Customer Reviews

Only Hope: Coming of Age Under China’s One-Child Policy

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This book is based on the author's ethnographic fieldwork as part of her doctoral research in Northeastern China (the Yellow Sea port city of Dalian, to be precise) over a period of several years in the late 1990s. She came to know many students and their families intimately, and conducted extensive interviews and surveys with hundreds of other students. To my knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of Chinese adolescents and one of the all too few dealing with this important population.

Fong examines the impact of the one-child policy from a sociological and educational perspective in rich detail and provides the likely less informed reader with thick descriptions of the sort that are now necessary to differentiate the experiences of today's Chinese youth. Though like-minded in some important respects, as the author makes clear in her thesis, these youth defy monolithic depiction.

However, it must be noted that this book, as valuable as a contribution as it certainly is, examines only a segment of China's vast adolescent population, most of whom reside in rural areas unlike those of this study.

Strongly recommended for the general reader with interest in contemporary China and required reading for those engaging in serious inquiry into the contemporary Chinese educational system and its familial connections.