One-child policy

The Planned Birth policy (Simplified: 计划生育 Jìhuà Shēngyù) is the birth control policy of the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is known in Western society as the One-child Policy due to its enforced limit of one child per couple in urban areas. Though controversial both inside and outside of China due to noted extreme methods such as forced abortions, and other human rights abuses, China's pandemic overpopulation problem stimulated the government to take strong measures.

Overview

The term "one-child policy" is based on a popular misconception that the birth control policy of the PRC requires all couples in mainland China to have no more than one child. In reality, though having one child has been promoted as an ideal and the limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, the actual implementation varies from location to locationSee Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific report "Status of Population and Family Planning Programme in China by Province".. In most rural areas, families are allowed to have two children, if the first child is female See China Daily reportFamily Planning Law and China's Birth Control Situation.. Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children result in fines, or more frequently the families are required to pay economic penalties, and cannot receive bonuses from the birth control program. Some children who are in one-child families pay less than the children in other families.

Moreover, in accordance with PRC's affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups are subjected to different rules and are usually allowed to have two children in urban areas, and three or four in rural areas; in addition, some couples simply pay a fine, or "social maintenance fee" to have more children See Xinhua report New rich challenge family planning policy.. Thus the overall fertility rate of mainland China is, in fact, closer to two children per family than to one child per family (1.8). The steepest drop in fertility occurred in the 1970s before one child per family was implemented in 1979. This is due to the fact that population policies and campaigns have been ongoing in China since the 1950s. During the 1970s, a campaign of 'One is good, two is ok and three is too many' was heavily promoted.

Recently, the policy has changed because the long period of sub-replacement fertility caused population aging and negative population growth in some areasSee People's Daily report Wuhan sees negative population growth., and improvements in education and the economy have caused more couples to become reluctant to have children. To solve the one-two-four problem, that is as the one-child policy approaches the third generation, one adult child supports two parents and four grandparents, couples from one-child families are allowed to have one additional child in some areas.

Background

During Mao Zedong's period of rule, the People's Republic of China became increasingly diplomatically isolated. Mao believed in the idea of self-sufficiency, and thus created many policies to strengthen China, including the Great Leap Forward, which ended in terrible famine, compounded with natural disasters. The failure of the Great Leap was partly blamed on Mao's idea of "the more people, the stronger we are" (人多力量大), and the rampant overpopulation thereof. Uneducated families were told to have as many children as possible. China's population growth exponentially increased.

When Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978, his new policies focused on strengthening China's economy. China was the world's most populous nation by far, and he saw overpopulation as a roadblock to economic development. In 1979, Deng began the national initiative of "birth planning", encouraging families to have only one child to control the population. The policy is not legally enforced nationally, only "encouraged". The policy is supervised usually at the Township-Level. Every township and town has a "Birth Planning Commission", headed by a Commissioner.

Achievement

China's population of 1.3 billion population is said to be 300 million (.3 billion) smaller than it would likely have been without the enactment of this policy.^*. The fertility rate has fallen to 1.7 births per woman, a sub-replacement fertility rate (compared to 2.1, essentially a replacement level rate, in the United States).The colloquial term "births per woman" used here actually refers to a more technical term in demographic analysis called the "total fertility rate": the number of children that the average woman would expect to bear in her child-bearing years, which by convention are ages 15-49. Such a reduction in fertility reduced the severity of problems that come with overpopulation, like epidemics, slums, overwhelmed social services (health, education, law enforcement, and more), and strain on the ecosystem from abuse of fertile land and production of high volumes of waste.

Availability of resources

Although it managed to bring population growth under control, China still faces difficulties providing clean water, sufficient food and cheap electricity to its population, indicating that further action may be required. While urban centers have accessibility to these resources, rural areas still face great shortages. 71% of China's population resides in rural areas China continues to lose arable land because of erosion and economic development, required to feed its oversized population. There were reports of shortages of power in summer 2005 [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html#Econ.

Sustainable development

The CIA World Factbook reports: "From 100 to 150 million surplus rural workers are adrift between the villages and the cities, many subsisting through part-time, low-paying jobs ^*". This is the result of China's failure to maintain sustainable development and to ensure that population growth rate does not exceed economic development rate.

Criticism

The OCPF policy has been criticised by human rights advocacy groups, especially Western religious advocacy groups. They generally consider that the one-child policy is against human rights of reproduction. The one-child policy has also been criticised by pro-life advocates and some evangelical Christians. Inside China, criticisms generally focus on the quite possible social problems such as the "One-Two-Four" or "little emperor" problem, while recognizing the importance of having such a policy for the country. Related to this criticism are certain side-consequences that are sometimes attributed to the one-child policy, including the use of sex-selective abortion, as reflected in highly skewed male-female ratios at birth.

A second type of criticism has come from those who acknowledge the challenges stemming from China's high population growth but view the OCPF as only one of a set of alternative policies that could have achieved the same reduced fertility and population growth over a more extended period of time without some of the negative side-effects of the OCPF as it was implemented. Susan Greenhalgh's (2003) recent review of the policy-making process behind the adoption of the OCPF shows that some of these alternatives were known but not fully considered. Susan Greenhalgh. 2003. "Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy," Population and Development Review 29 (June): 163-196.

A third type of criticism concerns exaggerated claimed effects of the policy on the reduction in the total fertility rate. As Hasketh, Lu, and Xing observe: "However, the policy itself is probably only partially responsible for the reduction in the total fertility rate. The most dramatic decrease in the rate actually occurred before the policy was imposed. Between 1970 and 1979, the largely voluntary "late, long, few" policy, which called for later childbearing, greater spacing between children, and fewer children, had already resulted in a halving of the total fertility rate, from 5.9 to 2.9. After the one-child policy was introduced, there was a more gradual fall in the rate until 1995, and it has more or less stabilized at approximately 1.7 since then."Therese Hasketh, Li Lu, and Zhu Wei Xing. 2005. "The effects of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years," New England Journal of Medicine, 353, No. 11 (September 15): 1171-1176. These researchers note further that China could have expected a continued reduction in its fertility rate just from continued economic development had it kept to the previous policy.

Human rights

Many feel the one-child policy is a violation of basic human rights or are concerned with the practices allegedly used to implement this policy. ^* China has been accused of meeting its population requirements through bribery, coercion, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and infanticide, with most reports coming from rural areas.

In at least one case, a government official who claims to have participated in some of these actions testified before a United States House subcommittee regarding her participation in forced sterilizations and abortions. It was also reported as recently as 2001 that in Guangdong a quota of 20,000 forced abortions was set due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. The effort included using portable ultrasound devices to locate abortion candidates. It is reported that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant are forced to abort by injection of saline solution into the womb, killing the baby and causing the mother great mental and physical pain. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=MBO41XZJLB0BDQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2001/08/05/wchin05.xml

It is because of these types of alleged human rights abuses that U.S. President George W. Bush stopped US$40 million payment to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in early 2002. In early 2003 the U.S. State Department issued a press release stating that they would not continue to support the UNFPA in its present form because the US government believed that, at the very least, coercive birth limitation practices were not being properly addressed. Furthermore, it is the U.S. government's view that the right to "found a family" is protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This, coupled with the International Conference on Population and Development's view that it is also the right of the individual, not the state, to determine the number of children, represents a clear conflict between China's policy and internationally accepted and adopted human rights conventions.[http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/rm/2003/16790.htm.

The use of forced sterilization and forced abortion are in contradiction with officially stated policies and views of China. ^*

Gender-based birthrate disparity

The sex ratio at birth (between male and female births) in mainland China reached 117:100 in the year 2000, substantially higher than the natural baseline, which ranges between 103:100 and 107:100. It had risen from 108:100 in 1981 -- at the boundary of the natural baseline -- to 111:100 in 1990. Other Asian regions also have higher than average ratios, including Taiwan (110:100), and South Korea (108:100), which do not have a strict family planning policy.See the C.I.A. report [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2018.html Sex ratio. In the ethnic minority regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet, the sex ratio at birth is actually below the world average.

The high preponderance of reported male births in mainland China has been attributed to four main causes: diseases which affect females more severely than males; the result of widespread under-reporting of female birthsFor a study in China that revealed underreporting or delayed reporting of female births, see M. G. Merli and A. E. Raftery. 1990. "Are births underreported in rural China? Manipulation of statistical records in response to China's population policies," Demography 37 (February): 109-126. ; the illegal practice of sex-selective abortion made possible by the widespread availability of ultrasound; and finally, acts of child abandonment and infanticide.

In a recent paper in the Journal of Political Economy, Emily Oster (2005) proposed a biological explanation for the gender imbalance in Asian countries, including China. Using data on viral prevalence by country as well as estimates of the effect of hepatitis on sex ratio, Oster found that Hepatitis B could account for up to 75% of the gender disparity in China.

However, Monica Das Gupta (2005) has shown that "whether or not females 'go missing' is determined by the existing sex composition of the family into which they are conceived. Girls with no older sisters have similar chances of survival as boys. However, girls conceived in families that already have a daughter experience steeply higher probabilities of being aborted or of dying in early childhood. This indicates that cultural factors still provide the overwhelming explanation for the "missing" females."Monica Das Gupta, "Explaining Asia's 'Missing Women,'" Population and Development Review 31 (Sept. 2005): 529-535.

The disparity in the sex ratio at birth increases dramatically after the first birth, for which the ratios remained steadily within the natural baseline over the 20 year interval between 1980 and 1999. Thus, a large majority of couples appear to accept the outcome of the first pregnancy, whether it is a boy or a girl. However, if the first child is a girl, and they are able to have a second child, then a couple may take extraordinary steps to assure that the second child is a boy. If a couple already has two or more boys, however, the sex ratio of higher parity births swings decidedly in a feminine direction.

This demographic evidence indicates that while families highly value having male offspring, a secondary norm of having a girl or having some balance in the sexes of children often comes into play. For example, Zeng Yi et al. (1993) reported in Population and Development Review a study based on the 1990 census in which they found sex ratios of just 65 or 70 boys per 100 girls for high parity births in families that already had two or more boys.Zeng Yi et al. 1993. "Causes and Implications of the Recent Increase in the Reported Sex Ratio at Birth in China," Population and Development Review 19 (June): 283-302. A study by Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver (1995) published in Population Studies found a similar pattern among both Han and non-Han nationalities in Xinjiang Province: a strong preference for girls in high parity births in families that had already borne two or more boys.Barbara A. Anderson and Brian D. Silver. 1995. "Ethnic Differences in Fertility and Sex Ratios at Birth in China: Evidence from Xinjiang," Population Studies 49 (July): 211-226.

The commonly accepted explanation for son preference is that sons in rural families may be thought to be more helpful in farm work. Both rural and urban populations have economic and traditional incentives, including widespread remnants of Confucianism, to prefer sons over daughters. Sons are preferred as they provide the primary financial support for the parents in their retirement, and a son's parents typically are better cared for than his wife's. In addition, Chinese traditionally view that daughters, on their marriage, become primarily part of the groom's family. A woman used to change her surname to her husband's surname or add her husband's surname before her surname after marriage. For some families, one's daughter-in-law's name instead of a daughter's name would be added in the book of family tree. Daughters traditionally could not inherit, too. Therefore, if a family had no son, the fortune of this family would be given to the husband's brothers or other male relatives after the husband's death. However, high sex ratios in the current population of China do not occur only in rural areas. Hasketh et al. (2005) show that the ratio is nearly identical in rural and urban areas.

Sex-selective abortion

Various explanations have been put forward for the gender-based birthrate disparity with sex-selective abortion gaining the widest acceptance. Even in other Asian countries without population control programs, such as South Korea, India, Vietnam, and Taiwan, the strong social preference for sons combined with the access to modern technologies such as ultrasound have resulted in increased sex ratios at birth.^* Even in the United States, Chinese immigrants were known until the mid-1990s to use sex-selective abortion. In the 1980s and early 1990s, some demographers believed that there must be widespread female infanticide in mainland China because modern technologies such as ultrasound were believed not readily available. But studies of sex-ratios based on the 1990 census imply that these technologies were in fact widely available by the late 1980s, even in remote and predominantly rural areas such as Xinjiang (Anderson and Silver 1995). Although the government has declared strict penalties against sex-selective abortion, couples can often gain access to the technology.

Abandoned or orphaned children and adoption

The social pressure exerted by the one-child policy has affected the rate at which parents abandon undesirable children, and the state often fails to provide adequate care. Children experience significant mortality rates in high profile state institutions, some with death to admissions rates as high as 77% (official figures) or 90% (estimated by Human Rights Watch). Failures include inability to track the status and location of children in state care. Institutional deaths are blamed on lack of medical care and medical training for employees. However, Human Rights Watch also suggests some handicapped orphans are singled out for death by starvation and medical neglect.See Human Rights Watch report A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China’s State Orphanages and CHINESE ORPHANAGES A Follow-up.

A phenomenon that is often overlooked in the analysis of son preference and sex ratios at birth is adoption. According to Sten Johansson and Ola Nygren (1991) adoptions accounted for half of the so-called "missing girls" in the 1980's in the PRC.Sten Johansson and Ola Nygren. 1991. "The Missing Girls of China: A New Demographic Account," Population and Development Review 17 (March): 35-51. Through the 1980's, as the one-child policy came into force, parents who desired a son but bore a daughter in some cases failed to report or delayed the reporting of the birth of the girl to the authorities. But rather than neglecting or abandoning unwanted girls, the parents may have offered them up for formal or informal adoption. A majority of children who went through formal adoption in China in the later 1980's were girls, and the proportion who were girls increased over time (Johansson and Nygren 1991). The practice of adopting out unwanted girls is consistent with both the son preference of many Chinese couples and the findings of Zeng Yi et al. (1993) and Anderson and Silver (1995) that under some circumstances families have a preference for girls, in particular when they have already satisfied their goals for sons. Recent research by Weiguo Zhang (2006) on child adoption in rural China" published in the Journal of Family Issues also reveals increasing receptivity to adopting girl children, including by infertile and childless couples.Weiguo Zhang. 2006. "Child Adoption in Contemporary Rural China," Journal of Family Issues 27 (March): 301-340.

Infanticide

It is unknown how common infanticide is in China, though government officials state that it is rare. There are accounts of parents killing their female infants in remote and rural areas due to various reasons, including: the family is not able to support all their children; the parents do not want to be looked down on or laughed at by the community (a woman who did not give birth to a boy may be considered "not good at" birth); the wife wants to prevent the husband from marrying another woman/concubine in the excuse of her inability of giving birth to (enough) sons. Anthropologist G. William Skinner at the University of California-Davis and Chinese researcher Yuan Jianhua have claimed that infanticide was fairly common in China before the 1990's and the widespread availability of ultrasounds to determine the sex of babies See Mercury News article on Skinner/Jianhua study.. The root causes of infanticide, especially for baby girls, may be poverty in rural China along with the traditional preference for boys for cultural and economic reasons (Confucianism and farm work).

Gender-selected abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in China. Despite the Chinese legal position, the US State Department See Asociated Press article US State Department position., the Parliament of the United Kingdom See publication of the United Kingdom Parliament position regarding Human Rights in China and Tibet., and the human rights organization Amnesty International See Amnesty International's report on violence against women in China. have all declared that China's family planning programs contribute to incidences of infanticide.

The "One-Two-Four" problem

As the one-child policy approaches the third generation, one adult child supports two parents and four grandparents. This leaves the oldest and most vulnerable generation with increased dependency on retirement funds, the state, or charity for support. If personal savings, pensions, or state welfare should fail, then the most senior citizens would be left entirely dependent upon their very small family or neighbors for support. In the event that the child is unable or unwilling to care for their parents and grandparents, or if that child fails to survive, the oldest generation may find itself destituteSee a report by the Disabled People’s Association of Singapore Ageing is now a global issue. However, allowances have been implemented in China for a couple who are both only children to combat this problem.

Fertility medicines

China Daily recently reported that wealthy couples are increasingly turning to fertility medicines to have multiple births, due to the lack of penalties against couples who have more than one child in their first birth. The report quoted a doctor from a main pediatric hospital as saying that dozens more multiple births were recorded in 2005See China Daily report China: Drug bid to beat child ban..

Spoiled children

Some parents over-indulge their only-child. The media referred to the indulged children in one-child families as "little emperors". Since the 1990s, some people worry this will result in a higher tendency toward poor social communication and cooperation skills among the new generation, as they have no siblings at home. However, no social studies have investigated the ratio of these over-indulged children and to what extent they are indulged. With the first generation of one-child policy children (those born in 80s) reaching adulthood, such worries are reduced.

References and Notes

External links

Mainland China | Chinese numbered policies | Birth control | Human rights abuses

Ein-Kind-Politik | הגבלת ילודה בסין | 一人っ子政策 | Yhden lapsen politiikka | 中国计划生育政策

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