Subhealth: Questioning the Quality of Bodies in Contemporary China

Abstract

In this article, I explore contemporary medical and popular discourse on subhealth (yajiankang) in China. The idea that most people suffer from subhealth was at first associated with the marketing of a health product in the 1990 s, but subhealth acquired new meanings when it was popularized in media reports of sudden death and it gradually became a field of medical research. Subhealth discourse revolves around bodies characterized by lack and need of improvement, and thus it mirrors the governmental concern with lack of quality (suzhi) that has figured prominently in contemporary anthropological writings on China. The widespread concern with subhealth, however, suggests that the health care industry has significant influence on the way bodies are imagined and acted upon, and I argue that anthropological research on processes of subject formation in contemporary China might be enriched by looking beyond the state and exploring the field of liberalized health care ethnographically.