This thesis writes about the operation of a contemporary Chinese state-run orphanage (welfare institute is its official name translated from Chinese) in Zhejiang province. It argues that the system of Chinese welfare institute grounds on the mechanisms handling three crucial relationships that are all decorated by the rhetoric of “love”, which are its external relationships with the state and society, and its internal relationship between institute nannies and institutionalized children.

In exploring the welfare institute-state relationship, it argues that contemporary Chinese welfare institutes are not merely acting as child relief organizations that provide special care and assistance (which the state portarys as the “state’s love”) as the existing literature assumes but...[ Read more ]

This thesis writes about the operation of a contemporary Chinese state-run orphanage (welfare institute is its official name translated from Chinese) in Zhejiang province. It argues that the system of Chinese welfare institute grounds on the mechanisms handling three crucial relationships that are all decorated by the rhetoric of “love”, which are its external relationships with the state and society, and its internal relationship between institute nannies and institutionalized children.

In exploring the welfare institute-state relationship, it argues that contemporary Chinese welfare institutes are not merely acting as child relief organizations that provide special care and assistance (which the state portarys as the “state’s love”) as the existing literature assumes but a governmental technique for the state population governance. It shows that, by cooperating with other governing institutions, such as household registration, birth control, education, health care, marriage registration, labor and social security, the welfare institutes contribute to the making and running of a totalizing governing system for the modern Chinese state to effectively control and manage its citizens.

Next to the welfare institute-state relationship, the state policy of “socialization of social welfare” (shehui fuli shehuihua)—a policy signifies the retreat of the state from welfare provision and the allowance for non-state sectors to get involved—and the emerging local philanthropic activities have made welfare institute-society relationship become another critical aspect in the operation of these institutions. Contending against the existing paradigm beautifying philanthropy by connecting it to civil society and democracy, this thesis points out philanthropic activity or even “civil society” itself reproduces and reifies unequal social relations between the philanthropists and the institutionalized children they claim to “love”. And these unequal relations that have been decorated by the discourse of “society’s love”have actually eroded social justice.

If the management of external relationships concerns more about the macro aspects in the operation of a welfare institute, the institute nanny-child relationship constitutes the most important aspect of its internal operation. By investigating the nannies’ childrearing practices and construction of “institute nanny motherhood” towards the children for whom they care, this thesis reveals how a specific workplace setting shapes its workers’ emotional reproduction and identity formation. The complexity within their identity and childrearing practices indicates the nannies’ “love” is far from selfless but rather ambivalent. Grounding on the above ethnographic exposures, this thesis demonstrates some key aspects in the running of the welfare institute system and its residents’ everyday life in present-day China.