This book breaks down the naturalized and eternal relationship between female infanticide and Chinese culture and reconstructs that association as a product of historical processes of the nineteenth century. It takes as its explicit focus the changing perception of female infanticide in Chinese history, rather than its practice. Without diminishing the seriousness of the problem of excess female mortality in either the Chinese present or past, this book seeks to disrupt the familiar, shopworn narrative about the continuity of female victimhood in China from the premodern era to the present, an ... More

This book breaks down the naturalized and eternal relationship between female infanticide and Chinese culture and reconstructs that association as a product of historical processes of the nineteenth century. It takes as its explicit focus the changing perception of female infanticide in Chinese history, rather than its practice. Without diminishing the seriousness of the problem of excess female mortality in either the Chinese present or past, this book seeks to disrupt the familiar, shopworn narrative about the continuity of female victimhood in China from the premodern era to the present, and to introduce the possibility of historical change. Historically the nature of infanticide in China has evolved from a general trend analogous to trends of infanticide and child abandonment in other parts of the world, to a distinctly gender-specific and culturally unique phenomenon. This text focuses particularly on the transformation of thought that occurred in the nineteenth-century, and how the lives and bodies of newborn Chinese infant girls came to mean something new and distinct in the early twentieth century, when compare to the nineteenth. If we wish to move beyond an undifferentiated past of Chinese gender discrimination and barbarity, then we need to frame our central question in a radical, new way. This book does not take female infanticide and Chinese culture as a given; instead it asks: just when and how did female infanticide become so Chinese?