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  • Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics
  • Jianyue Chen (bio)
Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin A. Winckler . Governing China's Population: From Leninist to Neoliberal Biopolitics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. xiv, 394 pp. Hardcover $65.00, ISBN 0-8047-4879-9. Paperback $24.95, ISBN 0-8047-4880-2.

With over 1.3 billion people, or one fourth of the world's population, China is indeed the most populous country on earth. A large population means a huge source of cheap labor and a huge domestic market, but it also presents a tremendous obstacle to China's economic expansion as the country moves toward the goal of a modern, affluent society. Until recently the problem of how to feed all of China's people was a daily challenge to China's leaders. Deng Xiaoping's reform has truly transformed China into a world-class economic powerhouse, and China's rapid, seemingly endless economic growth has been fascinating to watch. Nevertheless, how the Chinese leaders have balanced their plan for continuing economic development with the reality of an ever-expanding population has remained an important issue for world leaders and an under-researched topic among scholars.

To fill the research vacuum, Susan Greenhalgh, a well-published anthropologist, and Edwin A. Winckler, a political scientist who has written much on China's population policy, have combined their research of over twenty years to produce a book that traces China's population policies since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. Their book also presents a case study on the "administration of collective human life, health, and welfare," which is "a key objective of modern states" (p. 1).

The authors have attempted here to provide an accurate guide for U.S. policy makers by helping them understand "the human costs" of China's "one-child" policy and how "China's policies have played out in U.S. politics" (p. xiii). Thus, U.S. policy makers are encouraged to take advantage of the promising opportunities that China's current regime has provided and to translate into reality the new ideals that are presented in this book. As the authors see it, a better and more productive China policy will be formulated as U.S. policy makers respect China's ethical and political realities and "engage China as a partner on the world stage" (p. 334).

This book, based mainly on Chinese government sources, the authors' interviews with government officials at all levels, and local mass media and archival sources, is divided into two parts. Part 1 focuses on the formulation and implementation of the population policies of different eras at the state, provincial, and local levels. Part 2 deals with the social, cultural, and political consequences of these policies. A brief history of how China's population policies changed from [End Page 122] the "soft" birth control of the Mao era to the "neoliberal" policy of the Hu Jintao regime highlights a thesis that the "governmentalization" of a people through formal organizations can be both negatively repressive and positively productive (p. 23).

This thesis, first used by French historian Michel Foucault, is particularly evident in the authors' analysis of the Communist population policy under Deng Xiaoping. According to Greenhalgh and Winckler, Deng's era witnessed the "very rapid rise of 'harsh' birth planning." The reader is told that this tough policy was first formulated at the highest level before "subnational political leaders" and their community "cadres" carried it out, with the great masses left with no alternative but to abide by it. The whole process of policy making thus detailed presents a typical example of "the evolution of modern power over life at macro- and micro-political levels," or simply how "biopower" works in Communist China (p. 29).

The heavy-handed enforcement of Deng's "one-child policy" in particular has aroused severe criticism both within China and abroad. Its "unintended non-demographic results" have included great pressure on cadres and a rising tide of misreporting, misdirection, and misappropriation of funds (p. 129). Yet, the policy has helped the Communist regime significantly reduce population expansion (pp. 1-3), a positive consequence of "biopower."

The authors present a sketchy...

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