More Chinese children are being given their mother’s surname

AS CHINA EMERGED from lockdown, a woman wrote a post on Weibo, a microblog, that has echoed through the long, hot summer. She was divorcing her husband, she said, because he would not allow her to change the surname of her child to her own. Details of the case were scant, but that did not stop it lighting up the internet, shining a new spotlight on the question of how far Chinese women have come. Phoenix Weekly, a magazine, launched an online poll that drew 47,000 respondents. Almost two-thirds said that a surname could come from either parent.