International Women’s Day was first celebrated in China in 1922, following the lead of other communist countries. It has been a national holiday since 1949, but attitudes towards feminist activism in China are not permissive: in 2015, eight women were arrested for planning a protest against sexual harassment on International Women’s Day.

Instead, the Chinese authorities have tended to focus on women’s beauty, thanking them for their “selfless” contribution to their family, society and country on International Women’s Day. Women can theoretically be granted a half-day off work on 8 March – but many businesses fail to offer this perk.

To mark International Women’s Day 2021, zebra crossings in Changsha in central China were painted pink and daubed with red hearts. More hard-hitting was a video that went viral on social media for critiquing traditional Chinese gender norms and prejudices – from the expectation that girls are innately bad at maths to the belief that “real men” shouldn’t cry.

The clip was a collaboration between a Chinese skincare brand and China Women’s Daily, the official publication of the state-run All-China Women’s Association. CNN describes the video as “surprisingly progressive for a state-run publication”, and “all the more remarkable considering some of its lines are a bold contradiction – and seemingly thinly-veiled criticism – of the Chinese government’s recent efforts to entrench certain gender norms”.

How International Women’s Day is celebrated differently around the world