Autonomous Choices and Patriotic Professionalism: On Governmentality in Late-Socialist China

This paper argues that choice and autonomy constitute important new techniques of governing in late-socialist China. College students no longer receive direct state job assignments upon graduation, going instead to job fairs where they experience a degree of autonomy from state planning organs that was not available under high socialism\u27s central planning. Yet even as post-Mao governmental rationalities have promoted autonomous decisions, young professionals\u27 experiences of choice have remained framed within notions of social responsibility and patriotism. This paper examines how both neoliberal governmentality and a nationalism steeped in Maoist notions of state strength, achieved today through reform-era economic competitiveness, are intertwined in the emergence of what is called \u27patriotic professionalism\u27