and science and technology studies (STS). The book focuses on a very short historical period, 1978-1980, the initial stage of the policy, when Greenhalgh was employed as a policy analyst for the Population Council. Her subsequent research in the 1980s and early 1990s were enabled by connections established in this period, which led her to argue for the importance of studying the policy through observing the political elites who operated at the center of the state apparatus. The author argues that the one-child policy was “a product of a new kind of scientific sense making” as China re-entered the world capitalist system, within a historical context that made “the embrace of science… politically essential to the regime’s survival” (p. xvii).

The book seeks to answer four sets of questions:

1) What are the origins and broad effects of the one-child policy, and its likely future?
2) How has “scientific policymaking” re-arranged the relations among state, science, technology and society, and how this affects the way the PRC emerges on the world stage?
3) What are the issues in relation to modernity, Chinese culture, and politics?
4) What is the anthropology of policy, and what are its contributions to the understanding of modern policy, governance, and power?

The Introduction outlines the author’s “epistemic, or knowledge-centered” approach to policy study. In this approach policies are contextualized and seen as products of particular histories which are full of specificity, contingency, complexity, and messiness. Three concepts are introduced: 1) policy problematization, 2) policy assemblage, and 3) the micropolitics of science making and policy making. The author’s central argument is that, while China in the late 1970s did face a serious population problem, it only rose to a crisis level under a set of highly particular assumptions which ultimately led to a one-for-all solution.

Chapter Two traces how the PRC’s state ideology precedes the application of science in policy making. The new socialist state built its view of the population issue on the Marxian understanding of mode of production, i.e., population growth must be part of the overall socialist development plan, so that the production of humans and the production of material goods will be synchronized. Owing to this paramount role of the state, Greenhalgh believes that population studies in socialist China should be separated from conventional demography, and calls it “the social or human science of population” (p. 47). She traces the twists and turns of population policy through the speeches of Mao, and argues that within the highly hierarchical political system, everyone was limited by the “speech space” of the top leader. Science was thus not “one thing”, but “what specific actors, with particular intellectual backgrounds, institutional locations, and personal histories, and working in specific historical contexts, make it to be” (p. 83). The scientists’ role, in Greenhalgh’s view, was to “empirically illustrate the ideas about the population problem already articulated by China’s leaders and to craft policy solutions that would resolve that problem” (p. 84).

The next six chapters, divided into two sections: “Making Population Science” and “Making Population Policy”, describe how in the post-Mao era this particular form of science continued to work within Deng Xiao-ping’s speech space. Greenhalgh suggests that Chinese population scientists were divided into two groups: the social scientists and the natural/military scientists. It was the latter group that had made the most impact on population control as it became an essential part of the new modernization program. Citing Jasanoff’s (2004) perspective that technoscientific knowledge and political power are co-produced, the first section (Chapters 3-5) shows how political assumptions were imported into scientific facts and narratives, which were depoliticized and then presented as objective, scientific and universal truths. Population science making was thus a process of building politics into science and making it invisible. Greenhalgh traces how population policy moved from a two-child policy to “one is best, two at most” and subsequently the “encourage one, prohibit three” position, brought about through the support of political elites such as Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, and Chen Muhua.

The second section (Chapters 6-8) shows the “credibility contest” of “three sciences of population”: Marxian Statistics, Sinified Cybernetics, and Marxian Humanism. These three groups of specialists competed for epistemic authority and ultimately policy influence. Greenhalgh argues that in this process science has become the co-producer of policy. She puts forth data on how the scientists made use of visualized presentations of quantitative data to the decision makers, and published a large number of research reports and articles strategically in the year 1980, which helped to convince both the political elite and the educated public that theirs was the real, sophisticated science that had the answer to the population problem. While contested by social scientists, statisticians and humanists, at the end the work of a group from the missile industry, led by Song Jian, making use of systems engineering and control theory methods triumphed, because it was deemed “useful” by political forces. Potential problems, such as the impact of this new policy on the peasantry, on gender equality, and on female infanticide, were not discussed, due to the following reasons: it would be a matter of national policy so it needs no discussion, or it was too sensitive and therefore off limits to scholarly enquiry, and lastly China’s sexist culture led to a gender-blind policy. In addition, while Song’s approach did not go unchallenged, he was able to convince the top leaders by instigating fear for the environmental future and citing European cases. This led to a crisis mentality, and a decision to control that crisis despite social costs.

The Conclusion revisits the significance of an epistemic approach for the anthropology of policy. Greenhalgh contends that the one-child policy is a case of mispracticed scientific policymaking, which has significance beyond the PRC. As outlined in the Preface, the author tries to reach an interdisciplinary readership, including scholars from fields as varied as population studies, women’s studies, STS, political science, as well as natural science. Greenhalgh achieves this with a highly readable and organized style, showing her skills not only as a researcher but also as an effective story teller by avoiding jargons and convoluted language. Yet at times the author seems to slip into overgeneralizations: one such example is her claim that one of the reasons why party leaders in the early period after the 1949 revolution were concerned about reproductive problems was that “[w]omen cadres began demanding access to birth control so they could devote more time to studying and working for the revolution” (p. 45), another example being a rather simplistic description of the Cultural Revolution on p. 48. All in all, Greenhalgh has made a new contribution to understanding the one-child policy. The book is highly engaging, and makes policy study interesting—highly recommended for anyone interested in the study of contemporary China.