China's Very Complicated One Child Policy

There has been a lot of discussion and various news articles recently published about the one child policy, and I’ve certainly stayed away from the subject here.

There are two reasons I’ve stayed away, the first being that it’s a very complex issue and there is no way to say whether doing away with it would be a good or bad thing for China or the world. Certainly, the policy is harsh, particularly on women and on female children.

And the second is that it makes me very uncomfortable to hear people who are in the process of an adoption freak out about the news stories. I try to take solace in the belief that China should do what is best for her people. The idea that people might want this kind of policy to stay in place in order to make sure babies make it into orphanages is just mind boggling. It makes my head and heart hurt. So, I’ll stay away from that and go back to my first reason.

Let’s look back in history for a bit to understand why the policy was put in place to begin with. After years of food shortages and people literally starving to death, the country was finally able to feed most everyone. But the government looked ahead and realized that if families continued having lots of kids that in another decade or two there would (again) not be enough food to feed everyone. Realize that in the late fifties and early sixties it is estimated that between 20 and 43 million people in China died of starvation. In some areas one out of every four people died of starvation. Imagine 16 of your friends and family, with four of them dead to starvation and you perhaps not far from it.

So, in the late 70’s when the one birth policy was put in place, it was done so in part to keep the population from exploding back to what it had been when there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone. This is a bit simplified of course since there was more at work during the famine than just population, but it’s a complicated subject and I’m trying to do this in a few paragraphs.

If you’ve visited China then you know that there is plenty of food now. Well, there may be some shortages right now because the winter storms disrupted the crops, but in general terms, if you have the money to buy food, there is affordable food to buy.

But now the government is having to deal with a reality where there are enough people who can afford to pay the fines for more than one child that it has become noticeable. And those who can’t afford to pay the fines are justifiably upset. There are the families seen in fancy hotel elevators all well dressed and toting three kids. Walk around the areas where the rich shop and you’ll see families with more than one child. But go out into the countryside and you will mostly only see families with one child. Now there is some bitterness, where there was not before.

The government is looking for a solution to this, and has begun putting political pressure as well as the threat of fines to keep their wealthy people limited as well.

And, they are starting to put out hints that they are reconsidering the law. Some argue this won't happen any time soon. And even if they do change it, my guess is that there will still be restrictions in place, they’ll just loosen it even more than it has already been loosened. It hasn’t been the “one child policy” for a long time. First, it’s really the “one birth policy” since twins and triplets are okay. And second, there are now many ways to legally have more than one child without paying fines. In some areas if your first child is a girl you get one more chance, though if your first child is a boy then you are done. Also, two only-children parents are allowed to have two kids, no matter the gender of the first.

But, back to our discussion of the ramification of taking the one child policy away. Let’s shift directions.


OK, let's look at look at land.

As of November 2005, China had approximately 301.5 million acres of farmable land. The United States had 470 million acres of farmable land in 2001 (can’t find anything more recent) China has less farmable land than the U.S.

If China’s population starts exponentially increasing then in today's global market we could be looking at worldwide food shortages. Under Mao’s reign they didn’t look outside the country for food. But in today’s market they’d get it from wherever they could, at whatever price it was offered.

China has population disparity. Without seeing it for yourself, I think it’s hard to get it across. When trying to explain what it was like to go to a market apparently it's like a store in the U.S. the day before Christmas. Every day. And the traffic? Like the traffic around the mall the day before Christmas. Every day.

The Chinese government will do what is best for China. The one child policy is harsh, and cruel and sad. But the alternative could, in the long run, also be harsh, and cruel, and sad.

As I said, I haven’t talked about it because it is a complex issue. When I think of the people in China then I’d love for them to be able to have a huge family as a basic human right. But, when I think of the overall effect of this happening across China, I’m actually pretty glad I’m not the one making that decision.

The equitable decision would probably be for the rest of the planet to also be responsible with how many children we bring into the world. But I doubt that will be happening any time soon. And, again, I’m glad I’m not in a place to have to make such a decision.

China's Stolen Children - A Documentary

There's a new documentary released in the UK called China's Stolen Children. It follows ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.

With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China's poorest people.

This film takes us into the heart of modern China, a place where girl babies are being sold for 3,000-4,000 RMB ($450-$550); detectives specialise in finding kidnapped children; and child traffickers are so relaxed about the trade they ply, that they allow the film-makers to covertly record them buying and selling tiny human lives. Tens of thousands of children are now kidnapped and traded on the black market whilst the State is more concerned with keeping the story quiet than tracing Chinas stolen children.

Why is this happening? Clare Dwyer Hogg from the Observer outlines it well:

A root cause of such large numbers of children being snatched is the fact that having a son in China is a necessity. He carries the family name, he is the child who will provide for his parents as they age. A daughter will leave the family to marry into another name, passively obliterating her own family line and leaving her relatives without the assurance of help in old age. The One Child Policy - which Save The Children calls a 'mass, live experiment in family life which is unique in the history of the world' - has resulted in prohibitive family-planning laws in China: prospective parents must have a birth permit before conceiving, and while rural families are allowed a second child if their first is a girl, urban families must pay a fine for flouting the one-child rule. And if you haven't had an abortion to get rid of your female child (although it is now illegal, around 40m girls have been selectively aborted since the One Child Policy was instituted in 1979), how can you be sure to get a son? Sometimes the only choice seems to be to buy a stolen child, gender already determined.

Here is the youtube link:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=b9YdA3WSiPM