125 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 H. Minas (ed.), Mental Health in China and the Chinese Diaspora: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, International and Cultural Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65161-9_10 Chapter 10 The Rise of the Therapeutic in Contemporary China Jie Yang Abstract This chapter examines the notion of therapy and its growing signifcance in the social, political, and affective life in China during the last four decades. Specifcally, it explores the ways in which the languages, ideas, and practices of psychology have been applied to various domains for different purposes and imper- atives including addressing the current mental health epidemic. This therapeutic ethos acts as both a mode of thinking and imagination. Since therapy suggests an illness or disease and it encompasses a dual process that both diagnoses (identifes an issue) and prescribes (offers solutions), this understanding can thus be easily appended to governance, problematizing (pathologizing, thus individualizing) social issues, and then proposing solutions. This mode of therapeutic governing involves a unique mode of psychologization in China, in which psychological expertise can be dispensed by non-experts with real consequences. It centers on the management of subjectivity. This mode of therapeutic governing accesses people’s subjectivity through “care” and “permissive empathy” that renews the government’s role as the “guardian of the people”. This chapter contends that the ways this thera- peutic ethos involved in Chinese society manifest the implicit complicity among therapy, the state, and market. Keywords China · Therapy · Subjectivity · Therapeutic governance · Therapeutic economy · Therapeutic lifestyle In recent decades, a therapeutic ethos has come to permeate social and political life in China. The emergence of this ethos has been concurrent with China’s post- socialist transition to a market economy, which has brought socioeconomic disloca- tion and widespread mental distress, reportedly affecting over 100 million people (Chen 2010). One way to think about ubiquitous mental distress is through the J. Yang (*) Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada e-mail: jie_yang@sfu.ca