Description
The People's Republic of China (PRC) has a long history of population control that aims to optimize the quantity, quality and distribution of the nation’s population. Women have long borne the costs of this state-managed reproductive modernisation. Even privileged urban middle-class women face heightened tension from the cultural and legal imperative to reproduce within heterosexual marriage and restricted timeframe (Xie, 2019). The demand to reproduce within these tightly regulated conditions has created a growing market in artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs). While ARTs were legalised in 2003 (Wahlberg, 2016), unmarried women are excluded from accessing such technology.
This paper explore the emerging phenomenon of single Chinese women crossing boarder to freeze their eggs in Western countries including the USA, UK and Australia. By outlining the key debates surrounding uncoupled reproduction in Mainland China, and exploring the PRC’s internal and national borders that must be crossed to gain access, we reveal the multi-layered reproductive stratifications under globalisation. Moreover, we demonstrate the tensions underlying egg freezing for single women themselves, as well as the impact cross border reproductive travel has on Chinese nationhood at a time when the state is trying to encourage its highly educated women to have more children under the Two-Child Policy since the nation is experiencing ‘a population crisis’. We pose further questions on to what extent this new phenomenon poses potential challenges to existing border between nations, as well as their interpretations of citizenship.
