1. Rethinking China's one-child policy
The child in time
Thirty years on, some want to scrap the repressive policy. The problem may be
to get people to have more—not fewer—babies
Aug 19th 2010 | BEIJING
IN MARCH, Yang Zhizhu was fired as a law lecturer in Beijing for having more than one
child. He knew the risk, but he badly wanted to father a boy. His story is not rare in a
country which for 30 years has told couples to settle for a single child and has used
draconian measures to limit births. But Mr Yang’s high-profile rebellion has won sympathy
even in the state-controlled press.
Rumblings of discontent over the one-child policy have been growing louder, stirred by
debate over whether it is needed now that the first children born under it face the prospect
of caring for an ever-increasing number of pensioners. A report last month by the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), a leading government think-tank, said officials were
seriously overestimating the fertility rate (the number of children an average woman can
expect to have in her lifetime). Rather than suppress the rate, suggested the report, the
government should try to lift it.
When Mr Yang told of his plight on his blog, Beijing Times, a newspaper (loosely) controlled
by the Communist Party, picked up the story. It quoted Mr Yang saying his second child was
“a gift from God” and said he had ignored officials who wanted the fetus aborted. Southern
Weekend reported that the case had drawn more attention than any other since the launch
of the one-child policy. Century Weekly, a magazine, said scholars and the public agreed
that giving birth was a “basic right” that should not be subject to official diktat.
Southern Weekend had already taken up the cause in March, describing the hitherto little
publicised case of Yicheng county in the northern province of Shanxi. Yicheng, it said, had
been trying a two-child policy for 25 years. Despite its more relaxed regulations, the county
has a lower-than-average population growth rate. It also has a smaller-than-average
imbalance between boys and girls. Elsewhere a traditional preference for boys, combined
with the one-child policy, has resulted in widespread abortions of baby girls.
In many other areas, something more like a two-child policy has been emerging. Rural
residents are usually allowed to have a second if the first is a girl (typically after a gap of
four years). Ethnic minorities can have more. Many places have started allowing parents
who themselves lack siblings to have two offspring. A senior family-planning official said in
2007 that in effect the one-child policy applied to less than 40% of the population.
The government, however, shows little inclination to scrap it. September 25th will be the
30th anniversary of an “open letter” by the party that is often seen as marking the policy’s
launch. The letter spoke of having a one-child strategy for 30 or 40 years, encouraging

2. some to hope that it might end as early as this year. In February, however, an official said it
would remain unchanged at least until 2015.
At the end of May, rumours spread that plans to hold a national census in November could
in effect herald an amnesty for the likes of Mr Yang. A police directive said that, in
preparation for it, officials must give household registration papers to children born in
violation of family-planning directives. Normally such papers are handed to “black children”,
as offspring like Mr Yang’s are commonly known, only on payment of a huge fine (or fee, as
officials say). In cities this is often between five and ten times the local average annual
income.
But officials have been trying to quash the speculation, saying that “fees” will still be
imposed. Mr Yang, who refuses to pay, says he is lucky not to live in the countryside, where
officials routinely seize property from those who cannot afford the levy. He thinks they
would be too embarrassed to do so in his case. He lives on a campus run by the Communist
Youth League.
Some Chinese scholars argue that the government is at risk of overdoing things. They say
the country’s fertility rate may actually be much lower than the official figure of around 1.8.
This number has been used for more than a decade (and by international agencies, see
chart). It suggests a comfortable levelling off after a steep decline in the rate in the 1970s,
after mild childbirth restrictions were introduced.
The recent CASS report said the rate that would be expected if women had exactly as many
children as allowed would be 1.47. The government uses the higher figure believing that
many “black children” were missed by censuses. But the report disagreed, saying such
serious underreporting was unlikely. It said data showed that the 150m-strong migrant
population has a fertility rate of only 1.14 (similar to that of registered urban residents).
This belies the common image of migrants as big producers of unauthorised offspring.
Zhang Juwei of CASS believes the overall fertility rate is no higher than 1.6.

3. China cannot avoid its looming ageing problem, but these lower fertility estimates suggest
its impact could be greater than officials have bargained for. The CASS study calls for a
“prompt” change of policy to get the fertility rate up to around the “replacement level” of
2.1. The problem could be in persuading Chinese to have more children. In cities and
wealthier rural areas, surveys found that the number of babies women said they actually
wanted would produce a fertility rate well below 1.47. Mr Yang would like more but his wife
has had enough. His second baby turned out to be a girl. So he called her Ruonan, a
homonym for “like a boy”.
Asia
http://www.economist.com/node/16846390
China's One Child Policy
Uploaded by guntalk on Aug 11, 2005
China's One Child Policy
For centuries China has stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences.
On the other hand, over the last decade it has plummeted economically. A big factor for this massive downfall is
the population of the country. China is overpopulated, at the dawn of this century there were some 426 million
people living in China. Today the population is about 1.2 billion. About two-thirds of this 900 million-person
increase was added within the last 50 years. In essence, the Mainland China alone contributes to at least twenty
percent of the world's contribution. (Ogilvy 2000:97) The Chinese government realized that something had to be
done or they would never be able to prosper as a country. Not at the rate they were heading, that's for sure. They
decided to set up a plan to reduce the population growth. They called it China's one-child policy. This policy limits
a Chinese couple to bearing only one child. (Milwertz 1997:56) Initially, the Chinese government adopted the
policy in order to reduce the severe famine that plagued the country. They realized later that it would also help
them prosper economically since the overpopulation held them back. The one child policy, although not formally
written into law consisted of three main points. Advocating delayed marriage and delayed child bearing,
advocating fewer and healthier births, and advocating one child per couple. (Wang 1995:34) Immediately after the
policy was enforced, infanticide was introduced. How could a couple murder their child just because it was a
female? Gender played a huge role in the Chinese culture. Males were definitely the dominant sex and a family
without a male child was looked down at.
The Chinese tradition implied that there must be a boy among the children in order to continue the family. They
felt that the males carried the name of their ancestors and they needed to carry the name for the next generation.
Therefore, whenever a couple had a female child they reverted to infanticide. They would either abandon the child
or even worse, kill it. This way they had another chance at getting a boy. As technologies advanced, they were
able to determine the gender of the child before birth and used abortion as a means to eliminate a female birth.
These wide uses of infanticide obviously arouse some issues. The sex ratio was totally unbalanced and the infant
mortality rate was horrible. Males were completely dominant in China. They did most of the work and were the
head of the household. The one concept that the Chinese people are not considering is that in the future there will
be far too many males and far too less females. Sure, the one-child policy will reduce the population growth rate,
but it might lower to a point where reproduction occurs very rarely. It is understandable though, because the
family name is such a big concept to the Chinese and for it to be carried on is very important. (Clubb 1978:15)
They take their cultural beliefs very seriously and will do anything to keep their ancestors happy. The fact of
carrying their family name on to the next generation cannot be the only reason to kill off their female babies. Girls
in China receive far less attention and resources than boys and are deemed an insignificant role in society.
There are always those women that do not really care whether they have a boy or girl, but it is their husbands
who force them to abort the child. There have been several cases where a wife has been brutally beaten by her
husband just so she would abort her child. (Wong 1995:3) The men take having a male child a lot more seriously
than the women. In some cases the husband forces the wife to go into hiding when she is about to give birth. This
way no one knows that she gave birth. Then if she has a girl, she can simply abandon it without anyone knowing.
A lot of women have decided to apply for refugee status in other countries for fear that they will be forcibly

4. aborted, sterilized and discriminated against. (Ogilvy 2000:12) This always does not work because a lot of these
countries in the surrounding area of the country are not as lenient in allowing Chinese refugees onto their land.
A lot of people found it easy to hide their children. Many people had more than one child and did not let the
government know. The biggest problem this led to was that the children that were not registered did not receive
any medical benefits. It was as if they never did exist. They call this elite group of unregistered children the "black
population" and this makes the Chinese government statistics completely off. (Clubb 1978:18) These children are
not allowed to go to school, and later will have difficulty obtaining permission to marry, to relocate, and for other
life choices requiring the government's permission. (Milwertz 1997:21)
China's one-child policy has brought so many problem, that one needs to wonder if it was actually a good idea in
the first place. Sure, it lowered the population growth rate tremendously, but the number of infant deaths took
over. Women in China are forced to give up their babies and are sometimes beaten. Males are still the dominant
gender and have the power of the family name behind them. Tradition will always live in China, and a male child
will always be a necessity. The family name must be carried on and the only way to do this is through a male.
Works Cited
Milwertz, Cecilia Nathansen
1997 Accepting population control: urban Chinese women and the one-child family policy. Richmond,
Surrey [England] : Curzon Press
Ogilvy, James A
2000 China's futures : scenarios for the world's fastest growing economy, ecology, and society. San
Francisco :Jossey-Bass,
Clubb. O Edmund
1978 20th century China. New York : Columbia University Press
Wang Xin.
1995 . Population vs development. Challenge of the new century. Beijing Review. Vol 38, p12-15
. "China's Population Policy" URL: http://www.com/China "One Child Policy" (13 January 1997)
Wong, Dr. Yin
1995 "A Question of Duty" Reader's Digest,.
China faces growing gender imbalance
More than 24 million Chinese men of
marrying age could find themselves
without spouses by 2020, says the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The gender imbalance among newborns is the most serious demographic problem for
the country's population of 1.3 billion, says the academy.
It cites sex-specific abortions as a major factor, due to China's traditional bias towards
male children.
The academy says gender selection abortions are "extremely common".
In some provinces, 130 boys are born for each
100 girls

5. This is especially true in rural areas, and ultra-sound scans, first introduced in the late
1980s, have increased the practice.
Forced prostitution
The latest figures show that for every 100 girls born in China, 119 boys are born, the
academy says in a new book.
Researcher Wang Guangzhou, quoted by the Global Times newspaper, said the
implications were that men in poorer parts of China may remain single throughout
their life.
"The chance of getting married will be rare
if a man is more than 40-years-old in the
countryside. They will be more dependent
on social security as they age and have
fewer household resources to rely on," he
said.
In some provinces, 130 boys are born for
each 100 girls, the book says.
Experts at the academy also predict the
gender imbalance will lead to more inter-generational marriages, where a wife is older
than her husband.
A reluctance among young urban Chinese to have a first or second child is
exacerbating the problem.
Academy sociologist Yan Hua said: "People's minds have changed a lot during the last
20 years.
"Young couples either don't want to have a second child, or would prefer to live a
DINK (Double Income No Kid) life."
The growing imbalance means that forced prostitution and human trafficking has
become "rampant" in some parts of the country, according to the researchers.
While analysts admit there is definitely a pronounced gender imbalance in China, they
also say that exact information is difficult to obtain because some families are thought
to avoid registering female babies in order to make it easier for them to have a second
child.
CHINA'S GENDER IMBALANCE
119 boys born per 100 girls. Rises to 130 boys
per 100 girls in some rural areas
Total population 1.3 billion
Expected peak 1.6 billion in 2050
One child policy written into constitution in 1978
Many rural couples allowed second child if first
is a girl
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8451289.stm