China proposes law to ban clothing that 'hurts feelings' of the country

Clothing that "hurts the feelings" of the nation could soon be outlawed in China, according to recent draft revisions to legislation, with their vagueness sparking concern over the broad scope for interpretation and enforcement.

The proposed law states that both speech and clothing deemed "harmful to the spirit of the Chinese people" or that "hurts the feelings" of the nation will result in fines or even jail time.

But it stops short of defining specifically which types of clothing stand to be banned by the new rules.

"Determining who has the authority to decide and how to make judgements may require more time, and we need the establishment of mature judgement criteria before advancing such proposals," a 23-year-old Beijinger surnamed He said.

She worried that the offences the law targets are "not as clear as crimes like robbery, where right and wrong are definitive".

Several legal scholars in China objected on similar grounds to the revisions, which were released earlier this month for public consultation.

The consultation period ends on September 30.

'Historical' reasons

The proposals would lead to "too vague a standard of punishment, which will easily lead to an arbitrary expansion of the scope of administrative punishment", wrote Tsinghua University's Lao Dongyan on the social media platform Weibo.

But like most people on the streets of Beijing, He interpreted the revisions mainly as a reaction to incidents involving people wearing Japanese clothing in historically significant places or on memorial days.

In 2021, the state-backed tabloid Global Times said a woman was "severely criticised and educated" after she wore a kimono in public on December 13, the national remembrance day for victims of Japanese war crimes in 1937.

And last year, a woman said she was detained during a photoshoot while wearing a kimono in the eastern city of Suzhou by police.

"If someone makes an insulting move in front of a certain statue on a specific day and wears a special costume, such behaviour is 100 percent on purpose and should be punished," He said.