As this overview of the past century shows, Chinese youth sexual culture developed from generation to generation, with the 1990s as a key inflection point in trends towards greater youth sexual autonomy. The use of ‘romantic love’ as a legitimating sexual discourse in the 1990s can be traced back to the early twentieth century. Similarly, 1990s nightlife culture and even the culture of dating all had forerunners in the consumer cultures emerging in urban China in the Republican Era (1911—49). Socialist policies and legal reforms in the 1950s had an equally profound effect on the development of later youth sexual cultures, creating the institutional basis for monogamy and reducing the authority of parents. Similarly, the one-child policy had influences far into the new millennium, not only delinking sex from reproduction, but producing at least two generations of singletons, a vast social experiment with as yet unclear impact on youth sexual cultures.
Seen in the light of these historical legacies, the sexual revolution of the 1990s is no less remarkable but more comprehensible. The most stunning change, and the centrepiece of the narrative above, was the legitimation of nonmarital sex for women and the great increase in female sexual autonomy, both partially grounded in cultural and social innovations earlier in the century. Although economic inequalities and heteronormative marriage pressures still restrict their options, young Chinese women, probably for the first time ever, are now able to legitimately pursue love, sex and pleasure outside of marriage.
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