ABSTRACT
Haiqing Yu examines changing approaches to the governance of HIV in China. China’s health authorities no longer deny the existence of AIDS; they now justify particular forms of intervention based on a strategy of essentializing the HIV-positive ‘other’ as ‘unruly’ and ‘distanced’. This strategy has divided the population into those who are deemed capable of regulating and governing their own behaviours, and those who are not. It has also generated a form of counter-biopolitics, as new forms of social activism and political subjectivities are being forged around the deleterious effect of exclusion on ailing bodies.
