Authoritarian Absorption: The Transnational Remaking of Epidemic Politics in China

Authoritarian Absorption portrays the rebuilding of China's pandemic response system through its anti-HIV/AIDS battle from 1978 to 2018. Going beyond the conventional domestic focus, Yan Long analyzes the influence of foreign interventions which challenged the post-socialist state's inexperience with infectious diseases and pushed it towards professionalizing public health bureaucrats and embracing more liberal, globally aligned technocratic measures. This transformation involved a mix of confrontation and collaboration among transnational organizations, the Chinese government, and grassroots movements, which turned epidemics into a battleground for enhancing the state's domestic control and international status. Foreign interveners effectively mobilized China's AIDS movement and oriented activists towards knowledge-focused epistemic activities to propel the insertion of Western rules, knowledge, and practices into the socialist systems. Yet, Chinese bureaucrats played this game to their advantage by absorbing some AIDS activist subgroupsDLnotably those of urban HIV-negative gay menDLalong with their foreign-trained expertise and technical proficiency into the state apparatus. This move allowed them to expand bodily surveillance while projecting a liberal façade for the international audience. Drawing on longitudinal-ethnographic research, Long argues against a binary view of Western liberal interventions as either success or failure, highlighting instead the paradoxical outcomes of such efforts. On one hand, they can bolster public health institutions in an authoritarian context, a development pivotal to China's subsequent handling of COVID-19 and instrumental in advancing the rights of specific groups, such as urban gay men. On the other hand, these interventions may reinforce authoritarian control and further marginalize certain populationsDLsuch as rural people living with HIV/AIDS and female sex workersDLwithin public health systems.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgement Introduction: Transnational Politics of Pandemics Part I. Hidden Epidemics, 1978-1999 Chapter 1: Institutional Ignorance: When the State Manufactures an Epidemic Chapter 2: Victims Unseen Chapter 3: Homosexuality Invisibility, Heterosexual Advocates Part II. Politicizing Epidemics, 1999-2009 Chapter 4: inding Victims: The Rise of Biopolitical Citizenship Chapter 5: Biosocial Solidarity Chapter 6: Bureaucratic Feasting on AIDS Projects Chapter 7: Quantitative Participation as a Managerial Tool Part III. A "China Model" of Epidemics, 2009-2018 Chapter 8: Seeing Gay Men like a Project Chapter 9: Erasing the Dead Chapter 10: A New Global Health Leader on the Rise? Conclusion: From AIDS to COVID-19 and Beyond References

About the Author :
Yan Long is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a political and organizational sociologist studying the interactions between globalization and authoritarian politics across empirical areas such as public health, civic action, urban development, and digital technology.

Review :
Authoritarian Absorption tells the fascinating story of HIV/AIDS policy in China, where rural blood contamination victims were heartbreakingly sidelined and gay men were unexpectedly incorporated as state agencies developed capacities to control viruses - all under the influence of global networks of activists, experts, and funders. Deeply researched and brimming with theoretical insights, this book reveals the tangled threads connecting transnational social movements and China's rising infrastructural powers. Deftly sociological and quietly sympathetic, Long's multi-site, multi-year ethnographic study announces the arrival of an academic star. Her ingenuity and persistence show us how fieldwork research on contemporary China is still possible. The generative impact of international intervention on Chinese institutions, vividly illustrated by the stories of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, offers a hopeful lesson for our pessimistic age: the genetic make-up of communism is not a foregone conclusion, and China is always a work in progress. Why would an autocratic regime with a peasant base and a homophobic history abandon farmers who contracted HIV/AIDS through the commercial blood trade and embrace gay men who fell ill in cities? How did urban homosexuals overtake impoverished peasants in China's hierarchy of HIV/AIDS victimhood? And what do the answers tell us about the interactions of local officials, western donors, international organizations, and health activists in the Global South? Yan Long answers these questions in her painstaking study of the Chinese case, shedding new light on both epidemic politics and authoritarian survival in China and beyond. A book that's as empathetic as it is insightful. This is a meticulously researched, theoretically informed and empirically grounded work that not only sheds light on the dynamics of health politics in authoritarian regimes but also deepens our understanding of global-local interactions in the age of transnational influence. It is a highly recommended read for scholars in China studies, political science, global health and development studies.