This research is not only about documenting the past, it is about understanding how policy legacies continue to live on in bodies, families, and lives, and what that means for those who carry these histories forward.
Jingxian Wang, Lau China Institute
17 September 2026
Wellcome Early-Career grant awarded for research on disability and China's population policy
A researcher from King's College London has been awarded a five-year Early Career Award from the Wellcome Trust for a new project examining a hidden and highly sensitive legacy of China's 'one child policy'.
Jingxian Wang will begin the Wellcome fellowship this October, based at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. The project will examine the ways in which children’s physical impairments, health conditions or disability classifications could become strategically mobilised within family reproductive decision-making.
Under local birth-planning rules in China, families could apply for permission to have a second child if their first child was officially certified as disabled. This research asks how disability or disability classification became a reproductive resource, how gender shaped these processes, and what long-term consequences ensued for those whose bodies carried the effects of these decisions.
Drawing on critical disability studies, medical anthropology, China studies and theories of bio-legitimacy and biological citizenship, the project develops the concept of “instrumentalised disability” to understand how health classifications can become embedded in family strategies, bureaucratic systems and community silences. It will investigate the life-course consequences for adult survivors, including physical health, mental wellbeing, reproductive autonomy, family relationships and access to healthcare, through a qualitative, trauma-informed methodology based around longitudinal life-history interviews with adult survivors. A Survivor Advisory Group will support the ethical development of research materials and dissemination.
The project is significant for understanding the long-term health legacies of China’s now dismantled one-child policy, as well as for wider debates on health inequality, disability classification, reproductive governance and the hidden harms produced by policy systems. It draws on Jingxian’s earlier work, including her PhD at the University of Nottingham on China’s hidden “black children” (hei haizi) born in violation of one-child-policy quotas.
The Lau China Institute's Deputy Director, Dr Charlotte Goodburn, is project sponsor and Dr Michelle Pentecost from King’s Department of Global Health & School of Medicine will act as adviser.
I belong to the generation that was born under the one-child policy, grew up through its tightening and loosening, and now face a new era where births are being encouraged. This research is a long-term, deeply grounded China study, tracing how reproductive policies have shaped the health, family lives, and life trajectories of a generation over decades.
Jingxian Wang, Lau China Institute
We are delighted to be hosting what is essentially the first funded research position in the world on this important topic. Jingxian has excellent access and deep expertise in working with those harmed by China's one-child policy, and we look forward to collaborating on this groundbreaking project.
Dr Charlotte Goodburn, Reader, Lau China Institute
In this story
Wellcome Early Career Fellow, Lau China Institute
Deputy Director, Lau China Institute