Issue #1
Out of the Fog
Looking Back at COVID Governance in China
January—June 2023
The year 2023 began with a series of jolts in China, as the government abruptly rolled back its notoriously strict pandemic measures following countrywide protests in late 2022. While external popular perceptions saw China as being uniformly locked down for the first years of the pandemic, the reality was that the country’s pandemic governance was unevenly applied and varied substantially from place to place. The result was mixed—and often even contradictory—attempts to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2, with vastly differentiated experiences on the ground. While heterogeneous and fragmented governance in China is nothing new—and indeed is the basis of how most scholars understand policy implementation in the country—the pandemic nevertheless produced patterns of governance that were at times surprising, while also reinforcing previous trends. This issue of the Made in China Journal examines patterns of pandemic governance and the subjectivities associated with living through lockdown and the ever-present possibility of quarantine.
Table of Contents
Op-eds
Fare Thee Well Beijing LGBT Centre | Stephanie Yingyi WangStay Angry and Leave Hope for Tomorrow: Understanding the Feminist Movement in China | Lü Pin
The Individuals in the Numbers: Reproductive Autonomy in the Shadow of Population Planning in China and India | Holly Donahue Singh and Yun Zhou
China Columns
Doing Fieldwork in China During and Beyond the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study | Xiao Tan, Nahui Zhen, Leiheng Wang and Yue ZhaoCheers and Tears: Life Stories of Highly Educated Women in Shenzhen | Meng Meiyun
China’s Maker Movement | Olivia Yijian Liu
Winter Olympic Dreams and Foreign Friends | Heidi Østbø Haugen and Anne Tjønndal
Politics and Traditional Chinese Medicine in Hong Kong’s Fifth Pandemic Wave | Chan Chor See
Focus
Grid Managers, the Moral Logic of Guan, and State–Society Dynamics in China | Wei ZhuUrban Villages, Grid Management, and the Contradictions of Capital | Nellie Chu
‘They Want the Horse to Run but Without Providing Feed’ | Xiaoling Chen
Red, Yellow, Green: Test, Test, Test | Han Tao, Hailing Zhao and Jesper Willaing Zeuthen
The Poison Kings: Markers of Mobility and Morality | Han Tao, Hailing Zhao and Rachel Douglas-Jones
Testing Uncertainty: Chance, Play, and Humour as Pandemic Response | Han Tao, Hailing Zhao, Rachel Douglas-Jones and Ane Bislev
Conversations
The Left in China: A Conversation with Ralf Ruckus | Christopher Connery and Ralf RuckusA Conversation about Futurity, Critique, and Political Imagination | Jenny Chio and Joshua Neves
Reproductive Realities in Modern China: A Conversation with Sarah Mellors Rodriguez | Shui-yin Sharon Yam and Sarah Mellors Rodriguez
Digital Masquerade: A Conversation with Jia Tan | Shui-yin Sharon Yam and Jia Tan
Clean Air at What Cost? A Conversation with Denise van der Kamp | Coraline Goron and Denise Sienli van der Kamp
Surveillance State: A Conversation with Josh Chin | Darren Byler and Josh Chin