'Europe-Asia Studies': new review of 'Reproductive uncertainty: Understanding the regulations on assisted reproductive technologies in China'
Congratulations to Tiantian Chen, the editor of the book 'Reproductive uncertainty: Understanding the regulations on assisted reproductive technologies in China' for receiving a review from Kanav Narayan Sahgal published in 'Europe-Asia Studies', 77:4, pp. 673-674:
In recent years, concerns and anxieties about the future of reproductive rights have intensified globally. In this context, Tiantian Chen’s new book, “Reproductive Uncertainty”, makes an important and timely contribution to this discussion by offering a critical examination of the regulatory landscape surrounding Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) in contemporary China. […]
The book accomplishes its central aim: providing readers with a sociological examination of reproductive uncertainty in contemporary China and exploring how those uncertainties are linked not just to policy frameworks regulating ART practices but also to prevailing social norms. Chen’s conception of ‘spiral modernisation’, an alternative to dominant linear conceptions of modernity, and one that is particularly relevant to China, is a significant theoretical contribution to existing scholarship on modernisation. [...]
[Extract from book review on the journal 'Europe-Asia Studies', 77:4, pp. 673-674, Reviewer: Kanav Narayan Sahgal. (Published online: 29 May 2025.) DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2025.2489320]
The book is available to order here: Reproductive uncertainty: Understanding the regulations on assisted reproductive technologies in China
This book provides the first sustained account of intense debates in China over the ban on single women’s access to assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). Drawing on the author’s fieldwork in clinics and government agencies in Beijing, it mainly explains Chinese policymakers’ and clinicians’ rationale for restricting single women’s use of ARTs even if they celebrate ARTs as a success of Chinese modernization strategies. The main concept explored in this book is uncertainty. ARTs become a source of discomfort for the Chinese government and clinics because they reveal the uncontrollability of human destiny; they introduce ambiguities into genetic and legal paternity; and they undermine clinical and bureaucratic authority.
This book uses ARTs as a lens on broader social changes in China. The uncertainty of ARTs reflects the limits of Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s reform. It also informs that the Chinese government has reversed policies by repackaging tradition and tightening party control. The book’s interpretation of uncertainty challenges the linear and progressive paradigm of modernization. China’s development path is distinct from the sequential logic of Western, modernist conceptions of history.
Edition 1st
ISBN 979-8-8819-0107-3
Published in April 2025
Page last updated on July 14th 2025. All information correct at the time, but subject to change.
