Lasting from 1979 to 2015, China's One Child Policy is often remembered as one of the most ambitious social engineering projects to date and considered emblematic of global efforts to regulate population growth during the twentieth century. Drawing on a rich combination of archival research and oral history, Sarah Mellors Rodriguez analyses how ordinary people, particularly women, navigated China's shifting fertility policies before and during the One Child Policy era. She examines the implementation and reception of these policies and reveals that they were often contradictory and unevenly enforced, as men and women challenged, reworked, and co-opted state policies to suit their own needs. By situating the One Child Policy within the longer history of birth control and abortion in China, Reproductive Realities in Modern China exposes important historical continuities, such as the enduring reliance on abortion as contraception and the precariousness of state control over reproduction.

‘Centering women's embodied experience, Mellors brings a feminist analytic to an arena in which women shoulder an undue burden. From the late nineteenth century through the present and across three state regimes, women's wellbeing has consistently taken a back seat to nationalism, racial fitness, social stability and industrial production.’

Nicole Elizabeth Barnes - Duke University

‘Mellors Rodriguez brings refreshing insight into the complexities and variations in attitudes, policies and practices of birth control and abortion in twentieth-century China. Offering a nuanced perspective through personal interviews and archival research, this book will change what you think you know about China and its population policies.’

Tina Phillips Johnson - author of Childbirth in Republican China: Delivering Modernity

‘Providing excellent syntheses of recent English and Chinese scholarship on reproduction, gender, sexuality, and demography, this informative book also makes itself a highly useful guide for new students of modern China. … Recommended.’

L. Ma Source: CHOICE

‘A rich and fascinating overview of the continuities and changes in birth control practices and policies over the course of modern China’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century history. This study will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students specializing in gender, science and technology, and reproductive regimes around the world.’

Michelle T. King Source: Twentieth-Century China

‘[A] thought-provoking and well-researched contribution to the study of reproductive health and population control in China. Rodriguez not only traces the historical trajectory of these policies but also emphasises the importance of understanding women’s agency in negotiating their reproductive choices. The book encourages critical reflection on the ethical implications of state-controlled reproductive policies, making it an essential read for scholars of Chinese history, women’s studies and reproductive justice.’

Chong Liu Source: Europe-Asia Studies