CHINA may have a new president in Xi Jinping, but it is China’s new first lady, Peng Liyuan, who has been making the headlines this week. It certainly helps that Ms Peng, 50, was already a celebrity. She been a fixture of Chinese television since the 1980s, famous for her soaring renditions of patriotic folk songs, which she performs wearing her army uniform. It is rare to have a first lady who looks like a model but is ranked as a major-general.

Chinese social media, notably Sina Weibo, has been buzzing over Ms Peng’s wardrobe. Despite censors’ attempts to suppress the conversation (the site currently blocks searches for Ms Peng’s name) Weibo users and online shoppers have been dissecting photographs of the first lady accompanying her husband as he makes his first trip abroad as China’s new leader. Copies of her overcoat, handbag, scarf and shoes appeared almost immediately in online stores. Commenters praised the first lady for choosing to wear Chinese brands rather than draping herself in foreign luxury labels.
She is also well-known for championing social causes, especially public health. Last year the World Health Organisation named her as a “goodwill ambassador” in the fight against tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. While her husband met with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in the past week, Ms Peng visited children in a Moscow orphanage.
Ms Peng’s high profile marks a contrast from that of her predecessors’. Hu Jintao’s wife often accompanied her husband abroad, but otherwise kept rather quiet, dutifully posing for pictures while remaining a mostly silent supporter of her husband’s career. The wives of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin appeared even less often in public and rarely travelled overseas with their husbands.
This reluctance to give wives too prominent a place in national politics has deep roots. Chinese history is littered with cautionary tales of women who were allowed to become too close to the centre of power. More than 2,000 years ago, the Empress Lü Zhi, a widow of the founding emperor of the Han dynasty and mother to his successor, ordered a rival concubine’s to be dismembered alive and thrown into a cesspool. The act so traumatised the empress’s son, the new emperor, that he withdrew from public life and effectively allowed his mother to rule in his place. Empress Lü was accused of killing another claimant to the throne by having forced him to drink poisoned wine, a method of murder which might recall a more recent scandal. Gu Kailai, the wife of Chongqing’s deposed party secretary, Bo Xilai, was often portrayed as being a ruthless and ambitious woman. Ms Gu is currently in prison for the 2011 poisoning of a Briton, Neil Heywood.
Then there is the inimitable Empress-Dowager Cixi. The widow of the Xianfeng emperor and the mother of his only son, Cixi came to power in a coup in 1861. For the next 47 years she was one of the most powerful women in the world, ruling as the regent to a series of young and ineffectual emperors. Historians still blame her—perhaps unfairly—for single-handedly bringing about the demise of the Qing empire.
Similarly, Jiang Qing, the fourth (or third, depending on how one is keeping score) wife of Mao Zedong took the fall, along with three of her cronies, for causing the Cultural Revolution. Like Peng Liyuan, Jiang Qing rose to prominence first as a singer and actress. Unlike Ms Peng, Madame Mao was universally feared and reviled. She was convicted along with the rest of the “Gang of Four” in a 1981 show trial. She had once famously referred to herself as Chairman Mao’s dog. “When he said, ‘bite,’ I bit.”
While there is likely some truth to each of these stories, Chinese history can seem awfully quick to paint powerful women as ruthless and immoral. Take for example the Tang-dynasty Empress Wu Zetian. In the dynastic histories, her ascent to becoming the only woman in Chinese history to sit on the Dragon Throne is a lurid tale of sex and murder. But even her critics begrudgingly admit that she was a competent—if occasionally ruthless—monarch.
Whatever its historiographical merits, with this background there was cause to wonder how Mr Xi would handle the fame of his wife once he ascended to the top spot. As late as 2007, Beijing wags would still refer to Xi Jinping as “Peng Liyuan’s husband.” As Mr Xi consolidated his position, Ms Peng’s star seemed to fade slightly, as she slipped into semi-retirement. Some see her re-emergence as part of an ongoing attempt to humanise the Chinese leadership. (In interviews, Ms Peng has described her husband as a simple man who enjoys carousing only occasionally, with close friends.)
In this, Ms Peng would have less in common with the infamous Madame Mao than she does with the wife of Mao’s arch-enemy, Chiang Kai-shek. In 1927, Generalissimo Chiang married Soong May-ling, the daughter of one of China’s richest men and a sister-in-law to Chiang’s mentor, Sun Yat-sen. Nine years younger than her husband, Ms Soong was a devout Methodist, educated in America, who spoke fluent English. She was cosmopolitan, beautiful, and charming—three words that would never be used to describe her notoriously aloof and prickly husband.
Like Ms Peng today, Madame Chiang added a touch of grace and beauty to a regime sorely in need of both. She made an impression on everyone who met her. Life magazine dubbed her “the most powerful woman in the world”. In 1941 she became the first Chinese person (and only the second woman) to address both houses of the American Congress. A speaking tour of the United States drew thousands of people eager to catch a glimpse of the glamorous wife of China’s wartime leader. So famous were her charms that when she met Franklin Roosevelt in the Oval Office, he reportedly asked that a card table be place between them—just in case.
As China looks for new ways to boost its soft power abroad, Peng Liyuan could well follow in Ms Soong’s footsteps. As one Weibo user remarked, “Finally. We have a real first lady.”
(Picture credits: AFP and Wikimedia Commons)

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