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ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA
1. ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA
2. Success of the One-Child Policy in China
3. Bureaucracy and Population Control in China
4. Family Planning Officials
5. Rewards for One Child and Punishments for Extra Children
6. Problems with the One-Child Policy
7. Undocumented Children in China
8. Skirting the One Child Policy
9. Kidnapped Children and the One Child Policy
10.Victims of Kidnapped Children and the One Child Policy
11.Abandoned Children or Kidnapped Children?
12.Riots Against the One-Child Policy
13.People Allowed to Have Additional Children
14.Easing the One-Child Policy in China
15.Ending the One Child Policy in Shanghai
16.Two-Child Policy?
17.Maintaining One-Child Policy in China
ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA
In 1979, three years after Mao’s death, a one-child policy was introduced to reduce
China’s burgeoning population. According to the policy as it was most commonly
enforced, a couple was allowed to have one child. If that child turned out be a girl, they
were allowed to have a second child. After the second child, they were not allowed to
have any more children. In some places though couples were only allowed to have one
child regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl. This policy is still in effect today.
Posters promoting China's one-child policy can be seen all over China. One, with the
slogan "China Needs Family Planning" shows a Communist official praising the proud
parents of one baby girl. Another one, with the slogan "Late Marriage and Childbirth Are
Worthy," shows an old gray-haired woman with a newborn baby. Another reads: “Have
Fewer, Better Children to Create Prosperity for the Next Generation.”
Slogans such as “Have Fewer Children Live Better Lives”, "Stabilize Family Planning
and Create a Brighter Future” are painted on roadside buildings in rural areas. Some
crude family planning slogans such “Raise Fewer Babies, But More Piggies” and “One
More Baby Means One More Tomb” and "If you give birth to extra children, your family
will be ruined" were banned in August 2007 because of rural anger about the slogans
and the policy behind them.
The conventional wisdom in China has been that controlling China's population serves
the interest of the whole society and that sacrificing individual interests for those of the
masses is justifiable. The one-child policy was introduced around the same time as the
Deng economic reforms. An unexpected result of these reforms has been the creation
of demand for more children to isupply labor to increase food production and make
more profit.

2. Good Websites and Sources: Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Family Planning in
Chinachina.org.cn ; New England Journal of Medicine article nejm.org ; One Child policy
articlesharker.org Links in this Website: POPULATION IN
CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; BIRTH CONTROL IN
CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; PREFERENCE FOR
BOYSFactsanddetails.com/China ; THE BRIDE SHORTAGE IN
CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China
Success of the One-Child Policy in China
The one-child policy has been spectacularly successful in reducing population growth,
particularly in the cities (reliable figures are harder to come by in the countryside).
In 1970 the average woman in China had almost six (5.8) children, now she
has about two. The most dramatic changes took place between 1970 and 1980
when the birthrate dropped from 44 per 1000 to 18 per 1,000. Demographers
have stated that the ideal birthrate for China is 16.7 per 1,000, or 1.7 children
per family.
One way the government records progress in its birth control programs is by
monitoring the "first baby" rate—the proportion of first babies among total births. In
the city of Chengdu in Sichuan for a while the first baby rate was reportedly 97 percent.
One Chinese official said the one-child policy has prevented 300 million births, the
equivalent of the population of Europe. The reduction of population has helped pull
people out of poverty and been a factor in China’s phenomenal economic growth.
Some argue that economic prosperity has done as much as the one-child policy to
shrink population growth. As costs and the expense of having children in urban areas
rise, and the benefits of children as labor sources shrink many couples opt not to have
children. Susan Greenhalgh, a China policy expert at the University of California in
Irvine, told Reuters, “Rapid socioeconomic development has largely taken care of the
problem of rapid population.”
Bureaucracy and Population Control in China
The Family Planning Association, the bureaucracy that monitors the child bearing
habits of the Chinese masses, is comprised of 300,000 full-time paid family-planning
workers and 80 million volunteers, who are notorious for being nosey, intrusive and
using social pressure to meet its goals and quotas. Chinese women have to obtain a
permit to have a child. If a woman is pregnant and she already has children she is often
pressured into having an abortion. Special bonuses are given to men and women that
have their tubes tied. Local officials are often evaluated in how well they meet their
population quotas.
At the bottom of the bureaucracy are millions of neighborhood committees which have
to answer to the next level up, the street or village committees. In the cities, several
street committees make up a district committee which in turn is under the jurisdiction
of the Municipal People's government or the Regional People's government. All of these
committees follow birth control guidelines laid out by the Central Chinese government.
If neighborhood, street or village committees are unsuccessful in dissuading a couple
from having a child, community "units" at the husband's and wife's work place are

3. called in to pressure the couple, sometimes by reducing wages, taking away bonuses or
threatening unemployment. Community units are also called in if a couple is thinking
about getting divorced.
Family Planning Officials
The officials who work in the local family offices are often members of the Communist
Party. They have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations and impose heavy
fines euphemistically called “social service expenditures,” which are often important
sources of income for local governments in rural areas.
Couples are supposed to get a permit before they even conceive a child. To be eligible
couples must have a marriage certificates and have their residency permits in order.
Women must be at least 20 and men 24.
Old legal scholar in Beijing told the Los Angeles Times, “the family planning people are
even more powerful than the Ministry of Public Security.”
Villagers who can’t pay the fines complain that family planning officials confiscate their
pigs and cattle and ransack their homes and even seize their children. Sometimes
officials make regular visits looking for illegal children. “We were always terrified of
them,” one villager told the Los Angeles Times.
Rewards for One Child and Punishments for Extra Children
Parents who have only one child get a "one-child glory certificate," which entitles
them to economic benefits such as an extra month's salary every year until the child is
14. Among the other benefits for one child families are higher wages, interest-free
loans, retirement funds, cheap fertilizer, better housing, better health care, and priority
in school enrollment. Women who delay marriage until after they are 25 receive
benefits such as an extended maternity leave when they finally get pregnant. These
privileges are taken away if the couple decides to have an extra child. Promises for new
housing often are not kept because of housing shortages.
The one-child program theoretically is voluntary, but the government imposes
punishments and heavy fines on people who don't follow the rules. Parents with extra
children can be fined, depending on the region, from $370 to $12,800 (many times the
average annual income for many ordinary Chinese). If the fine is not paid sometimes
the couples land is taken away, their house is destroyed, they lose their jobs or the
child is not allowed to attend school.
Sometimes the punishments seem more than a little over the top. In the 1980s a
woman from Shanghai named Mao Hengfeng, who got pregnant with her second child,
was fired from her job, forced to undergo an abortion and was sent to a psychiatric
hospital and was still in a labor camp the early 2000s, There were reports that she had
been tortured.
Into the mid 2000s, authorities in Shandong raided the homes of families with extra
children, demanding that parents with second children get sterilized and women
pregnant with their third children get abortions. If a family tried to hide their relatives
were thrown in jail until the escapees surrendered. One woman who said she had
permission for a second child told the Washington Post she was hustled into a white

4. van, taken to clinic, physically forced to sign a form and was given a sterilization
operation that took only 10 minutes.
Another woman told the Washington Post several of her relatives were thrown in jail
when she was seven months pregnant and were denied food and threatened with
torture and told they wouldn’t be released until the woman had an abortion. After she
turned herself in, a doctor inserted a needle into her uterus. Twenty-four hours later
she delivered a dead fetus. Another woman was forced to undergo a botched
sterilization that left her with difficulty walking.
Even high level officials are not immune from the policies. In April 2007, a Communist
Party official in Yulin in Shanxi was fired for having too many children—three daughters
with his wife and a son and daughter with his mistress.
Some parents who broke the one child policy have were required to pay their fine with
grain: 200 kilograms of unmilled rice
Problems with the One-Child Policy
The one-child policy clashes with local traditions. One farmer in Guangxi told the New
York Times, “Last year, I had a son, so now we can’t have any more. But the tradition
here is big families and lots of sons. So no one is very happy.” In Guanxi friction over
the one child policy has resulted in violence. Newspaper has reported several clashes
between peasants and family planning officials.
As the government has taken rice bowl benefits away from people, children are the
only safety net they have.
Files are kept on every woman of child-bearing age by the local councils, who are
assisted by networks of informants. Women who have children without permission—and
are found out—are often forced to have abortions or sterilizations. If they refuse to
cooperate, thugs are sometimes sent to destroy their houses or beat them up. If they
run away sometimes their parents or relatives are imprisoned.
In some cases the basis for raises and promotions of local officials is based on how
well they meet their population targets. This policy encourages officials to push forced
sterilizations and forced abortion and mete out tough punishments to meet their
quotas. In some places enforcement has been so harsh that the Family Planning
Association has had to give out brochure that list the "seven don't" of population policy
(don't beat up people who have an unplanned birth; don't burn their house down, etc.)
Birth control policies vary a great deal from place and place, and the way the policy
carried out can be quite arbitrary. When a peasant woman in Guizhou got pregnant with
a third child, according to one report, the local authorities took her cow. When she
bowed to pressure and had an abortion, she was charged half a year's income to get
her cow back.
Enforcement of one-child policies also varies greatly from place to place. In
Guangdong Province many families have four or five children. They can get away with it
because either the one-child policy is ignored of they can raise the money to pay the
modest fines. In Guangxi, the policy is more strictly enforced. Family planning boards
keep strict tabs on families. Rule bending is minmal. Families fear the consequences of

5. breaking the rules because they are poor and have a hard time coming up with money
for the fines.
Undocumented Children in China
Additional children born to parents that have reached their one-child limit often have
a rough ride. Some are denied a birth certificate and proper documentation. This affects
them for the rest of their life. Without proper papers these children cannot enter school,
find work as adults or do most of anything legally.
Parents involved in illegal political or religious activities are sometimes punished by
denying their children birth certificates and documentation, even if they have only one
child.
Many parents with more than two children don’t declare all their children. A mother of
three in a suburb of Beijing told the Independent she only declared her oldest child. "If
I tell them the truth, are they going to reward me with a bonus?" she said. "Why invite
trouble.”
Undocumented children (also called "black permit" children) are children who are born
and raised in secret and never registered with the government. To avoid detection by
the Family Planning Association the children are shuffled around among uncles, aunts
and siblings. Pregnant women who chose to hide in the countryside until they give birth
are sometimes called "birth guerrillas."
According to some estimated there are 6 million undocumented children in China.
Most of them are believed to be girls. Many are the third of three daughters, who are
sometimes referred to as "excess" children, and are secretly shuffled off to relatives.
Skirting the One Child Policy
Families in rural areas, where children are needed to work family farms, are more
likely to break family planning rules than urban families. Migrants to the cities are 13
times more likely to break family planning rules than urban residents.
To get around the one child policy, parents give birth abroad or pretend their first
child is handicapped (loopholes allow them to have another legally) or get divorced and
remarried. One entrepreneur had three successive “wives” in order to have more
children.
Some parents bribe doctors to document a second child as a twin to the first even
though the second child was born years after the first one. There are stories about
twins who were born 10 years apart. The practice is so common in the Guangzhou area
that pregnant women are asked, “Is it you are first child or are you having twins?”
Others get approval for a “second first child” by giving birth in a hospital that has no
record of their first child. Others “park” second children with childless relatives or
friends.
Extra children are often tolerated and documented as long as parents pay the fine,
which has become viewed more as a fee than a fine. Depending on the place and the
situation the fine can vary between $370 and $12,800. One man who raised $1,200
from his family to pay teh fine for his second child told the New York Times, the

6. authorities "didn't try to talk us out of it. They just wanted to be sure we would pay the
fine."
While the rules remained strictly enforced in large cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the
rules were eased in medium-size cities and towns. By the mid 2000s, so many children
had been born outside the rules, only one child in five was an only child.
Kidnapped Children and the One Child Policy
Some of the children that end up in orphanages are believed to have been seized by
family planning officials and sold to orphanages, who in turn sell the babies to adopting
parents, many from the United States, for around $3,000 in $100 bills. [Source:
Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, September 28. 2009]
A migrant worker from Hunan Province whose daughter taken in 2005 and later found
to be living in the United States said, “Our children were exported abroad like they were
factory products.” Orphanages that receive the money say the money goes for food,
clothing, medicine and building upkeep but in most cases the babies are taken by foster
parents who receive $30 month and the orphanages are grim places that look as if little
money has been spent on them or their occupants.
Family planning officials may be able to impose fines and force abortions but they
don’t have the right to seize children even though they tell villagers they do have the
right and villagers believe them. In some cases the officials trick barely literate villagers
into signing paperwork that hands over their children to orphanages. In other cases
officials switched from seizing animals to seizing babies after they became aware that
orphanages sold babies to adopting parents for $3,000.
The remote village of Tianxi in undeveloped Guizhou Province has been a target for
family planning officials in search of children, There officials often showed up at least
once a week—even though reaching the villages require a two hour trip on difficult
mountains road and a hike into the mountains—keeping an ear out for crying babies
and looking for diapers on cloth lines and other evidence of babies.
Victims of Kidnapped Children and the One Child Policy
The mother of a four-month-old girl in Tianxi told the Los Angeles Times that one day
in 2004 an official showed up at her doorstep, demanding that she “bring out the
baby.” The woman was alone and unable to resist. As he walked to his car with baby
the official told her, “I’m going to sell the baby for foreign adoption. I can get a lot of
money for her.” In return he told her the family wouldn’t have to pay any fines for
breaking the one child policy but warned her: “Don’t tell anyone.”
The grandmother of a four-month-old girl who was taken in 2003 in Huangxin village
in Hunan Province by a dozen officer who raided her house told the Los Angeles Times,
“they grabbed the baby and dragged me out of the house. I was screaming—I thought
they were going to knock me over.”
A construction worker told the Los Angeles Times he knew his six-month-old daughter
was taken to the Changsha Social Welfare Institute in Hunan Province. “They wouldn’t
even let me in the door,” he said, For three year he tried to get in. Finally one day he
told him, “It’s too late. Your daughter has already gone to America.”

7. The Tianxi cases were revealed by a teacher with relatives in Tianxi, He reported the
seizing of babies to the police and a disciplinary agency, When he got no response he
posted complaints on the Internet that were picked up by the national media.
Afterwards the teacher went into hiding out of fear of retaliation. The officials were
based in the town of Zhenyuan, where orphanages had sent 60 children to the United
States. The U.S. Embassy reported that the implicated officials were arrested but the
officials involved told the Los Angeles Times no one was arrested or fired.
Other cases of child seizure have been reported in the village of Gaoping in Hunan
Province by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. Some of officials there
were relocated but none were arrested. None of the 15 sets of parents that lost babies
got their children back. In some cases the victims have been migrant workers with only
one child whose residency permits were not in order. One such worker described by the
Los Angeles Times had his only child taken by men who raided his house when the child
was being taken care of by grandparents.
Abandoned Children or Kidnapped Children?
The practice of child seizure has raised questions about whether the children in
orphanages said to have been abandoned were really taken by authorities. Among the
flags that something is not right are the fact that parents were said to have given up
their children after taking long trek through the mountains in the winter and the fact
that the suspicious children tend to be several month old. Brian Stuy, and American
man researching the origin of adopted Chinese children, told the Los Angeles Times, “If
you don’t want a girl, you give her up as soon as she is born.”
Ina Hut, the head of a Dutch adoption agency, told the Los Angeles Times, “In the
beginning, I think adoption from China was a very good thing because there were so
many abandoned girls. But then it became a supply-and-demand-driven market and a
lot of people at the local level were making too much money.”
Stuy told the Los Angeles Times, “International adoption is creating the suction that
causes family planning to take the kids to make money. If there was no international
adoption and the state had to raise the kids until they turned 18, you would be sure
family planning would not confiscate them.” People familiar with the issue say the best
way to clampdown on the practice is to scrutinize where the money from the adopted
parents goes.
One woman who had her baby seized and found out she was in America told the Los
Angeles Times, “Everybody in the village adored her. She had big eyes like saucers and
a smile for everybody she saw. I think of her all the time. I wonder if she looks like an
American now.” Like others in her situation she realized it would be next to impossible
for her Americanized daughter to come back and live with her in a poor Chinese village
but she said she would like to know how her daughter was doing and maybe get a
picture. “We’d like to know where she is...And we’d like her to know that we miss her
and that we didn’t throw her away.”
Riots Against the One-Child Policy
In May 2007, riots broke out in Bobai and Shabei counties in an “:autonomous” region
of Guangxi over attempt to enforce strict family-planning policies. Villagers protesting
heavy fines for having extra children burned cars, damaged buildings and fought with

8. police armed with guns and cattle prods. Between 300 and 3,000 people participated in
demonstrations and attacks against government offices in four townships. Twenty-eight
people were detained
The riots were prompted by a campaign by government work teams who went from
town to town and village to village fining anyone believed to have violated the one child
policy. Tension did not abate until officials retreated and admitted possible wrongdoing.
Members of the government work teams carried cattle prods and sledge hammers and
imposes heavy fines on the spot and looted and ransacked home of people that could
not pay and seized their farm tools, furniture and other valuables, even taking the
windows and doors off their homes. In some cases men and women of childbearing age
were forced to undergo forced sterilizations and pregnant women that already had
children were forced to have abortions.
Reuters interviewed one Bobai farmer who had six children with two wives had
thought he was off the hook when he paid 2,000 yuan ($260) in fines to his townships
government in 2004. He was shocked was given a one-page notice that he owed
$15,500 —45 times the region’s annual income—in fines. “I already cleared this by
paying 2,000,’ he said. “‘I told them ‘This government now wants 120,000 from me.
Where am I supposed to get it?
People Allowed to Have Additional Children in China
In 17 provinces, rural couples are allowed to have a second child if their first is a girl.
In the wealthy southern provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, rural couples are allowed
two children regardless of the sex of the first. Minority groups such as Tibetans, Miao
and Mongols are generally permitted to have three children if their first two are girls.
Urban couples, who are generally satisfied with small families, are generally restricted
to one child. Officials softened the one child policy in rural area where children are
needed in the fields and infanticide appears widespread as a result of the preference for
boys.
In the Yunnan, where many minorities live, the birth rate was 17 per 1,000 residents,
compared to four per 1,000 in Shanghai and five Beijing, and 12 for the country as a
whole. So many children are being born in Yunnan that the government is offering cash
for school tuition and higher pensions to those who stick with the one child policy.
Parents of a child certified by a doctor as handicapped and couples with both
members from single-child homes are also allowed to have an additional child. As
children of single-child grow up they will be allowed to have more children.
Urban parents are permitted to have two children if the husband and wife were only
children . The number of marriages made up of only children is increasing but many are
not taking up the option of having a second child. One Beijing couple with a two-year-
old son told the Times of London, “It cost more than 35,000 yuan ($5,125) a year just
to leave our baby in a kindergarten. Why spend this amount of money on a second?”
Easing the One-Child Policy in China
In the mid-1980s a rumor that the Chinese government was going to change its one
child policy caused the birthrate to skyrocket.

9. By the late 1990s the draconian aspects of the one-child policy had largely ended.
Second children were no longer banned from hospitals and schools. Reports of forced
abortions, infanticide and forced sterilization which much fewer in number. The
government took a softer approach to convincing women to have one child: expanding
health services, offering a choice of contraceptives. The unstated rule was that couples
have two chances to get a son and third chance can be obtained by paying a bribe or a
fine.
In the early 2000s, couple with extra children was no longer forced to pay “fines”:
they paid “social compensation fees.” Forced sterilizations and abortions were banned.
In Shanghai, 11exemptions were added to the one-child policy, including easy approval
for a second child and removal of long waiting periods and financial rewards for having
one child. In some places rules have been changed to make it easier for married
couples to have children. In other places the penalties having second children have
been sharply reduced. The introduction of private schools has made rules preventing
second children from obtaining places in school no longer such a dire threat.
By the mid 2000s many upper class and nouveau riche families were routinely having
two or even three children. The trend verged on becoming a fashion as a number of
celebrities were photographed with two or three children. Even fines of $65,000 for
extra children that exist in some cities are no problem for parents with lots of cash.
There has been some discussion of publically shaming and creating “bad credit” files
for rich and famous people who mock the one-child policy. One multimillionaire
businessman in Beijing, with three children, said he wasm't worried about such threats.
He told the Times of London: “I have plenty of money, and if I want to spend that
money on having more children I can afford to.”
A trend in rural areas is also producing more children. As farmers make more money
they are marrying sooner and producing more children and giving birth to more
daughters as the try to harder to have sons.
In December 2008, China announced it would raise the payments to one-child families
in rural areas to $105 a year for $84 a year. The payments are given to parents who
reach the age of 60 with either only one child or two daughters.
Ending the One Child Policy in Shanghai
Beginning in 2009, eligible couples in Shanghai were encouraged to have two children
in part to address concerns about taking care of an aging population. In Shanghai,
people over 60 already make 21.6 percent of the population, and are expected to make
up 34 percent in 2020, while the birthrate is less than one child per couple.
In Shanghai, one-child policy posters were torn down and replaced with details about
the new regulations and how to apply for permits. Xie Linli, director of Shanghai
Population and Family Planning Commission, said, “We advocate eligible couples to
have two kids because it can help reduce the proportion of the ageing people and
alleviate the workforce shortage in the future.
The response has been very disappointing. Few people have registered for the
program and few additional babies have been born. Officials in Shanghai told the

10. Washington Post they think that financial considerations are probably the main reason
couples don’t want more children.
Many attribute the lack of interest in having additional children to selfishness. A
human resources manager and single child told the Washington Post, “We were at the
center of our families and used to everyone taking care of us. We are not used to taking
care of others and don’t really want to take care of others.” The owner of a translation
company said, “Ours is the first generation with higher living standards. We do not
want to make too many sacrifices.”
Two-Child Policy?
By the mid 2000s, most couples were eligible to have two children, either because
they lived in rural areas or were offspring from single-child homes. There was
discussion of moving towards a two-child policy, seen by many as a sign that the
Chinese were worrying more about the consequences of too few births than too many
births.
There were concerns that Chinese parents had become happy with the one-child
policy and didn’t want to have extra children. A survey in Shanghai in 2004, found that
80 percent of the young people interviewed preferred to have just one child and 5
percent didn’t want any children at all. A 30-year-old editor told the Los Angeles Times,
that she didn’t want to have any children because wanted to focus on her career and
enjoy her free time. “Of course I may feel lonely when I’m old and be envious of people
with children. But I will have earned much more happiness when I was young.”
Maintaining One-Child Policy in China
In December 2006, the Chinese government said it had no plans to change its one-
child policy. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said that keeping the policy intact was critical to
China’s modernization plans and improving the lives of people living in the countryside.
In April 2007, the government said it would not loosen the one-child policy despite the
problem of too many baby boys and not enough girls.
The one-child policy is still taken very seriously. In January 2008, 500 Communist
Party members were expelled from the party for violating the one-child policy. The
officials came from Hubei Province, where 93,000 people, including hundreds of
lawmakers and officials, were recorded as violating the policy.
In March 2008, China’s top population official—Zhang Weiqing, minister of the
National Population and Family Planning Commission—said the one-child policy will
remain in place at least until 2018. In a front page article in the People’s Daily he was
quoted as saying, “The current family planning policy, a result of gradual changes in the
past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions. So it has to be kept
unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth...Given such a
large population base, there might be major fluctuations in population growth if we
abandoned the one-child policy now and it would cause serious problems and add extra
pressure in social and economic development.” There had been some speculation the
policy might be relaxed because of demographic pressures such as labor shortages and
a graying population increasingly becoming a burden for the labor force.

11. Image Sources: Landsberger
Posters http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/ Beifanhttp://www.beifan.com/
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London,
National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet
Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
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© 2008 Jeffrey Hays
Last updated April 2010
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