Seventy-five years ago, the People’s Republic of China issued its first law. It wasn’t the Constitution, nor was it the Civil Code — it was the Marriage Law.

This unique level of importance reflected the times. In revolutionary China, marriage reform was a major subject among early 20th-century intellectuals, who felt feudal concepts of family and marriage significantly stifled the individual freedoms of Chinese people — especially women — and hindered their participation in reshaping China. While choosing a partner to marry may be the status quo now, for centuries, families arranged marriages, divorce was rare, and women were subordinate to their husbands. As legal historian Qu Tongzu wrote in the book “Law and Society in Traditional China,” the main purpose of marriage in Imperial China was “to produce offspring to carry on ancestor worship” and was in no way concerned with the couple’s wishes.

The extraordinary emphasis placed on the Marriage Law all those years ago in many ways paved the way for freedom in marriage. For revolutionaries and the founders of the People’s Republic, it was critical to reform marriage and advocate for women’s rights, which would be achieved not just from overthrowing the old political system, but also in thoroughly eradicating the traditional family structure that long upheld it. By 1948, prominent Communist Party leader Liu Shaoqi had already instructed the Central Women’s Committee to draft a marriage law. The new Marriage Law — promulgated in 1950, just one year after the People’s Republic was founded — emphasized ideals such as freedom of marriage, monogamy, and gender equality. For hundreds of millions of Chinese people, it ushered in a completely new culture of marriage.

However, creating the law was one thing; implementing it was another altogether and involved a more complex, painstaking process that would dominate the next several years of policy to come. One day before issuing the new law, the Communist Party of China called upon all party members to prioritize the dissemination of the new Marriage Law above all else. One of the key drafters of the Marriage Law, Deng Yingchao, maintained that the messaging about the Marriage Law could not just be limited to women and that, “It pertains to men, women, the elderly, and the young, as well as the married and unmarried. Everyone must have a clear understanding of it.”

And so began the first nationwide movement — and centralized governmental push — to popularize legal knowledge. When looking at political posters from this period, there are numerous slogans such as “marriage autonomy” and “free marriage,” as well as other lines straight from the new Marriage Law. Women, who had previously been marginalized in the revolutionary agenda, also began to occupy positions of equal prominence to men in these posters.

All the same, leaders would soon learn that marriage reform would not happen overnight and that deep-rooted conservative factions across China remained influential. In September 1951, after conducting a nationwide inspection of how the Marriage Law was being enforced, the central government discovered that there were still “crimes impeding the freedom of marriage and encroaching on women’s rights.” According to rough estimates, in the central and southern jurisdiction of China that year alone, more than 10,000 women died by suicide or were killed due to marital disputes — stemming from existing marriage arrangements from the previous system, as well as clashes between women advocating for their rights and resisting forces of conservatism. For the government, the alarming findings highlighted the importance and complexity involved with promoting a clear understanding of the Marriage Law and how critical it was to prioritize legal education.

In the wake of these findings, the central government carried out a more in-depth educational campaign about the Marriage Law. On Dec. 8, 1952, the General Publishing Administration issued new guidelines to make the Marriage Law the main topic of subsequent publicity efforts. Subsequently, there was an explosion of publications concerning the new Marriage Law. Most of these publications used plain, accessible language or comic-book-style illustrations to make the content understandable to the general public, many of whom had limited literacy.

In addition to traditional forms of media like newspapers and books, plays and movies were also widely employed throughout the movement. To support the campaign, the Ministry of Culture specifically invited celebrated writers like Lao She to write new works, and instructed state-run theater troupes to stage plays on the theme of marriage, such as the Peking opera “Southeast Flies the Peacock,” and the Yue opera “The Butterfly Lovers.”

Notably, many of these productions drew inspiration from traditional Chinese culture. For instance, “Southeast Flies the Peacock” is derived from an ancient ballad about a husband and wife from the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220) who were forced to separate because of their parents’ disapproval, ultimately dying together in the name of love. The ancient tale was staged again almost 1,800 years later to prove that the traditional marriage system was unreasonable. Likewise, “The Butterfly Lovers” — a classic with over 1,000 years of history and considered one of China’s four greatest love stories — tells a tale about a pair of doomed lovers who transformed into butterflies to reunite after their deaths. In the new production, the story extolled the virtues of freedom in love.

Marriage Law promotion efforts reached their zenith in 1953. In February of that year, the central government made March 1953 the “Month of Promoting the Implementation of the Marriage Law” and required all local governments to mobilize the masses to “make the Marriage Law known in every household and make a real impact on the people.” Public and private branches at every level were mobilized to expand this phase of the movement.

In Beijing, for example, all government work units, factories, and schools had to establish publicity teams, which conducted targeted outreach to different groups through methods such as public lectures and exhibitions, often using real-life case studies as illustrative examples. Archival photographs from the time show that, within a short period, slogans promoting the Marriage Law covered factories, streets, and parks throughout Beijing.

An anecdote about the Beijing Linen Factory, a pilot site for the monthlong campaign with a high concentration of female workers, provides a snapshot of what success might have looked like. Based on official reports, lingering pressures and misunderstandings about women’s roles in the household often prevented female factory workers from concentrating on their work prior to that month, which sometimes led to workplace accidents, such as injuring their fingers in machines. According to the reports, extensive educational efforts targeting these female workers and their families began to show results by April of that year, with authorities gauging the campaign’s success based on the eradication of these workplace accidents.

The centralized push to make the Marriage Law known throughout China would last until the end of 1953, but the efforts and materials put forth in the early days of the campaign would define attitudes toward marriage and women’s rights for decades to come. Indeed, the changes during this period can be summed up by the slogans featured in an old photograph, hung just behind the Beijing Linen Factory’s female workers: “Free marriage, mutual love and respect, hard work and production — these are what make for a happy home.”

Translator: Hannah Lund.

(All the in-text images are from the public domain, collected and provided by Wu Jingjian, unless otherwise noted.)

(Header image: Visuals from Wu Jingjian, reedited by Sixth Tone)