Paying particular attention to the story of one of the most key social and political figures in modern disability history – Zhang Haidi (b.1955), model hero, writer and current chair of the China Disabled Persons Federation – Chapter 2 reveals how disabled people began to emerge from the shadows following the end of the Cultural Revolution. It demonstrates how political, social and economic changes prompted the rise of new model para-citizens; it also shows how these changes have continued to keep disability at the forefront of the public imagination in subsequent times. From greater international engagement in the 1980s, to the emergence of neoliberalism, disability has become a prominent trope in state discourses of citizenship. While drawing on earlier narratives of individual productivity and social engagement, the new ‘responsibilised’ para-citizen has been further transformed in response to pressures to ‘fend for oneself’ and pay back one’s ‘debt’ to society. For many, this is an affective discourse, continuing, as it does, to decouple (semantically and metaphorically) the terms ‘disabled’ and ‘useless’ and offer ways to be recognised as a valuable member of the community.