Only Hope: Coming of Age under China's One-Child Policy. By Vanessa L. Fong. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 242 pp. £29.95. ISBN 0-8047-4961-2.]

Extract

This is an ethnographic study, conducted in Dalian between June 1997 and 2002, of a sample of singleton urban youths and their families. The author interviewed high school boys and girls and their families about their hopes for college and the elite jobs expected upon graduation. Given that Fong (now an assistant professor in the Harvard School of Education) was then a graduate student at Harvard, home of some of the most respected anthropology and sociology faculty whose careers began with survey projects such as this, there are understandingly high hopes for this book (the revised product of her dissertation). Although the footprint of the dissertation (in style and, to some extent, in theory) remains to distract the China specialist occasionally, the book is fascinating and, as book editors often say, “a good read.”

Over the last 20 years, there have been a number of studies by Chinese and foreign scholars on the establishment, provision, effectiveness and consequences of the so-called single child family (SCF) policy. This controversial policy, subject to different interpretations and more effective in urban China than in rural areas, seems well established. The generation of young people now coming of age includes the so-called singletons. Fong has contributed to our understanding of their situation by her use of the term “only hope,” by which she means these children are the only hope for a growing number of aging, city-dwelling parents, who are without jobs or welfare protection, and thus facing a bleak future.