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4. Funded Research Projects
4.18 Winning the “Second Chance”: Prenatal genetic testing,
personal choices and national future (new project
initiated in AY 2018-20)
Principal Investigator: Dr. Dong Dong
Research Assistant Professor, Environment, Health
and Sustainability Working Group of LEWI
Co-investigator: Zhu Jianfeng
Fudan University
Source of Funding: GRF, RGC, HK
Amount Awarded: HKD789,888
Brief Introduction:
The tension between the quantity and the quality of human reproduction has
always been apparent in contemporary China. Such tension is created by two
factors: first, the state’s extremely visible and powerful control over and
penetration into the private space of individual families, and second, the
promotion of “healthy births” through the market but with strict regulations and
interventions whenever the state feels it is necessary.
At the end of 2015, China officially ended its one-child policy and replaced it
with a two-child policy. However, the new population control policy may
encourage more women over age 35 to have their second child and cause an
abrupt increase in the rate of birth defects. Prenatal genetic testing has therefore
become a critical site for the state to “control population growth and improve
population quality.”
The overall objective of this project is to understand the knowledge, power, and
agency in relation to China’s two-child policy. It focuses on the tension arising
from the encounters among the state, the formation and upsurge of a commercial
market for prenatal genetic testing, and the shifting interpretations of “life”
among the expectant parents.
Based on the former research experience and our preliminary investigations for
this project, the investigators find that knowledge production and consumption
surrounding “prenatal genetic testing” go beyond the distinction between
“normality” and “abnormality.” It is important to differentiate the authoritative
43 HONG KONG BAPTIST UNIVERSITY | David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies
