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Aug 2023
33m 17s

Drum Tower: For richer, for poorer

The Economist
About this episode

A harsh custom courses through rural China. If a woman marries a man from outside her village, she becomes a waijianü, or “married-out daughter". Tradition deems married-out women can be stripped of their rights to land that legally belongs to them.

The Communist Party came to power promising to emancipate women from feudalism. Today, the collective financial losses suffered by married-out women are growing

The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, David Rennie, and senior China correspondent, Alice Su, meet the married-out women in rural Fujian fighting to get their land back. 

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