Within the discrepancy and rupture : China young women’s resistant reproductive consciousness

This thesis tries to investigate the young Chinese women’s reproduction consciousness, especially in relation to the state. The birth planning policy has always been a basic national policy in contemporary China and it has impacted billions of Chinese women for decades. As the media is the pillar of Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda system, I start this thesis with a historical archival analysis of news coverages of different stages changes of the birth planning policies in contemporary China and examined why the interpretation and of the news reports are of crucial importance to understand Chinese women’s reproductive consciousness under the context of the newly instated Universal Two-Child policy. Through in-depth interviews with ten young women who born after 1990 and are the singleton daughter of their family, I examined their unique identity as both the “consequence” of the former one-child policy and the target group of the new policy and their unique growing-up experiences in the early stage of China’s Internet booming that precedes the Chinese Communist Party’s foray into the cyberspace. These young women’s resistant reproductive consciousness emerges from their personal experiences living in the rupture of contemporary China’s biopolitical agenda and the discrepancy of propaganda discourse. With this thesis, I attempt to decenter the party-state in the policy-setting debates and discussions and try to demonstrate the exceptional power of propaganda in the everyday lives of real people, particularly concerning the issue of reproduction.Women's and Gender Studie