Lihong Shi

I am a sociocultural anthropologist, specializing in reproductive politics, family and gender dynamics, and state-society relations in China. My research focuses on the impact of China's birth planning policy on reproductive choice and family relations. I am the author of Choosing Daughters: Family Change in Rural China (Stanford, 2009), in which I discuss reproductive decision-making and family dynamics in China. My current research focuses on an unintended consequence of China's previous one-child policy, i.e., Chinese families who lost their only child born under the policy. I look at how the experience of parental grief is shaped by China's increasingly child-centered culture, a lack of institutional support in old age, and the ways in which state responsibility is defined and contested.