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Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics (review)

The rise of china as a global power has brought increased interest and scrutiny to its reform politics. One of the most discussed and arguably least understood of these is its reproductive policies. Greenhalgh and Winckler’s book is thus a welcome addition to Chinese scholarship. It offers a rigorous, informative and insightful perspective illuminating equally its origins and ongoing consequences for the Chinese populace. Especially impressive is the multi-level perspective and interdisciplinary approach it brings to the subject -adeptly integrating a traditional political science analysis with a critical lens to provide a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon. However, despite is considerable strengths the book nonetheless suffers from an overly normative focus in its second part, leaving its critical investigation ultimately both theoretically and empirically lacking, thus detracting from this otherwise excellent work. The book is divided into four sections: an introduction, a historical policy overview, a critical and cultural critique, and a conclusion. The introduction, comprising two chapters, presents the authors’ problematisation of China’s birthing policies as well as their broad theoretical perspective. They do well in these chapters to lay out the overall importance of the CCP’s continuing “population politics” and the need for both mainstream and critical approaches for its study. To this effect they argue that the government’s transition from direct control of reproduction under Deng to its present largely indirect governance linked to the introduction of a “socialist market” under Hu requires equally a macro-level examination of elite policy coupled with a Foucaultian based investigation of the ways this has shaped Chinese identity and social relations. Part 1, written by Winckler, offers a historical overview of the CCP’s official birth policy beginning with Mao and extending to the present administration of Hu Jintao. Spanning the entire revolutionary era, it traces the evolution of these policies from Mao’s vacillating pro and anti-natal attitudes, to Deng’s often extreme commitment to stemming population growth, to Jiang’s gradual move toward incentive based measures, and finally to Hu’s completion of these reforms with a reliance on a fully market-oriented approach of indirect regulation. In doing so Winckler brilliantly illuminates the shifting rationales underpinning these polices as well as the internal tensions constantly plaguing their formation and implementation. Part 2, written by Greenhalgh, complements the previous analysis with a critical Foucualtian approach exploring the effect of these policies at the meso (institutional) and micro (personal) levels and their influence on popular attitudes and Chinese identity in the reform era. It does so in three chapters examining in order the formative affect of these measures on Chinese conceptions of self, the “human costs” of these programs, and their impact on the country’s domestic politics and global standing. Greenhalgh clearly illustrates the profound role of the government’s reproductive programs on Chinese society from its influencing of gender values to its hidden destruction of women’s lives, to its positive and negative bearing on China’s international reputation. Moreover, she deftly charts the government’s transition from a “hard birth policy” under Deng to its current “market approach” with the CCP’s broader governing shift from direct coercion to attempts to instil self-discipline among the populace. The conclusion summarises the book's far-reaching arguments principally its claim that the transformation of birthing policy from Mao onward reflects the Party’s change from its initial policy of “revolutionary mobilization” to Deng and a lesser extent Jiang’s “bureaucratic professionalism” to finally the Hu administration’s “socialist market”. Further it stakes out the success and failure of these