The Suicide of Miss Xi : Democracy and Disenchantment in the Chinese Republic

A suicide scandal in Shanghai reveals the social fault lines of democratic visions in China’s troubled Republic in the early 1920s. On September 8, 1922, the body of Xi Shangzhen was found hanging in the Shanghai newspaper office where she worked.Although her death occurred outside of Chinese jurisdiction, her US-educated employer, Tang Jiezhi, was kidnapped by Chinese authorities and put on trial.In the unfolding scandal, novelists, filmmakers, suffragists, reformers, and even a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party seized upon the case as emblematic of deep social problems.Xi’s family claimed that Tang had pressured her to be his concubine; his conviction instead for financial fraud only stirred further controversy. The creation of a republic ten years earlier had inspired a vision of popular sovereignty and citizenship premised upon gender equality and legal reform.After the quick suppression of the first Chinese parliament, commercial circles took up the banner of democrac