Chapter 3 starts the chronological review by looking at the role of law during the Early Reform Era (1978–1989). In this era, the Party-state vested economic decision-making authorities with its local governments, giving them a relatively free rein to experiment with and administer economic activity by limiting central law-making. The chapter tracks how such political–economic relations were bolstered by the Party-state’s choices with respect to the use of law. It also shows how, as the era progressed, the law was used to carve out and legitimize politically palatable forms of market activity.

During the Reform Era, China finally became an urban society. Foreign investment funded factories in coastal cities, which grew rapidly, many new inhabitants migrant labourers from west China. Large cities such as Chongqing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai are the centres of megacity regions. These are agglomerations of cities criss-crossed with transport networks and connected to the rest of China by high-speed rail and air. Municipal officials seeking ever higher levels of economic growth have presided over urban expansion. At their best, Chinese cities are innovative, hosting the work of internationally reknowned architects, and incorporating ideas of eco-cities or livable cities. At their worst, they are poorly planned urban sprawl, where the natural environment has been ruined, historical buildings demolished, and communities destroyed. The state has withdrawn from the direct micromanagement of urban life and been replaced by overlapping informal community organizations, but surveillance technologies now give the government more control. Meanwhile, a new entrepreneurial and professional middle class enjoys a new sense of urban sophistication based on property and vehicle ownership, education, consumption of international brands, and foreign travel. However, millions of migrant workers live a precarious urban existence, often far away from their families in the countryside.

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.

A brief conclusion discusses the implications of the book. By illuminating the nature of state capitalism, state consumerism, and their successes and failures in the Mao era, this book contributes to the history of the twentieth century (and since) in four areas: the history of China during the Mao era; the history of “socialist” countries; the history of consumerism; and the related history of capitalism.