THE FAILURE OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED CARTELS AND DEVELOPMENT OF FEDERAL FARM POLICY

While economists recognize that private cartels are difficult to sustain, they are too sanguine about the prospects for government-assisted cartels. Although the state's coercive power would seem to make it an effective enforcer of cartel agreements, the political costs of enforcement can be high of segments of the industry resist. The government's solution lies in alternative strategies for raising prices. Examining government efforts to organize an orange cartel in the 1930s, we find that farmers' opposition to output cuts and quota assignments because of their distributional effects forced a policy she to purchases of "excess stocks."     

HAS FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT POLICY CHANGED IN RECENT YEARS?

This paper applies new tests for parameter instability in cointegrated regression models to the U.S. Federal government's intertemporal budget constraint in order to detect whether there has been a regime change in spending and taxing policies. Some researchers have argued that fiscal policy under Presidents Reagan and Bush moved the U.S. deficit onto an unsustainable path. My results suggest that government deficit policy in the 1980s was not significantly different from policies during the three earlier decades. However, a diverging debt-GNP ratio suggests that the government will run into problems marketing its debt if current policy continues.     

Labour crunch,foreign workers and policy responses: the experience of Japan

"Japan has experienced labour shortages since the late 1960s....The present study is an attempt to analyse the Japanese government's response to circumvent labour shortages. It focuses on two aspects: perception of Japanese society towards the increasing presence of foreign workers in Japan and associated problems; and measures taken by the government to overcome labour crunch. These aspects are examined within the [framework of an] increasing flow of foreigners to Japan during the past decades." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

On socialist fiscal crises

Conclusion Socialist states, it was argued, must address accumulation and legitimation concerns, just as capitalist states do. They too are likely to have fiscal problems, but for somewhat different reasons than capitalist states. Because of the nationalization of ownership of most of the economy, socialist states are not faced with the problem of absorbing the costs of production and reproduction while profits are privately appropriated. However, soft budgetary constraints strain socialist state fiscal resources. Of particular concern to us, the revenue generating problem of socialist states is compounded by the very successes of their social-welfare policies: when social policies raise life expectancy and lower the fertility rate, the size of the labor force available to contribute to the country's economic base withers at the same time that the state's pension and health care costs increase.The accumulation problems of socialist states in the Third World are further compounded by their weak position within the global political economy. Third World countries in general have little control over the prices of the goods and services they trade, and global geopolitical and world-market dynamics generally work to their disadvantage. Socialist states in the Third World have had particular difficulty getting access to Western markets, and this obstacle has been only partially offset by COMECON subsidized trade and concessionary financing. Mean-while, socialist state legitimacy rests on the provisioning of the population at large, and not merely - as in most capitalist countries - the monopoly sector, with a broad range of benefits free of charge or at low cost.The Cuban experience highlights the benefits and costs of Third World socialism. The Revolutionary government has many social accomplishments to its credit. In particular, life expectancy has increased while infant mortality and the birth rate have decreased. Cuba's demographic profile resembles highly industrial Western and East European countries more than capitalist Third World countries. Policies that have served to redistribute wealth, open employment opportunities for women, and guarantee all Cubans an inexpensive basic diet have undoubtedly contributed to the demographic trends; so too have the expansion and universalization of medical care coverage. The medical care restructuring has made it easy for women to obtain abortions and, increasingly, IUDs and birth control pills, at readily affordable prices; it also has helped Cubans live healthier, longer lives. Women have been making use of the birth control options, particularly as their labor-force opportunities have improved.The state's success at reducing infant mortality partly offsets the impact of the declining fertility rate on the country's ability to reproduce itself demographically and to maintain a labor force that adequately generates revenue to finance the needs of the aging population. The universalization of health care, special food rationing for pregnant women, and the promulgation of a maternity law entitling women to absent themselves from work to tend to the medical needs of their children all suggest that the government has been willing to underwrite certain costs (although it shifted some of the costs to enterprises, under the New Management System) to minimize infant mortality.The government might further counter the fertility decline trend with a pro-natal moral campaign. Families might be made to feel that they have a patriotic duty to have children. The government might also tie family allowances for children and work benefits to family size. However, such material incentives as family allowances have been ineffective thus far in Eastern European socialist countries as well as in Western market economies, and there is reason to believe that they would be ineffective in Cuba as well. As Cuban demographer Alvarez Vazquez notes, such material incentives as dietary supplements for pregnant women and families with young children, job-related maternity benefits, and free medical care, are unlikely to induce families to have more children because the island's population by now considers such benefits basic rights, not privileges.Immigration, an alternative source of labor, is not a viable option either. The government would have to make domestic conditions more attractive to entice foreign labor to come. Currently, there appears to be little foreign desire to migrate to Cuba; otherwise, more foreigners would be entering the country legally or, if impossible, illegally. There is, of course, no reason for the government to encourage labor migration as long as the domestic supply suffices. Unemployed labor would only add to the state's social and economic problems.Alternatively, the government might encourage men to assume more household responsibilities so that child-rearing is less onerous for working women. If men would assume more household responsibilities, the state could most readily address its production and reproduction concerns simultaneously, in a manner consistent with its commitment to Marxist principles of gender equality. The Family Code could provide the basis for a moral campaign. However, thus far the Code has not been a sufficient moral force, and its enforcement - through coersion - would undoubtedly meet with male resistance and antagonize a segment of the population whose political support the regime needs.The revolution's social accomplishments are, moreover, generating unintended fiscal problems that are difficult for the state to resolve. The population is no longer reproducing itself, at the same time that the state assumes the health and retirement costs of the increasingly long-living population. The ratio of the retired to the economically active population is growing, while the government's capacity to appropriate surplus and allocate it to social expenditures is decreasing. Economic reforms in the late 1970s and early 1980s improved productivity and made the economy more responsive to consumer demand, but they eroded the central government's revenue-generating capacity. By the latter 1980s the government seems to have been faced with a new dilemma. It tightened control over market activity, undoubtedly in part to increase its revenue base and thereby address its fiscal problems. However, the experience of the late 1960s suggests that productivity may drop again as material incentives contract, and political discontent may grow if living standards decline. When civilian groups felt that the government stressed accumulation excessively over consumption in the late 1960s, they expressed their resentment: in foot-dragging, absenteeism, refusal to work, and in emigration. While the government thus far has not been confronted with electoral opposition at the ballot box or with protests in the streets, the covert ways that civilians expressed their discontent tends to subvert state accumulation efforts.Thus, the Cuban experience suggests that the commitment of socialist states in the Third World to social welfare improves health standards and old-age security. However, it also suggests that socialism does not resolve the fiscal needs of states, even though socialist states are not constrained by significant private appropriation of profits. The base of the fiscal crisis instead shifts.The dilemma of Third World socialist states can obviously not be proven on the basis of a single case study. Certainly, the Cuban experience has been shaped by distinctive features of the prerevolutionary society that Castro inherited and by some distinctive ways that Castro has used state power. Comparisons between post and prerevolutionary Cuba, and between Cuba and contemporary trends in other Latin American countries during the same period, empirically highlight the distinctive impact of socialism. The logic of socialism, in turn, gives us reason to believe that other Third World states that attempt to undertake socialist transformations will face many of the same dilemmas as Cuba.Although facing fiscal problems, the Cuban state assumes more responsibility for social expenditures than the capitalist states in Latin America. It can not relieve itself of those responsibilities without risking its political base. Moreover, if it would relieve itself of social welfare responsibilities Cuban socialism would become an empty shell, stripped of its historical meaning.     

Devolution of Services to Children and Families: The Experience of NPOs in Nanaimo,British Columbia,Canada

This study focuses on the current experience of Nanaimos nonprofit family and child service organizations (N = 29) providing services on behalf of government and their adaptation to this devolution. The effects and consequences of contracting on organizational practices, accountability, and services were explored through interviews and focus groups with executive directors, board members, line staff, government representatives, and the United Way. Results show that a significant proportion of funding comes from provincial government contracts. The funding climate is uncertain, and there is considerable confusion, stress, and time involved with the contracting process. Accountability requirements are demanding and nonprofit organizations (NPOs) express concern about a shift to a business management model. Recommendations include a need for increased collaboration between NPOs, a body that speaks for the voluntary sector, and improved relationships between NPOs and government funders.     

The savings approach to financing long-term care in Singapore

Singapore is grappling with provision of services for the current generation of older people at the same time as building the foundation for the coming generations of elderly. In this article, I analyze four sets of factors that are shaping long-term care policy and financing in ways that are almost unique to Singapore. First, current developments can only be understood in the context of the Central Provident Fund (CPF) that was established by the Government of Singapore in the 1950s to ensure that the working population saved for retirement; the Medisave and related schemes for financing health care were subsequently developed alongside the CPF. Most recently, the existing funding arrangements have been extended to some long-term care services, and options for further extensions are under consideration. Second, the government's philosophy of maintaining the primacy of family support for the elderly has been expressed through a number of initiatives that provide financial and other incentives to families, combined with an emphasis on community care. The third factor is the relationship between government and the voluntary welfare organizations that are the major providers of institutional and community services. Finally, a series of government-sponsored reviews and advisory councils have provided for widespread consultation on policy options. These developments are directed to achieving a multi-pillar approach in which intergenerational transfers through taxation will be limited, and the role of individual savings and insurance will be increased.     

Asian Transnational Families in New Zealand: Dynamics and Challenges

Since the 1990s, Asia has emerged as the major contributor of migration flows into New Zealand. Settler migration, tourism, international business and more recently, international education make up the diverse flows of Asian peoples into the country. This paper explores the changing dynamics of Asian transnational families over the last two decades, with a special focus on the experiences of young people within these families. In the early 1990s, bi-local families were commonly known as "astronaut" families, in which one or both parents returned to their countries of origin to work, leaving their children to be educated in New Zealand. Over time the structures of these families have changed, as many young migrants relocated back to their former homeland or re-migrated to a third country, while "astronaut parents" rejoined their spouses either in the origin or destination. More recently, the educational migration of international students from countries in Asia has given rise to another form of transnational family, in which young people enter New Zealand as international students and some subsequently become residents. In this paper, the experiences of these young people are explored within the wider context of family strategies for maximising benefits through spatially extended networks on the one hand, and government initiatives and immigration policy changes that have been taking place in New Zealand since the 1990s on the other.     

A POSITIVE THEORY OF DISCRETIONARY POLICY, THE COST OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT AND THE BENEFITS OF A CONSTITUTION

We offer an explanation of government's preference for discretionary policy action. The main elements are asymmetric information and the ability and desire of governments to maximize reelection prospects. Discretionary policy imposes a social cost. We show that the cost is eliminated if all voters have the same information as the government. An optimal, state contingent policy rule that precommits government through a constitution eliminates the cost by removing government's opportunities to exploit its informational advantage. Rules of this kind, and constitutional restrictions, are difficult to enforce in the presence of uncertainty and different information available to government and the public.     

The redefinition of family farming: agricultural restructuring and farm adjustment in Waihemo, New Zealand

The process of agricultural restructuring embarked upon by the New Zealand government in the mid-1980s precipitated a period of financial hardship for many of the nation's farmers. It was not uncommon for families to adapt major adjustment strategies in order to maintain the viability of their enterprise at this time. Drawing upon a detailed case study of farm-level responses in a small rural locality, this paper argues that farm adjustments employed during and since this period have altered the character of family farming in the area in fundamental ways. Such change has been evident in the increasing heterogeneity of farm structure, and the alteration of farming goals and household labour arrangements, together with the evolution of local cultural norms. These transformations not only raise important questions about the future structure and sustainability of family farming in the area, but also inspire a conceptual reconsideration of the family farm unit as traditional linkages between the farm enterprise, household and property are weakened.     

Restructuring for growth in urban China: Transitional institutions,urban development,and spatial transformation

This research examines government policies and urban transformation in China through a study of Hangzhou City, which is undergoing dramatic growth and restructuring. As the southern center of the Yangtze River Delta, an emerging global city region of China, Hangzhou has been restlessly searching for strategies to promote economic growth and survive the competition with Shanghai. This paper analyzes Hangzhou’s development strategies, including globalization, tourism, industrial development, and urban development, in the context of shifting macro conditions and local responses. We hold that urban policies in China are situated in the broad economic restructuring and the gradual, experiential national reform and are therefore transitional. The paper suggests that China’s urban policies are state institution-directed, growth-oriented, and land-based, imposing unprecedented challenges to sustainability and livability. Land development and spatial restructuring are central to urban policies in China. Last, while Hangzhou’s development strategies and policies to some extent reflect policy convergence across cities in China, local/spatial contexts, including local settings, territorial rescaling and land conditions, are underlying the functioning of development/entrepreneurial states.     

The politics of health: the case of smoking control

The policy of the United Kingdom government towards the control of smoking has been characterized by a non-interventionist approach such as persuasion and industrial self-regulation, as opposed to more direct intervention through fiscal policy or control over tobacco production and sales. The effectiveness of the policies adopted by the UK government is difficult to assess, although there has been a reduction over the last ten years in the proportion of smokers in the population. However, evidence from other countries shows that a more comprehensive programme including direct legislation controlling tobacco advertising has a much stronger impact on tobacco consumption. The determinants of the UK government's policy position are analysed and the evidence suggests that this policy position is determined in part by the power of the vested interests in the maintenance of tobacco production, as well as the confusion of interests within the government itself.     

Utilizing grassroots workers in family planning programs in India: prospects and problems

In order to rapidly expand the network of delivery systems and speed up the process of acceptance of family planning messages and methods, a shift took place in the Indian family planning program from the bureaucratic "clinical" approach to the people oriented "extension" approach. As a result, there is an increasing emphasis on moving the family planning efforts closer to the grassroots level. A key methodological issue centers on the proper selection, cultural acceptability, and the effectiveness of the grassroots workers who are to be trained and through whom family planning motivational messages and methods are to be introduced. The Indian government, from time to time, has trained and utilized different groups of grassroots workers in its family planning promotional efforts. Anthropological field studies were conducted in two different regions in India to examine the potential and actual roles of two groups of grassroots workers--opinion leaders and traditional birth attendants--in the delivery of family planning services in the rural areas. These studies revealed that while the traditional birth attendants can be trained and utilized to a limited extent in promoting family planning efforts, especially to the eligible female clients, the role of the opinion leaders in such efforts is at best questionable. Based on these field studies, cultural and technical (including bureaucratic) problems in training and utilizing opinion leaders and traditional birth attendants are explored in detail. Modifications in the training program strategies are suggested to improve and expand the family planning delivery system in rural India.     

Empowered Wives and Frustrated Husbands: Nursing,Gender and Migrant Nepali in the UK

Since 2000, increasing numbers of Nepali nurses have crossed national borders to participate in the global healthcare market. The most common destination countries are the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand. In particular, educated middle‐class women are attracted to nursing with the full support of their families. There have been profound changes in women's position in Nepali society. As a female only profession in Nepal, nursing provides an excellent focus on how and why these changes have occurred. Based on a multi‐sited ethnography, including in‐depth interviews with nurses and their families, conducted in Nepal and the UK from 2006–2008, this article discusses the changing nursing profession within the broader context of gender dynamics. Between 2000 and 2008, around 1000 Nepali nurses migrated to the UK. International nurse migration hugely affects nurses' immediate family dynamics. This article illustrates how migrant nurses' husbands have to accept a compromised social position, from being family bread‐winners in Nepal to dependent husbands in the UK .

Policy Implications

• Since the late 1990s, a new women‐migration phenomenon has emerged in Nepal. The Nepal government's current women migration policy has created a serious controversy, which requires urgent policy attention.
• Because of British work permit regulations, Nepali nurses migrate to the UK on their own. Typically the UK government gives little consideration to how its international nurse recruitment practices and work permit policy affects migrants' family life. There is a need for a family‐friendly immigration policy.
• Female / nurse migration has a profound impact on nurses' families' lives in the UK. This area requires further enquiry.

     

Business restructuring,management control,and corporate organization

Conclusions After half a century of growing dominance of the large corporation by non-owning managers, the 1980s were marked by a slowing or even reversing of their quiet revolution. Professional managers had come to control the corporation on the premise that they could more efficiently produce shareholder value than the original founder-owners. They turned shareholding into a passive investment on the same premise. As companies faced increasingly competitive pressures during the 1980s, however, the legitimacy of the rule of incumbent management came under challenge. No longer could government interference be blamed for many of the problems facing business; fingers pointed at management itself. As the criticism of corporate leadership gathered momentum, a leading diagnosis focused on one of managerial capitalism's crowning achievements: the autonomous power of professional management.The critique viewed the managerial autonomy as excessively permissive, the agency system as no longer effective. Professional managers had come to show too much concern for the social welfare of various stakeholder groups, including themselves, and too little concern for the financial welfare of the only stakeholder group that should really count — the shareholders. Many of the restructuring efforts were thus undertaken in the name of returning companies to the single-minded pursuit of ownership interests. What had stood in the way of such a pursuit was less a matter of government constraint and more a matter of inadequate stockholder vigilance by their appointed agents.Mindful of the critique, incumbent managements moved during the mid- to late-1980s to improve stockholder returns by paring the workforce and cutting other costs. Corporate acquisitions and leveraged buyouts brought new management teams to the fore where others had seemingly fallen short. The resulting restructuring reached a large proportion of the nation's major companies. Half or more of the largest companies had undergone a significant reduction in their workforce. And the dollar value of company resources changing ownership hands expanded considerably. The aggregate purchase price of mergers and acquisitions of publicly-traded firms in 1988 was nearly three times greater than in 1981. Even more striking was the sharp increase in the number of publicly-traded companies and divisions that were taken private. The aggregate dollar value of such buyouts in 1988 had increased almost 25 times over that in 1981. This opening of the market for corporate control among major U.S. firms brought a significant fraction of the nation's large corporations more directly under the immediate oversight of ownership interests.The reassertion of ownership control over large corporations was usually taken in the name of improving corporate earnings. Would be takeover groups generally promised more internal discipline and stronger financial performance. Whatever the actual financial impact of the intensification of ownership interests, available research suggests that it has had organizational impact. General company strategies may come to be more centrally guided while specific operating actions are devolved further down the organization.Ownership change and other restructuring steps have also ramified into corporate social and political action. That outreach is likely to be less vigorous and more divided. It is also being redirected. During the 1970s and early 1980s, corporate energies focused on reducing government regulation and improving community opinion. Those energies are now increasingly focused on facilitating or resisting restructuring. Companies have fought legislation that would limit the process of plant closings, but they have also sought legislation to protect themselves against hostile takeovers.The evidence also suggests that considerable managerial discretion remains in shaping company response to the restructuring pressures. Although market and organizational factors are sure to act as constraints, top management, whether a relatively autonomous non-owning management group or an owner-dominated management, retains an important independent capacity to exercise strategic choice. That choice is likely to receive special shaping by the long-term ascendance of financial managers and the decline of manufacturing personnel at the executive level.Yet corporate change must not be viewed as isolated managerial responses to changing market conditions. Companies and managements frequently look to one another for guidance in coping with ambiguous circumstances. DiMaggio and Powell's analysis of organizational isomorphism, for example, suggests that firms frequently adopt organizational practices not because they are dictated by the firm's market strategies, but rather because they are already used by other companies. Similarly, Granovetter's analysis of the social embeddedness of economic action indicates that company decisions are partially shaped by top management's contacts with their counterparts in other firms. Understanding company responses to restructuring pressures therefore requires a focus on inter-company flows of ideas and doctrines as well as purely internally generated responses specific to the company. Reactions to the restructuring pressures that are collectively developed and defined in the broader business community may prove to be as critical as individually fashioned solutions in guiding management approaches to restructuring during the years to come.

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Rethinking the changing structures of rural local government – State power,rural politics and local political strategies?

There is a notable absence in contemporary rural studies – of both a theoretical and empirical nature – concerning the changing nature of rural local government. Despite the scale and significance of successive rounds of local government reorganisation in the UK, very little has been written on this topic from a rural perspective. Instead research on local political change has tended to concentrate on local governance and local partnerships – on the extra-governmental aspects of the governance system – rather than on local government itself. In contrast, this paper draws upon strategic-relational state theory to explore the changing structures and institutions of rural local government, and analyse how these can be related to the changing state strategies of those groups which are politically powerful in rural areas. In this respect, the paper draws on current and previous rounds of local government reorganisation to illustrate how new objects of governance, new state strategies and new hegemonic projects are emerging as a consequence of such restructuring processes.     

Making work matter: Satisfied detectives and dissatisfied campus police

Dirty work is part of all occupations. A comparison of two low-status occupations — detectives and campus police — revealed that workers in some occupations can surmount the tarnished image that goes along with dirty work, while others cannot. The detectives, but not the campus police, found ways to make their work matter. The former created a valued core identity, found an appreciative audience, and built collegiality. The constraints of campus police work kept the campus police from using the same strategies, and left them feeling that all their work was dirty. Under certain conditions, workers can redefine the core of a bad job into meaningful work.Order of authorship is alphabetical. Support for this research was provided in part by a grant from the University Research Council of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Norfolk, Virginia, 1989. We thank Howard Aldrich, Howard Becker, Carl Klockars, Richard Simpson, Donna K. Darden, and Charles Watson for their comments on earlier drafts.     

A new era in Australian migration policy

The discussion traces the evolution of Australian migration policy since 1975, arguing that the primary factor shaping policy has been interparty competition for influence within Australia's ethnic communities. Since late 1975 when the Liberal/National Country Party (LibNCP) Conservative Government returned to power, Australian immigration policy has moved in different directions from the previous post World War II experience. The demographic implications have been profound. In 1975 the LibNCP government returned to office committed to restoring an active migration program. By 1980-81 it had largely succeeded in this numerical goal. Australia's migration growth rate at .82% of the total population exceeded almost all other Western society. What was new, in comparison to previous policy, was the migrant selection system and source countries. By the time the government lost office in March 1983, family reunion had become the major migration program souce and Asia was rapidly becoming the dominant place of migrant origin. This emphasis on family reunion was not intended by government immigration planners but was a product of domestic political change and resultant new influences over migration policy. As to the increasing Asian component, it has mainly been an unintended consequence of the expansion in the family reunion program. Although the liberalization of family reunion eligibility has largely been designed to appease the major Southern European ethnic communities, few applications have been forthcoming from these countries. Asian applicants have been numerous. Labor government policy since March 1983 has shown remarkable continuity with that of the LibNCP both in its selection system and in the size of the migrant intake. The motivation for the commitment to immigration derived first from longstanding traditions within the Australian business community that Australia's economic growth and dynamism depended on rapid population growth. More specifically there remained a group of businesses whose fortunes seemed directly tied up with population growth, including those in the housing industry and manufacturers dependent on tariff protected growth in Australia's home market. This group has constituted the most vocal business pressure goups behind migrant intakes throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. At first the migrant intake was increased cautiously. The 1st major move toward expansion came with the introduction of the selection system in January 1979. This substantially liberalized entry for independent applicants by reducing the relative significance of scarce occupational skills and increasing that for other migrant qualities, including skill attainment, competence in English, and other qualities likely to favor the prospective migrant in his/her search for a job and in assimilating readily with Australian society.     

Assembling the "Empire of Morality": State Building Strategies in Catholic Ecuador, 1861–1875

This article studies the efforts of the Ecuadorian government between 1861 and 1875 to construct a "truly catholic nation". It examines the implementation and engagement of centralized initiatives of morality and religiosity, and reflects on its implications for the repositioning of state-society boundaries. Specifically, it considers the government's efforts after 1869 to centrally coordinate the institutions of municipal government and Church, and to redeploy them for national moralizing ends. It assesses the substantial achievements and limits of this model for strengthening state power and for disseminating "national" meanings of citizenship and progress.     

EVALUATING FAMILY THERAPY: DIVERGENT METHODS, DIVERGENT FINDINGS

This study reports on a triangulation strategy for assessing family interaction, involving family members, their therapist and coders independently viewing videotapes. Utilizing a standardized scale, the Beavers-Timberlawn Model of Family Competence, the study found weak agreement between paired assessments within the family triad, and within the therapist-coder dyad. In addition, more complex scaling techniques such as composite "family scores" or discrepancy scores between family member dyads added no predictive power. The findings suggest that a "limit of concordance" may exist when comparing varying raters' assessments of a given family, and that methodological and/or scaling strategies designed to maximize agreement may be both fruitless and diversionary.     

A Law to Protect, a Law to Prevent: contextualising disability legislation in China

Disability-related legislation in the People's Republic of China has gone largely unrecognised in the North, with the exception of the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law. Failure to contextualise the law has resulted in a simplistic presentation of the Chinese government's response to disability and impairment. This paper takes a first step towards redressing that imbalance. Recent disability legislation is outlined. The emergence of eugenicstyle policies in China is then reconsidered, with reference to the history of Chinese eugenics, the national interests of the current Chinese government and the internationalisation of disability. The complexity of the Chinese government's response re-opens the debate on the place of prevention within a politics of disablement.