sending to jail those who seek the same rights at home.
