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The steps taken by the Chinese government to ensure that the citizens of Beijing, China, are worthy hosts to the United Nations women's conference have included forbidding people from talking about the conference. A woman taxi driver who paid 4 pounds sterling for a one-week course during which she learnt some English phrases and was told not to talk to foreigners, described the conference as a waste of money and energy. A department store sales assistant finds it amusing not to be allowed to talk about the conference which another Beijing citizen says will make absolutely no difference to the life of Chinese women.

Chen Yiyun, director of Chinese non-governmental organisation the Jinglun Family Centre, blames the increase in domestic violence in China on the market economy and on the impact of Western films. Chen explains that values have changed as a result of the market economy and that Chinese men are under much greater stress. Work and neighbourhood committees have lost their tight grip on people's lives as a result of the economic reforms introduced in 1979, and domestic violence is no longer held in check by pressure from neighbours. The Jinglun centre offers counselling for abused women.

An experimental reform known as village democracy has been transforming the face of grass-roots leadership across China since 1987 by allowing peasants to choose their own village chiefs in direct elections. All but four of China's provinces have held at least two rounds of direct elections for village chief although most urban Chinese remain unaware of the reform. Peasants in nearly half of China's villages have protested against corruption by electing non-Communist Party members as village chief. However non-party members elected as village chiefs are rapidly recruited into the Communist Party.