Lost and Found: The "Missing Girls" in Rural China

In 1979, the Chinese government famously introduced The Single Child Policy to control population growth. Nearly 40 years later, the result is an estimated 20 million "missing girls" in the population from 1980-2010. In Lost and Found, John James Kennedy and Yaojiang Shi focus on village-level implementation of the one-child policy and the level of mutual-noncompliance between officials and rural families. Through in-depth interviews with rural parents and local leaders, they reveal that many had strong incentives not to comply with the birth control policy because larger families meant increased labor and income. In this sober exploration of China's Single Child Policy throughout the reform period, the authors more broadly show how governance by grassroots cadres with greater local autonomy has affected China in the past and the challenges for resolving center-versus-locality contradictions in governance that lie ahead.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: Counting the Missing Chapter 1: Street Level Birth Control and Mutual Noncompliance Chapter 2: Historical Underreporting and the Identification of the "Missing Girls" Chapter 3: The Registration Challenge: Counting the Population from Imperial China to the People's Republic of China Chapter 4: Cadres' Voices: Birth Registration in the Villages Chapter 5: Villagers, Daughters, and the Voices of the "Missing" Conclusion: Lost and Found Appendix Glossary of Chinese Terms References Index

About the Author :
John James Kennedy is Professor of Political Science and Director of Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Kansas. He has consistently returned to China to conduct research on rural politics since 1994, and he is also co-founder of the Northwest Socioeconomic Development Research Center (NSDRC) at Shaanxi Normal University, Xian, China. His research is on local governance and social development in China; topics include local elections, tax reform, family planning, health care and the cadre management system. He has in a published in a variety of peer reviewed journals including The China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Asian Survey, The Journal of Peasant Studies and Political Studies. Yaojiang Shi is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Experimental Economics in Education (CEEE) at Shaanxi Normal University, as well as Director of the Northwest Socioeconomic Development Research Center (NSDRC). He has been conducting regional survey research and village case studies in rural China since 2002. His research focuses on rural public service provision, quality of rural health care and rural education. He has published in a variety of peer reviewed journals including The China Quarterly, Journal of Comparative Economics, Health Policy and Planning, British Medical Journal, and Asia Pacific Education Review.

Review :
"Kennedy and Shi make a compelling intervention in debates about China's masculinised sex ratios and how birth planning policies were implemented in rural regions during the 1980s to early 2000s. Overall, this fascinating, provocative and lucid book is a must-read for all scholars of China's history, politics, society, demography and gender." -- Rachel Murphy, Journal of Chinese Political Science "Kennedy and Shi's work constitutes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the 'missing girls phenomenon.' By focusing on the role of local governance, it contributes to our understanding of this trend as such, as well as of Chinese grassroots politics more broadly. It is therefore a must read for anyone interested in the One Child Policy, population control, and local governance in China." -Comparative Politics "It's a rare day that policy relevance, striking new facts, and careful scholarship appear together in one gracefully and powerfully written book. But that day has come with Lost and Found. That millions of girls are only missing in China's statistics, owing to completely understandable reasons that families and local cadres failed to report them, is a finding that the China field and the Chinese government will be coping with for decades to come." -Kevin J. O'Brien, University of California-Berkeley "In this book, two talented scholars from the U.S. and China tell a fascinating story about how China's family planning policy enables local officials and residents to cleverly negotiate a deal that benefits both sides. The authors set a new standard that will lead the research agenda in Chinese local politics for years to come." -Wenfang Tang, University of Iowa "This provocative book will cause us to reconsider the consequences of China's one-child policy. Kennedy and Shi show that the phenomenon of 'hidden girls' may have been much larger than previously thought." -Bruce Dickson, George Washington University