Abstract
This chapter discusses neoliberalism in China and addresses how individual and state bodies are formed in close interrelation with one another. Through examining the intersection between governmentality in the Foucauldian sense and rural men and women’s bodies in contemporary China, the chapter demonstrates how a changing Chinese context continues to manage women’s reproductive and productive bodies for the good of the nation through the “one-child policy.” In a neoliberal climate, the one-child policy is reinforced through a rhetoric of free and rational choices rather than of state control. With the aim of unveiling the illusion of neoliberalism, which allegedly brings about freedom and choice for Chinese women, the chapter examines how the contemporary Chinese state is attempting to craft the governable bodies and docile gendered citizens crucial to its modernization project. It concludes that the promotion of entrepreneurial individuals who make more rational reproductive choices leads to women’s bodies being more subtly disciplined than in the past and controlled in ways that are difficult to unmask or criticize.
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Notes
- 1.
Nira Yuval-Davis (1997: 26–38) details three nationalist discourses which represent three particular population control polices. These include “people as power” which emphasizes enlargement of the nation’s population, the Malthusian discourses which emphasize the downsizing of the nation’s population, and the eugenicist discourse which emphasizes “improving the quality” of the population.
- 2.
Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin Winckler (2005) translate San Jeihe (Three Integrations) to Three Links for Western audiences.
- 3.
In her study of professionalism in post-Mao China, Lisa Hoffman frames individual choice as a form of governing rather than a form of freedom. See “Post-Mao Professionalism” in Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar, eds. Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong, Cornell University Press, 2008.
- 4.
For details on the Happiness Project, see “Neoliberalism and the Feminization of Family Survival: The Happiness Project in Four Chinese Villages” by Lihua Wang in AGR 16 Social Production and Reproduction in the interface of Public and Private Spheres (2012), eds. by Marcia Segal, Vasilikie Demos, and Esther Ngan-ling Chow.
- 5.
Currently, methods used have shifted only somewhat despite the changing rhetoric used to justify these “choices.” A 2007 national survey on birth control methods reported that 52.30 % married women relied on IUD’s and 32.25 % used female sterilization (Shang-Chun Wu, 2010: 286). For forced abortion, there is a lack of statistical data in China. This topic is not intended to be discussed in this chapter.
- 6.
For an account of abusive stories in River Crossing village, see “Globalizing, Reproducing, and Civilizing Rural Subject” by Junjie Chen in Reproduction, Globalization, and the State (2011) eds. by Carole Browner and Carolyn Sargent.
- 7.
- 8.
In the first author’s study of the two villages, the meaning of “extra” relied on separate standards. For minorities and Han people of higher mountainous areas, two children are permitted. Tunjie is a Yi minority village, while Maoba is a Han village located in a higher altitude. Although classifying a household of family planning differs regionally, the principle of “extra” is set strictly by national policies.
- 9.
- 10.
The introduction of neoliberalism has brought about the privatization of health care in China. See Health Policy Report by David Blumenthal and William Hsiao in the New England Journal of Medicine, 353:1165–1170, September 15, 2005, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr051133.
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Wang, L., Blum, L.M. (2016). Rural Women’s Bodies and Invisible Hands: Neoliberalism and Population Control in China. In: Käll, L. (eds) Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities. Crossroads of Knowledge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22494-7_2
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