Conclusion - Authority in the Chinese Border Regime

ABSTRACT

To contextualize recent developments, this book demonstrates how the Chinese border regime operates, specifically by differentiating its strategies of control according to a subject's geographic location (graduated sovereignty) and immigrant group (graduated citizenship). Following Ong, governmentality is shown to be territorialized in literal zones of exception. Further, the book demonstrates how authority over state territory is graduated the regime rearticulates the border on both a regional and a local scale through establishing Special Border Zones that provide preferential policies, exceptional immigration procedures, and additional resources to integrate the local economy and facilitate crossborder trade. The border regime can also be shown to create metaphorical zones of exception if the border is understood as biopolitical as well as geopolitical.