Wu Qi: To return to our main topic. Why, today, are you researching, and especially focusing on, social reproduction? Is this an idea that you discovered while working on migration, which put it on your radar, or is it something more recent?

Xiang Biao: This is recent. My past research focused on material production, value transfers, and structural analyses of socioeconomic inequality and institutional arrangements. While in Global “Body Shopping” I did talk about dowries and marriage, the experiences I examined are not particularly rich. The “social reproduction” I talked about in the book viewed people as a factor in production. I talked about how they invest in education, in IT training, and then how graduates moved away to large cities, looking for high-paying jobs that would allow them to pay off their investment in education. In this sense, I treated human production as a process of material production. But Vani said something to me that I found quite profound. She said that parents do not raise their children just to work in IT. Parents invest in education also because they have a sense of duty and love. Sometimes there is no plan, they don’t know why they are doing what they are doing, maybe to honor their ancestors, but no matter what the reason is, it is not simply that they raise their children in order for them to work in IT service jobs. There are a lot of intermediary steps, and I overlooked them.

I slowly came to focus on the importance of human lives. In fact, it had something to do with age, as I eventually came to feel that I could not move readers with that kind of stiff academic language. We can do all the structural analyses we want to, but when we are living our lives, they do not seem so structured. So this was the first thing.

Second, in terms of educating the young generation and taking care of the elderly generation, I noticed certain global changes and realized that “social reproduction” was becoming more and more important. “Social reproduction” is not the same as “human production.” “Human production” refers to how all people are trained to become an important element in production, related to such concepts as “human capital,” while “social reproduction” refers to how people reproduce themselves—they are the goal.

In the history of humanity, the vast majority of our labor is spent on “social reproduction,” gathering wild fruits, hunting, plowing, and planting. The goal is not to accumulate profit, nor to make a killing, but simply to sustain ourselves. Once we’re a bit richer, then the level at which we sustain ourselves goes up as well, and we indulge in a bit more ritual and leave a bit more sacrificial meat for the ancestors. So this is the general cycle, and it is a cycle that has been broken by modernity. Modernity is closely linked to capitalism, and the point of human activities is not to sustain ourselves, but rather to make a killing. This is the structural transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society. People found themselves further and further away from the center, and economic activity was basically about the movement of capital. Past economic activity had been part of social activities and was there to serve the people, but modern economic life broke away from that. Indeed, not only did it break away, it came to be the most important force molding social relations, and under these circumstances, “social reproduction” came to be ignored.

In addition, if you look at basic trends in world population mobility, the economic position of Asia and China is rising, which is in contradiction with Asia’s and China’s position in international migration, because economic growth has not been accompanied by a decline in outward population flows, nor has there been any obvious increase in the number of foreigners migrating to China. So increases in people’s income levels and ease of lifestyle strangely led to an unprecedented increase in desires to go abroad—to study abroad, to go to the United States to give birth, to emigrate as “investor migrants” by buying government bonds or assets in the host country. How do we explain this? Another thing we should look at is changes in capitalism itself. Who are the big players now? Big platforms are making the most money now. The second biggest player has to do with services like education, medical treatment, and entertainment that have to do with “human reproduction.” The third major player might be mining and agriculture, which are called primary industries. In comparison, manufacturing, the industry that drove classical capitalism, is in decline. But manufacturing is on the rise in Asia and China because they are the world’s factories. If we look at human mobility, the original developed countries remain the center of the businesses linked to “social reproduction,” and these include education, medical care, and various kinds of knowledge production, as well as lifestyle trends. If we put the changes in capitalism together with the population flows I talked about earlier, it would seem that we have our explanation: why is it that as Chinese people are getting rich they want to leave as soon as they make money? An important reason is that immigration is not about making money, but rather about “social reproduction,” about a more stable and more predictable future, about better education for your children, cleaner air, and more green space. Now, having lived through my own personal changes, and having linked “social reproduction” with global politics and economics, and at the same time having observed immigration flows, and analyzed the source of profits within capitalism, I would like to remind everyone of something: Asia’s rise and China’s rise are only one part of the whole picture, and “social reproduction” is a more important part.

Wu Qi: When you talk about changes in the life of an individual, what specifically are you talking about? What have advances in this kind of research managed to accomplish?

Xiang Biao: I’ll give you a recent example. I have a relative whose child is in middle school, and the parents are wondering whether they should send her abroad for high school, basically because the pressure in China’s educational system is too intense, which is having bad effects on children’s health. Even some children whose grades are very good to take a nap in the evening and then get up at three in the morning to do their homework. Because of long-term stress, their immune systems are compromised, and children break out in rashes that do not go away. For my relatives, sending their child abroad for high school is a matter of “saving her life.”

When we look at the history of Chinese studying abroad after reform and opening, we can divide it into three basic periods. The first was from 1976 to 1992. At the time, most students were sent by the state, and tended to be older and to study science and technology, doing M.A.’s and especially Ph.D.’s. Doing an undergraduate degree abroad was unheard of. The overseas students had a strong value orientation, which was to go to the West to learn advanced technologies, ideas, systems, and management methods, all of which serve as models for a future China. The second period was from the 1990s until quite recently, and students were no longer sent by the state. These students went as individuals, were younger, and studied any number of disciplines, but to my mind, the most important change was that they no longer had a definite value orientation. There were two changes here: first, they did not necessarily return to China, and were not necessarily studying for reasons of patriotism; and second, they no longer thought that the West represented the future or served as a model. So, both the idea of serving the country and the idea of universal values began to waver, and students became more utilitarian and pragmatic. Recently things have become even more clear. No one believes any more that the American system is the model, but when you ask them why they want to go there, they say “of course we want to go! They have clear air, and green spaces, and work can be fun.” This is what led me to think about the issue of “social reproduction,” which in fact is an important political question. It does not look political at first glance, but politics grows out of it.

In addition, what I call the “Pacific paradox” also touches on changes in individual lives occurring with international mobility, which is something I got interested in early on. In the latter part of the 1990s, and especially after 2000, many people moved to the left politically after going abroad, which was a fairly widespread phenomenon. At the outset, this happened especially with people doing Ph.D.’s in the humanities, people as Wang Shaoguang* (b. 1953) and Gan Yang (b. 1953), two well-known scholars who identified with the New Left. This went against the expectations of people of my generation, so I started thinking about the phenomenon of studying abroad and its impact on social life. What is the “Pacific paradox?” Sino-American relations at the time were closer than ever in terms of social and economic interactions, but at the same time in terms of political ideology there was an unprecedented rupture. Now it’s all clear. Lots of young Chinese went to America to study and came to feel that America represented no ultimate values, and instead felt that the Chinese system was quite good. But they still wanted to stay in the States, and all they talked about was the immigration lottery, which might give them a green card. When we watched “River Elegy” in 1989, rushing into the Pacific Ocean meant rushing into the future, and we all felt that intellectuals would certainly Westernize, but now things had suddenly reversed themselves. These were our initial expectations because we felt that through ever closer contacts, we would understand the West and its logic ever better, which would lead us to embrace it. But looking at things now, while we got closer in terms of lifestyle, political antagonisms grew as well. This is the Pacific paradox.

This paradox also has to do with the emptying out of public spaces. The state became the only unit of collective imagination, and outside of the state, communities like neighborhoods and school friends have all withered away, and nothing is left but the two extremes: the world and the individual self. When something happened all of a sudden, and people needed a collective in which to ground their identity, all they could do was turn toward the state. Of course, the state also produced a lot of discourse that helped this along, making your embrace of the state seem natural. This produces a type of nationalism that is not based on nostalgia or imagination grounded in a romantic view of history, tradition, or civilization, but rather in an understanding of power relations in the world. In other words, it is a geopolitical nationalism. This kind of nationalism says, if the big players act like this, then we have to act like this too. Everything is a struggle over power and interests so the world becomes a battleground where countries fight over power.

Wu Qi: In your subsequent work on studying abroad, did you discover anything new, or learn anything more about mobility or social reproduction? Can you talk about some specific examples?

Xiang Biao: I can talk about the “ritual economy” a bit. While I was in Singapore, the Asian Development Bank sought me out. In 2004, they had a general idea that they should be not just a funding agency but also a knowledge agency, meaning that they would not only stimulate development through investment but would also promote high-end policy research and engage in intellectual aid. One of the topics they thought up was whether they could get Asian immigrants to come back, or if they could be induced to help their home countries develop even if they did not come back. Because I felt somewhat lonely writing my book, I was eager for some practical engagement, so I agreed to work on the topic. I was responsible for the Chinese case, and cooperated with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, and studied the policies the Chinese government had put in place to try to induce Chinese students who had studied abroad to come back.

First, what was immediately obvious was that the government was not in fact encouraging people to come back permanently, and instead emphasized short-term visits to China, or even doing service to China without returning. There is a huge difference between “coming back to serve China” and “serving China without coming back.” In 2001, authorities came up with the “dumbbell model,” with one end of the weight inside China and one outside. At the time I thought this policy was innovative because they were promoting transnational thinking as a way to help China develop. Transnational and international are not the same thing. “International” refers to the links between two countries, and international trade, which is coordinated and controlled by sovereign nations, remains international no matter how big it gets. The relationship between a US company and a Chinese company is subject to the laws and policies of these two countries. “Transnational” refers to a space, or a set of activities, that transcends the realm controlled by sovereign countries. For example, Wenzhou people doing business in Europe have a relationship with Wenzhou, and with several countries, and are beyond the control of any one sovereign nation.

But I also found a paradox in the government’s initiatives to try to get students to come back and set up a company. On the one hand, all of these projects put a lot of emphasis on economic rationality, saying how much the government would invest, that the students were coming back to promote economic development, and that the whole thing was a win–win. On the other hand, there was a pronounced ritual element in how they actually did this, how they gave out the money, and how they told the students what the government wanted them to do. For example, if all they wanted was economic cooperation, then they would simply talk about the project and that would be it. So why bring all the participants together and hold a big meeting and a “signing ceremony?” These are big meetings and a lot of money goes down the drain. The event itself is highly ritualized, very emotional, and ideological, using language like “motherland,” “love”, and “sacrifice” in the speeches. So I call these initiatives “ritual economy” since it combines the two. This concept has at least two meanings. The first is that the state invests a lot of money in this ritual, which means there exists a concrete “ritual economy.” Second, what really makes the ritual convincing is the economist logic, namely that everyone is working for their own economic interests, and only economically win–win relations are realistic and sustainable. So the ritual celebrates and reinforces such economic thinking.

We can also flip this over, and talk about an economic ritual instead of a ritual economy. This is about how the state uses rituals to redefine its relationships with the world. The state essentializes and ritualizes economic rationality. It says that the Chinese government is solely concerned about the economy and about development, which means that it is progressive and pragmatic and that elites from all walks of life should support it. The function of ritual is to make this focus on the economy seem natural, so that it truly enters into your subconscious, and is not something you think about. So no matter what your political attitude is, the economic ritual ropes everyone in.

Later on, at Oxford I had a lot of contact with Chinese students, and I noticed something interesting, which was another paradox, which is the existence of intermediaries. In theory, such intermediaries need not exist. Universities are eager to attract foreign students, they put their regulations and application procedures on their websites, and explain everything very clearly. Those who are applying are all educated, and their friends and classmates are all studying abroad. There is no information asymmetry.

So why do you need intermediaries? First, the universities have their reasons. For example, National University of Singapore prefers to hire intermediaries to recruit students, because these intermediaries can handle a large number of applications, know the basic procedures of the college entrance examination in China or India and the situation of high schools, and can act as a filter to ensure that the school recruits the best students. From the students’ perspective, the role of the intermediary is in fact to help analyze the future employment situation, helping to decide where returns will be the highest in their particular case, and what school and major they should choose. So on the one hand, intermediaries promote global student mobility, and at the same time are also shaping and maintaining a certain hierarchical relationship—what kind of universities recruit what kinds of students, what kind of investment gets what kind of return. The reason that university rankings have become so important is that they give some information on return on investment. So here, the intermediaries are not dealing with problems of information asymmetry, or bringing supply and demand together and creating a market, but are instead structuring the market.

Here we see the relationship between studying abroad and social differentiation. Studying abroad transnationalizes the process of social differentiation. When the competition over differentiation reaches a peak within a country, then it spills over to the outside. If you can’t make it in China, then you try your luck abroad. In spatial terms, things move from domestic to international, and in terms of capital, the change is from financial resources to cultural or symbolic capital. The role of cultural or symbolic capital in sustaining financial or economic capital across generations is critical. This is how inequality gets locked in.

Wu Qi: I haven’t read much of this research in China, and you haven’t talked all that much about it. Will you talk about it in academic papers or at conferences?

Xiang Biao: I don’t know yet. This might wind up being a collective project, where I invite specialists from different fields to join in. It will need robust conceptualization so that we can see if what we learned from student mobility can be applied to migration related to health care and tourism. We need to relate the detailed information to basic questions such as those about values and hierarchy, then we will see whether it can be applied to other cases.

Wu Qi: I see from your explanation that in your research you regard mobility related to “social reproduction” as an overall trend, under which different case studies converge. This is not like Zhejiang Village where one case study opened up a different topic. So what you are doing now, in terms of its difficulty and approach, appears to mark a new period of your work. What first caught your interest and pushed you in this direction?

Xiang Biao: I think it probably has something to do with my time in Singapore. I had a lot of colleagues in Singapore who were working on foreign domestic care workers. The commoditization of care was a big topic at the time, which touched on gender issues because most domestic workers were female. There is also the issue about the relation between public and private, because these workers were not coming into an organized enterprise, but instead someone’s private space, working in someone else’s home. So a lot of research examined domestic workers’ individual experiences. But my feeling was that the global mobility of care workers represented a broader process of economic reorganization. Now everyone is aware of immaterial labor, such as IT, design, service, etc. Maybe we could put all this together to see whether there is something bigger behind it.

Transnational marriage is another example. In relatively developed countries, including China, “leftover women” are “high-status women,” women with Ph.D.’s, female white-collar workers or even female entrepreneurs, while “leftover men” are “low-status men.” Low-status men in cities marry women from rural villages, and low-status men in villages marry women from underdeveloped countries. For example, Japanese men marry Chinese women, South Korean men marry Vietnamese women, and Chinese men are now marrying Burmese and Vietnamese women. What existing research has focused on is what we call the commoditization of transnational marriage. People are worried that a human relationship as basic as marriage has become something that could be bought and sold. There are intermediaries who organize groups of men to go overseas to select brides, and the women line up to be chosen by their future husbands. A lot of people feel that this is hard to accept. But I wanted to ask the opposite question, which was, if getting married is so hard, then why not stay single? Why is marriage so important that we have commoditized it? Maybe commoditization fetishizes marriage instead of degrading it. Behind transnational marriage is a conviction that marriage is so important that one cannot question it. Transnational marriage is an important process of social reproduction, and it reproduces not only individuals but also nations. According to conservatives, only if people get married and have children will we have the next generation, and only in this way will civilization be carried forward. So there is always this kind of dialectic behind transnational mobility and social reproduction. Mobility, accelerated mobility, does not only stimulate changes but can also consolidate existing inequalities and norms.