China's One-Child Policy: current effects and future implications

China's One-Child Policy

The Current State and Future of China's One-Child Policy

The One-Child Policy of China has been and remains the subject of a pitched world-wide debate. Originally instituted to curb the population growth China experienced during the second half of the 20th century, the Policy was controversial from the start. Today across the globe, there are divergent views of where the Policy is at now and what shape the future of the Policy, and China as a result of the Policy will take. This paper examines the various issues involving China's One-Child Policy today and moving ahead in the 21st century.

History of the Policy

The People's Republic of China experienced a massive population surge in the late 1940s and 1950s. The reasons for this are believed to be improved sanitation and medication, the banning of imported birth control and an era of peace and stability after decades of war, disease and civil unrest.

At first, the Chinese government welcomed the surge. The extra bodies, it was held would only increase national productivity and if more food or supplies were needed, the bigger population could produce as much as what was needed.

This proved to be overly optimistic however. As early as 1955, food supplies were dwindling and the country was unprepared when widespread famine hit in 1962. As a result of the famine, 30 million people died. The famine occurred because the extra mouths to feed coincided with a movement, led by the government, to convert manpower towards industry and away from agriculture. As a result, the population growth exceeded the food supply.

This era saw the first of the government's modern attempts to promote birth control. For the next decade, an informal campaign to slow the growth rate succeeded, but not to the degree the government felt necessary to solve the problem. Finally, in 1979, Chinese officials approved a policy limiting the Han peoples (China's ethnic majority) to having only one child.

Present Effects and Impact of the Policy

Current Enforcement

There are some signs which suggest that the Policy might be coming to an end in the near future. According to the available public figures, a little more than one-third of the country's population was still subject to the law in 2007.

However, it is also believed that even fewer adhere to the One-Child rule. There is a litany of exceptions which presently apply and allow families to have more than one child. These exceptions often apply in rural families (the rule is generally enforced in Beijing more strictly than elsewhere in China), to ethnic minorities, and families "where both parents are themselves only children,"

and many other cases.

Punishment for violations of the Policy, where it is enforced, also vary greatly. Violation of the One-Child Policy in Beijing usually results only in a fine or a loss of public benefits to the offenders. Therefore, there is no criminal punishment or oppressive economic sanction for the having a second child, another sign that the era of the One-Child policy might be ending. Some Chinese nationals report that the second child in Beijing only costs the parents a small fee to obtain state 'registration papers' and that travelling to Hong Kong to give birth eliminates even the need for that.

One of the heavily populated southern provinces imposes much stiffer fines, as much as six times the annual income of the offending parents. The penalties are not regularly enforced, however, and many high-income families merely elect to pay fines when deciding to have a second or third child.

Despite the lack of stiff and regularly enforced punishments, Chinese officials are sure to remind all Chinese nationals that the One-Child policy is still the official policy of China.

Drawbacks and Criticisms

The Policy has had the much unwanted effect of creating a large disparity between male and female births. This has happened for several reasons. First, the male child has long been more coveted than the female child in China. The male child is one that can be the productive worker and can better support the parents during their old age.

After 1986, Chinese families began using ultrasound tests and abortions, which were more readily available than ever before to control the sex of their baby. China tried to eradicate this problem by banning prenatal sex screening in 1994. Still, as of 2009, the British Medical Journal determined that China still counted 32 million more boys than girls under the age of 20. Also these young people do not have the skills to work in the factories, causing a labor shortage in the factories.

Female infants and fetuses have suffered atrocities since the Policy was implemented. Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute in Washington, D.C., believes that the Policy has created an obsession among the Chinese to have a boy, and this obsession in turn, has led to Chinese parents using abortion and infanticide to prevent or kill female births. Mosher also links the growing disparity of the young men to women to the rise in China's sex trade.

Many human rights activists and organizations have taken China to task for its government sanctioned actions in support of the Policy. Chinese officials stand accused of a long list of crimes against humanity on way they have allegedly treated women who have violated the Policy. According to one international human rights organization, just a this month (April 2010), Chinese officials have launched a campaign to perform forced sterilizations on nearly 10,000 people in southern China, after last year's alleged campaign to perform forced abortions on those mothers who would not consent to.

The activist group, Women's Rights Without Frontiers, handed down a scathing indictment of the Chinese government last week after it learned of the alleged forced sterilization campaign. According to the group's president Reggie Littlejohn, the One-Child Policy is responsible for the alarming disparity between male and female segments of the young adult population, China's female suicide rate (the highest in the world), and a rapidly growing sex-slave and human trafficking trade. Littlejohn believes that the forced sterilizations and abortions should be prosecuted by the Hague as crimes against humanity.

Conclusion

China's growth rate has slowed dramatically in the last 30 years under the auspice of the One-Child Policy. In fact, at this point it is believed that growth rate is under 2% and that the population replacement rate is at 2.1%, meaning that if these numbers are accurate and hold up, the population of China could actually decrease at some point in the future.

Hence, the One-Child Policy could be seen to be an immense success. But at what cost?

The 'side effects' of the Policy have and likely will continue to have a staggering effect on Chinese society. The sterility and abortion atrocities by the government, like the abandonment and infanticide of female infants by the parents, not only scream of a Policy that has lost its moral compass, but it has created a huge disparity between the number of males to females. This disparity means there a fewer women available to marry men, creating a much bigger demand for prostitution and sex slaves. Finally, the working generation of the next 30-40 years will be very hard pressed to support their parents, creating a social security crisis. It follows then, that it might be time for China to end the One-Child Policy and re-examine the situation in 2015.