Throughout the thousands of years of Chinese history, it was common for rich Chinese men to have a wife and various concubines. Women were treated like slaves and prostitutes before the 1900s. Before the establishment of the People's Republic of China, when Mao Tse-Tung and the communist party took power in 1949, it was lawful to have a wife and multiple concubines within Chinese marriage. He pushed for gender equality and created policies to eliminate the oppression of women and he also outlawed many of the old Chinese laws and traditions that they viewed as not benefiting the state.
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