Yousheng Policies and Technologies: Population Quality Control in Contemporary Urban China

• In Event: Reproductive Governance in East Asia

Abstract

The tension between the quantity and the quality of human reproduction has always been apparent in contemporary China. When the two-child policy was initiated in 2016, the state’s control over the “quality” of its population seemed to be facing a dilemma: on the one hand, the two-child policy wishes to expand China’s labor pool by encouraging more births; on the other hand, it may encourage more women over age 35 to have their second child, which in turn may cause an abrupt increase in the rate of birth defects. The National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) repeatedly emphasized the prevention of birth defects as a “focal point” for the sake of “comprehensive two-child policy reform”. But, unlike a commodity, the “quality” of a baby can hardly be assured even through the strictest “quality inspection system”. Then the questions are: how does the Chinese state deal with the dilemma between population quantity and quality? What political, economic, and social strategies does the state invent, adopt, and utilize to solve this dilemma? This study is based on our ethnographic studies on human reproduction in China since mid-2000 and a thorough archival study on policies and regulations related to yousheng in contemporary China. We also trace the historical change of prenatal genetic testing practices in China since the 1990s and reveal the significance that selective reproduction technologies can have in social, cultural and regulatory terms, and the role that they can play in shaping governance practice.

Author

• Dong Dong, Hong Kong Baptist University