The debt to the Green Gang
This debt represents the way Chinese culture is affecting Violet. Since she has that uncanny belief that secretly, she was supposed to have been born in America, she appreciates the brokenness of her culture. She experiences her "debt" to culture as a kind of noose around her neck, so the family's struggle to come to peace with the criminal underground represents the way brokenness is dragging Violet down through the story.
Loyalty as a symbol for the patriarchy
Loyalty represents the effects of male power in Chinese culture, because that's who really affects Violet most. He has the money to broker deals with "honorable" townspeople who want to exploit the needy women in the courtesan. So, he buys the right to Violet's virginity and sells it to a baby thief who lies to the government and steals Violet and his child from her. In other words, Loyalty represents the opposite of his name, the abandonment of women's rights by powerful men in history.
The baby stolen from its mother
The child of Violet and Edward's union is stolen from her, which is a sign of exploitation. She was vulnerable, which Loyalty and Edward used to their advantage. Loyalty made a quick profit, and Edward got an easy child for his wife who would not conceive with him. So Violet's child is stolen, and everything that child represented—her status as a mother in a community, her honor in Chinese culture, her prized precious child, stolen. That is a picture of the injustice against women in Chinese history.
The American delusion
Although it is technically a delusion, Violet is an American, she believes. She feels she is wrongfully trapped in a Chinese experience. That is interesting because it signifies to the reader that she understands her situation with a sense of objectivity, comparing everything about China with America, and it gives us an understanding of her primal attachment to freedom and independence, which might have been part of what her perception of America represents.
The courtesan house
The platform of injustice is a house where Violet lives with her mother, secretly behaving as concubines for the townspeople who knew about the dirty little secret, but Violet did not. So Violet's virginity was sold to a merchant who trafficked her to a man who lied to her about his love and singleness, and then stole the baby for his wife back home—she didn't even know he was married.
Therefore the courtesan house represents the toleration of injustice against women and the development of a mistreated class—the abused sex-worker. This comes when women are treated as objects whose value is in their virginity. That is animalistic and wrong, and though China's history against women is nothing to sneer at, Violet might be disappointed to know that America is often not different from this. These issues abide wherever injustice against women is being done at the cultural level.
