Chapter 3 turns to the culture of the early reform period to examine three films – Youth (Qingchun, 1977) and Venus (Qimingxing, 1991), directed by Xie Jin (1923–2008), as well as Mother (Mama, 1991) directed by Zhang Yuan (b. 1963). Youth marked the first major reappearance of disability in mainstream culture and provides the starting point for an examination of the return of disability to the screen. While the chapter demonstrates that these new representations continued to reflect notions of difference, and that even children were expected to ‘overcome’ their impairments to make a contribution to ‘mainstream’ society, it also reveals the significance of personal motives (for example, those of Xie Jin, himself the father of two children with learning impairments) in bringing disability back into the public eye. We see the difficulties of moving beyond the ‘personal tragedy’ narrative even when disabled people and their families have the opportunity to represent their understandings of what it means to be disabled. The particular vulnerability of children as shown in these films, equally, works to reassure the able-bodied gaze that ideologies of normalcy remain intact and unchallenged.

Chapter 1 unearths the hidden history of disabled people in China during the Mao era. This was a period when the traditional attitudes towards disability and impairment discussed in the Introduction would begin to take on new guises as the newly formed PRC established its foundations. The chapter shows how the rise of socialism, the equation of a ‘healthy’ body with a healthy nation, as well as the great economic endeavour of the time, combined to offer new ideas for personhood and new forms of para-citizenship. But this was to come at a cost. The increasing undesirability of impairment because of these revolutionary endeavours, which sought to mobilise as much of the population as possible, would limit the representation of disabled people across all forms of cultural production. Notable disabled exemplars from inside and outside China would, however, offer concrete ways to understand both state and personal views of the role disability could play in this new age. From fictional Pavel Korchagin’s ‘hybrid form’ to real-life Wu Yunduo’s heroism and the miraculous curing of deaf and blind children, disabled people were transformed from the ‘useless’ into the ‘useful’ of society.

Chapter 6 returns to look at ‘real-life’ experiences. On the surface, these life stories often conform to the ‘triumph over tragedy’ format familiarised by the Zhang Haidi narrative. Frequently highlighting the support of the state, these memoirs emphasise the superhuman qualities of their subjects, demanding similar achievement from their audience, disabled and non-disabled alike. Unsurprisingly, the state draws upon such writing to legitimise itself as custodian of a civilised society. Yet, we also see how autobiographies and memoirs hint at the beginnings of the de-collectivisation of subjectivity and the pluralisation of memory. This is significant as, with only a few exceptions, disabled people in China continue to be dealt with as a single homogeneous group with consonant problems and similar desires. Here, Showdown with Death (Duijue sishen, 2012) by Yin Shujun (b. 1977) reveals a unique and intimate history that offers us insight into the way subjective perspectives contribute new spaces for the emergence of new ideals of para-citizenship. Like Zhang Haidi before, we also see how the female disabled body remains a potent site of personal, cultural and political significance.

Paying particular attention to the story of one of the most key social and political figures in modern disability history – Zhang Haidi (b.1955), model hero, writer and current chair of the China Disabled Persons Federation – Chapter 2 reveals how disabled people began to emerge from the shadows following the end of the Cultural Revolution. It demonstrates how political, social and economic changes prompted the rise of new model para-citizens; it also shows how these changes have continued to keep disability at the forefront of the public imagination in subsequent times. From greater international engagement in the 1980s, to the emergence of neoliberalism, disability has become a prominent trope in state discourses of citizenship. While drawing on earlier narratives of individual productivity and social engagement, the new ‘responsibilised’ para-citizen has been further transformed in response to pressures to ‘fend for oneself’ and pay back one’s ‘debt’ to society. For many, this is an affective discourse, continuing, as it does, to decouple (semantically and metaphorically) the terms ‘disabled’ and ‘useless’ and offer ways to be recognised as a valuable member of the community.

Chapter 5 brings analysis to more recent times with its focus on Tuina (Massage, 2008) by Bi Feiyu (b. 1964), a novel that explores the world of blind tuina massage therapists in Nanjing and is, ostensibly, based on conversations with real-life therapists there. Although a non-disabled person, Bi Feiyu argues that Tuina breaks away from received ways of writing about blindness and impairment more broadly to show the ‘human’ experience of blindness from within the experience of disability. The novel reveals the surprising (to the able-bodied gaze at least) ‘normalcy’ of disabled lives and emotions – greed, ambition, fear, despair, anger, love, desire and everything in between – debunking, as it does, the various prejudices surrounding the ‘world of darkness’. The way in which the novel highlights the individual/particular over the public/metaphoric certainly demonstrates its potential for the sharing of marginal perspectives and the personal reinterpretation of ‘difference’ and belonging; but, as the chapter also reveals, this does not mean that it can produce literature that fully avoids symbolism and allegory, or many of the more obvious pitfalls of the ‘narrative prosthesis’.

The Introduction sets out the academic rationale for studying disability and citizenship in China, before mapping out current theoretical understandings of disability and citizenship, as well as the historical context of disability in China in particular, all of which set the foundations for the study that follows. It engages with a wide range of viewpoints on disability, from the medical and social models to notions of ableism and ‘normalcy’ and more recent rights-based models. It also provides a brief history of disability in China, from early philosophical conceptualisations to late imperial developments when bodies, literally and metaphorically, became the crucibles for the birth of a new republic in 1912. It then proceeds to look at the way in which citizenship is seen to intersect with disability by asking whether there can ever be such a thing as a ‘good’ disabled citizen, given that most societies have developed the template of an ideal citizen characterised by able-bodiedness, able-mindedness and normalcy. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book’s route towards the concept of ‘para-citizenship’ as a new framework for understanding disability and belonging.

With the loosening of control over cultural production from 1976 onwards, authors were also freed to focus on concerns of a more social and personal nature as well as to explore the aesthetic potential of disability. In fiction, two relevant strands emerged. In the first, we see the appearance of semi-autobiographical works produced by writers with direct experience of disability, such as Shi Tiesheng (1951–2010), arguably China’s most famous disabled author. In the second, we see the rise of explicitly fictional works, exemplified by the works of two of his key contemporaries Han Shaogong (b. 1953) and Yan Lianke (b. 1958). Chapter 4 demonstrates that, while the inclusion of disability has subverted and challenged the conventions of socialist realism to reveal hopes and aspirations for enhanced inclusion and intimacy, it has more often become the ‘narrative prosthesis’ that reinforces tropes and stereotypes. Disabled people here are variously portrayed as isolated, pitiful, grotesque, sub-human even. Exposure of and violence against the female body in particular by male authors, re-establishes power relationships and offers reassurance to able-bodied male audiences of their superiority.

The book concludes that, while there might be many areas of common experience, the ways in which disabled identities and citizenship are constituted and imagined in China might equally be a world away from those envisaged and experienced elsewhere. Theories of disability provide extremely useful tools for decoding the evidence we find, yet they can only take us so far as the various comparative lenses inherent in them inevitably leave China wanting. Proposing a broader conceptualisation of citizenship – para-citizenship – that acknowledges both the structural rules and resources that shape social systems and the individuals (and groups) within them, as well as the agency that enables individuals (and groups) to identify and respond to, or draw on, these particular power relationships, offers an approach that can encapsulate the diversity of disabling structures and disabled experiences, as well as reflect their fluidity and dynamism. And, with a much firmer understanding of disability in China’s recent past, we can begin to see how new forms of para-citizenship might be re-imagined in future, particularly as China transforms from within and opens up further to outside influences.