China’s one-child policy almost killed me.
Luckily, I was born in America. I had an older brother, and my parents at the time were recent immigrants from China. By the 1980s, China had a very strict one-child policy due to exploding population growth.
I hate to say it, but I’m also very lucky I’m a man. Chinese culture is incredibly patriarchal, and boys are very prioritized within Chinese culture. My older brother was also a boy. One very unfortunate part of the one-child policy was a growing rate of abortions of girls and female infanticide, all so Chinese couples could have boys as their only child.
My mother had to take mandatory birth control from the Chinese government after my older brother was born, and the consequences for violating the one-child policy were incredibly strict. In fact, when I was in middle school, a biology teacher briefly mentioned the one-child policy as an attempt at population control that had very lax consequences.
“No that’s not true,” I said. “If you had a second child, you could lose your job.”
Regardless, I never actually confirmed whether that was true. I did know you could incur crippling fines. But the one-child policy was surprisingly effective, and it was enforced especially in urban areas. My grandmother on my mom’s side was some sort of Communist official, and my mom’s side of the family lived in the city.
So what was the history behind the policy, and what implications has it had, even today?
Why China instituted the one-child policy
According to Andrew Mullen at the South China Morning Post, the one-child policy started in 1980 during the reign of Deng Xiaoping. It was after the death of the infamous Chairman Mao Zedong, who presided over the population increasing over 400 million people in just 30 years. It was during this period my grandparents had my parents, uncles, and aunts. On my paternal side, my grandparents had five kids.
It’s also important to note China was a third-world country at much of the time prior to the one-child policy. In 1969, China’s infant mortality rate was 119.1 per 1000 kids, which is astoundingly high compared to 2015, when the infant mortality rate was 10.7 per 1000 kids. Babies born in 1963 (when my father was born) had a life expectancy of just over 44 years old, which is also astoundingly low compared to the life expectancy of over 77 years old today.
A bigger population was a sort of communist dream. Mao outlawed contraception and abortion to increase the workforce and number of soldiers in the military.
After the reign of Mao, and Deng Xiaoping sought to have the population of China firmly controlled. China’s economy struggled, and it simply could not afford to feed its growing population with a minimal food supply. The Great Chinese Famine killed between 15 to 30 million people from 1959 to 1961.
The majority Han Chinese population and predominantly urban environments would be most subject to the one-child policy. In the countryside, a family could have two children if the first child was a girl. Ethnic minorities in the country could also have multiple children.
In cities, the one-child policy was easy to enforce. Since many people worked for the government or an organization associated with the government in cities, people could be threatened to lose their job.
The policy would continue to be strictly enforced through threats of job elimination or fines. One filmmaker was fined 7.48 million yuan in 2013 for having three children, which today is over $1,000,000 in U.S. dollars.
Female infanticide and abortions
Of course, any form of population control in a country that heavily values male offspring was going to have very negative consequences. And the strict enforcement of the one-child policy also had very negative consequences.
Journalist Mei Fong points to forced abortions and female infanticide, which today has created a gender imbalance in China that the country is trying to reverse. There are currently 34 million more male than female residents in China.
If some families did not have sons, some left baby daughters out for dead. Widespread forced abortions of girls were also widespread. In 1994, the Chinese government recognized this alarming trend, leading to a disproportionate abortion of female fetuses and leading to a sex imbalance within the country. As a result, the government banned the sex screening of fetuses.
Of course, these are the most extreme cases, but the strict enforcement of the one-child policy, coupled with Chinese cultural values led to horrific consequences.
Takeaways
If the singular goal of China’s one-child policy was to control its population, then it worked. The country’s fertility rate declined significantly, and the Chinese government claims 400 million births were prevented (a claim that is disputed). India, a much geographically smaller country, may overtake China’s population by 2027.
There were other intersectional, cruel nuances as well. Only being able to have one child puts significant pressure on parents to have the child they want. The 1994 law that outlawed sex screening said a child with a serious genetic disease also had to be aborted.
Ethically, China’s one-child policy is very complicated. Shouldn’t reproduction be a basic human right? At the same time, the rationale of the Chinese government was that the greater good for a country with a low life expectancy, that couldn’t afford to maintain such a growing population, had to make tough decisions for the greater social good.
If you had two kids, you were being selfish, taking someone else’s spot and resources to raise their children.
However, it’s unlikely the unintended consequences were also present in this rationale. Essential state violence against women was sanctioned by the authoritarian government.
On some level, my nuclear family was the lucky one. I have a sibling. My cousins who grew up in China don’t. Right now, many Chinese families are operating on a 4–2–1 family structure: two parents support one child and four grandparents, which is not a sustainable path forward as China’s future generation stagnates in population.
In terms of population control, China’s one-child policy was so effective it’s now being reversed, and Chinese officials are encouraging couples to have two children as of 2016, and three children as of 2021.
So at the end of the day, whether China’s one-child policy worked depends on who you ask. From the perspective of an analyst focused on decreasing population growth, the answer is yes.
But when it’s from the perspective of someone who had to give up their child, pay enormous fines, or lose their job for having a second child, the answer grows a lot more complicated.
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This post was previously published on Frame of Reference.
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