Disability In Contemporary China

The first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949 to the present day.

Bodies of Difference chronicles the compelling story of disability's emergence as an area of significant sociopolitical activity in contemporary China. Keenly attentive to how bodies are embedded in discourse, history, and personal exigency, Matthew Kohrman details ways that disability became a fount for the production of institutions and identities across the Chinese landscape during the final decades of the twentieth century. He looks closely at the creation of the China Disabled Persons' Federation and the lives of numerous individuals, among them Deng Pufang, son of China's Communist leader Deng Xiaoping.

Without access to a public social welfare system in parts of China, some families face invidious decisions about the lives of their children with disabilities. In other places, children with disabilities can now expect to participate in their families and communities with the same aspirations as other children. Understanding how Chinese policy has changed in the places that have addressed these stark situations is vital for the rights of the children and their families who still struggle to find the support they need. This book examines family experiences of child disability policy in China, and is the first to compile research on this area. It applies a child disability rights framework in four domains – care and protection, economic security, development and participation – to investigate families’ experiences of the effectiveness of support to fulfil their children’s rights. Questioning how families experience the interrelationships between these rights, it also considers what the further implications of the policy are. It includes vivid case studies of families’ experiences, and combines these with national data to draw out the likely future policy directions to which the Chinese government has said it is committed. Bringing together a wealth of statistical and qualitative data on children with disabilities, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese social welfare, social policy, society and children's studies, as well as policy-makers and NGOs alike.

Annotation A study of the culture of disability in China and the emergence of the government institution known as the China Disabled Persons' Federation.

Set in the remote, mountainous Guangxi Autonomous Region and based on ethnographic fieldwork, Families We Need traces the movement of three Chinese foster children, Dengrong, Pei Pei, and Meili, from the state orphanage into the humble, foster homes of Auntie Li, Auntie Ma, and Auntie Huang. Traversing the geography of Guangxi, from the modern capital Nanning where Pei Pei and Meili reside, to the small farming village several hours away where Dengrong is placed, this ethnography details the hardships of social abandonment for disabled children and disenfranchised, older women in China, while also analyzing the state’s efforts to cope with such marginal populations and incorporate them into China’s modern future. The book argues that Chinese foster families perform necessary, invisible service to the Chinese state and intercountry adoption, yet the bonds they form also resist such forces, exposing the inequalities, privilege, and ableism at the heart of global family making.

Based on data collected through in-depth fieldwork observation and interviews in Bai Township, this book examines how women with disabilities in rural Southwest China compensate for their disability identity through marriage. As the first book to theorize the married life of rural-based women with different types of disabilities, it provides a more holistic picture of their marital life by tracing the marriage process from mate selection to wedding ceremony, reproduction and role performance. It also generates a substantive theory grounded in the real experiences of women living with disabilities with Jing Yang arguing that these women are not passive victims in the marital process, but active agents who endeavour to minimize the risk of abuse and maximize security and satisfaction in their marriage. By examining the effects of fertility, patriarchy and village society on women with disability, this book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of many disciplines, including disability studies, sociology, social work, women's studies and Chinese culture and society.

Due to high audience numbers and the significant influence upon the opinions and values of viewers, the political leadership in China attributes great importance to the impact of television dramas. Many successful TV serials have served as useful conduits to disseminate official rhetoric and mainstream ideology, and they also offer a rich area of research by providing insight into the changing Chinese political, social and cultural context. This book examines a group of recently released TV drama serials in China which focus upon, and to various degrees represent, topical political, social and cultural phenomena. Some of the selected TV serials reflect the present ideological proclivities of the Chinese government, whilst others mirror social and cultural occurrences or provide coded and thought-provoking messages on China’s socio-economic and political reality. Through in-depth textual analysis of the plots, scenes and characters of these selected TV serials, the book provides timely interpretations of contemporary Chinese society, its political inclinations, social fashions and cultural tendencies. The book also demonstrates how popular media narratives of TV drama serials engage with sensitive civic issues and cultural phenomena of modern-day China, which in turn encourages a broader social imagination and potential for change. Advancing our understanding of contemporary China, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Chinese culture, society and politics, as well as those with research interests in television studies more generally.