One Child Policy

Introduction

One child policy is a policy that attempted to control the population in China. Many people simply thought that under this policy, no family was allowed to have more than one child. However, this was not the truth. Although the policy had been promoted and enforced in urban areas, the actual implementation varied. Again, like many other political policy in China, there exsits a differenece between rural and urban implementation. Due to labor force requirement

and probably the traditional paternal Chinese culture, for most rural families, they were allowed to have more than one child until they were able to have a baby son. The family just needed to pay some extra fines in order to violate the policy.

Othan than the exceptional case in rural areas, the policy was also not strictly carried out among the non-Han groups. All the non-Han would not be penalized if they had more than one child. Moreover, for most rural and urban population, men who married more than one women were also allowed to have children of each of their wives.

Background

The one child policy was implemented in 1979. Many people think that one child policy was effective in dealing with the population surge. However, there was in fact a deep birth-rate drop in the early1970s before the policy was actually implemented. Between 1970 and 1979 (before the adoption of the policy) fertility rate fell from 34 per 1,000 people to 18 per 1,000 people. After the adoption of the policy, however, no prominent drop of fertility rate was recorded. Ridiculously, China even had a slight increase in fertility rate of about 21 births per 1,000 people in the 1980s after one-child policy was adopted!

China has about one-fifth of the world population, but they only have 7 percent of the worldÐŽ¦s fresh water, 7 percent of the worldÐŽ¦s arable land and 2 percent of the worldÐŽ¦s oil. Rapid growth of population would result in falling economy (due to decrease in marginal product due to rising labor population), rising poverty (due to insufficient endowment to feed the population) and unemployment (due to insufficient job opportunities). So, the PRC had to adopt the policy to keep population low.

Although an increase in fertility rate was recorded, the one child policy actually did help in controlling the rise of the fertility rate. However, the policy also raised some other social problem.

The implementation of the policy

As mentioned above, the adoption of the policy did vary from place to place practically. In the Henan province, families with more than one child needed to pay the government 20 percent of your annual income for 7 years. Also, those families would no longer be able to receive free health care.

It was also common that the government forced the women to abort their baby. Three large hospitals in South China claimed that over 400abortions were performed in each year. There were also groups of officials (abortion gangs), who were responsible for arresting the pregnant who already had one child. They will force them to abort their baby.

In order to escape from state penalty, some families simply did not register for the second child and so the second child did not legally exist. However, this caused difficulties for the second child in schooling and marriage in the future, as the PRC intervened into these activities. For some wealthy family, could illegally bribe the officials so that they could register for the second child. While for women who wanted to escape from abortion, they could sneak and stayed with relatives away from her original hometown until she gave birth to her second baby.

Positive consequences of the policy

Since 1980, it was estimated that 250 million births were prevented and the population became lower. It was even lower than the average of that of the developing countries. The one child policy effectively resulted in late marriage and lengthened childbirth. More importantly, living standards of the China population raised and the economy were also better off as a result of the policy. Literacy problem had lessened as every family needed to pay the education fee for just one child instead of many children. More and more families are now able to afford schooling of their children. The state also provided better medical care. Also, womenÐŽ¦s rights began to be treated positively and fairer than before. Gender discrimination was lessened. Education became more widespread. Besides, the number of educated women increased and they could now be able to find non-farm job and receive better health care. All these were the positive effect of one child policy on Chinese families and on the Chinese Society.

The Fact underlining the policy

The first group of population who suffered under the one child policy was pregnant women. Abortions are no doubt risky and dangerous. Thus, many women tried to escape from it under this policy. However, Mobile Abortion authority was introduced in 1997. It aimed at forcing pregnant women to receive abortions. The Mobile Abortion was actually a van equipped with a bed, surgical instruments and a body clamp, which was used to hold unwilling patients down during the abortion procedure.

In addition to Mobile Abortion, the abortion gangs were also responsible to force pregnant women to abort their second child. Any women who did not cooperate with the gang and acted against the forced abortion, the gangs had the power to cut off the water or electricity supply to their houses and might even burn down their house. In extreme cases, the gang may even physically torture the womenÐŽ¦s husbands until they agreed to have abortion. The abortion gangs were so radical that they enforced the one child policy regardless to the value of human life.

Under one child policy, it is obvious that even the most basic human right (survival) were infringed. This also clearly reviewed the lack of personal freedom of Chinese citizen in the past few centuries.

Negative consequences of the policy

To many Western scholars, ChinaÐŽ¦s one child policy

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