In China, ‘the online expression of anger over menstrual pads has taken a very political turn’

“Is it thanks to these few centimeters that you think you’re going to get rich?” one of the first contributors to the movement took offense, in a video published on November 3. Like several other consumers, this woman was astonished by the short length of the sanitary pads she had just bought. On Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book”), one of China’s most popular social media sites with a high proportion of female readers, she and a growing number of other women set out to investigate, measuring all sanitary pads of all brands.

They concluded that most towels on the Chinese market were smaller than the size promised on the packaging. The citizen’s investigation also revealed that the thickness of the absorbent layers was below the advertised criteria and that the pH of many towels corresponded to acceptable levels for household linen but certainly not for intimate hygiene.

The consumers’ anger was heightened by the arrogance with which manufacturers initially greeted their requests. A communications manager from ABC Group, one of the market leaders, first explained to one of them that a margin of error is normal: “If it doesn’t suit you, don’t buy it.” They denounced a particularly pernicious shrinkflation on a staple product and asked why they weren’t being heard.

The civic expression represented by the act of consumption in a country where public speech is restricted has long been known. Foreign brands regularly bear the brunt of the nationalist fervor of Chinese customers, as in the case of H&M and Nike, threatened with boycott in 2021 for having pledged to stop using cotton from the Xinjiang region, where the Uyghurs minority is subjected to a policy of repression and mass internment. And health scandals are a regular occurrence in the country, from that of melamine-contaminated milk in 2008 to that of food oil transported in tankers carrying fuel oil on the way home, which emerged in July.

‘We’re too disunited’

But the online expression of anger over menstrual pads has taken a very political turn, in a country where the emergence of a feminist movement has been perceived as a threat by the authorities. For the first time in a quarter of a century, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee appointed in October 2022 has no women among its 24 members.

“The women’s community is large, but we lack a voice to speak for us,” wrote one web user on November 22 on the social media network Weibo, the local equivalent of X. “Since it’s not a man losing blood, nobody cares,” a Beijing woman replied. “The reason they ignore our needs and lower the quality due to us is because we’re too disunited,” argued another. “Women have always been asked to contribute in self-sacrifice and to cope. But if we women remain silent, our rights and interests are bound to diminish too,” wrote one Cantonese woman.

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