From the Law of Value Debate to the One-Child Policy in China
On Accounting and Biopolitics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12423742 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Malcolm Thompson (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 9-34 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-14 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | positions asia critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1067-9847 • E-ISSN: 1527-8271 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/10679847-9417929 |
| OpenAlex | W4205710321 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 23 |
This article argues that the origins of the one-child policy beginning in 1980 in China, and its development into the current system of “comprehensive population management,” are to be found not in any unfolding of a statist or authoritarian logic, or within the parameters of a nominally “socialist” project, but rather in a return to a properly capitalist set of concerns and governmental techniques, the first iteration of which can be traced to the 1920s and 1930s. With regard to the broad set of economic reforms launched in the period 1979–81, it is argued that the one-child policy is absolutely continuous with other reforms across economic sectors (agricultural responsibility systems and urban enterprise reforms) and discontinuous with anything we might understand as population management in the period 1949–76. The “law of value debate” in 1979, which “resolved” a long-standing set of issues concerning national accounting, planning, and accumulation, is found to be—despite its apparently Marxist character, derivation, and vocabulary—the passage through which a capitalist developmental logic was reintroduced into Chinese governing, with significant consequences
Authoritarianism · Biopower · China · Democracy · Economics · Law and economics · Marxist philosophy · Period (music · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Value (mathematics · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Law
Cultivating Global Citizens
How China Escaped Shock Therapy
Growing Out of the Plan
The Origins and Social Consequences of China's Hukou System
The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China
The magic of concepts. History and the economic in twentieth century China
Marxism and the Chinese experience
The Reinstatement of Economics in China Today
Making It Count
Just One ChildScience and Policy in Deng's China
Governing China's Population
Impact of Reforms on the Labour System in China
Living Capital” (Shengming Ziben), Vital Statistics, and National Economics in China, 1912 – 1937
The People's Republic of China, 1949-1979
The socialist system
Market Control and Planning in Communist China
The Implications of the New Agricultural and One-Child Family Policies for Rural Chinese Women
| Citations per year | 0.4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2024 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |