Governmentality studies and China: Towards a 'Chinese' governmentality

Is a governmentality approach useful for the analysis of government in contemporary China and is there a ‘Chinese’ form of governmentality? Michael Dutton and Barry Hindess address these questions by noting how governmentality emerged as an object of study coincident with a ‘crisis of Marxism’ in Western Europe and in China. They argue that the shift of focus to new mentalities of government in Europe and China resulted in different conceptions of ‘frugal government’. In the west, it led to an art of ‘the least possible government’, while in China it would grow out of Maoist notions of self-reliance.