One-Child Policy

                As I read the letters and autobiography’s I found that there was a common occurrence throughout all of them. The One Child Policy. As people began speaking about their families in their letters most of them would begin by saying that they are the only child in the family and would refer to the one child policy. I had heard about the policy before, but I had never really looked into it before. I thought that the law was spread equally throughout all of China. Then I began reading a few letters that said they had siblings. This is when I knew I wanted to be able to figure out how this was even possible. How did these families stray away from the law without getting in trouble? I began asking questions about the one child policy to the people with multiple children in their family. A girl named Lemon was one of the only people who responded to me about the issue. “About one child policy, I don’t know whether you have residence cards. Because my parents’ residence cards are non-agriculture, they can’t have more than one child or they will lose their job. To be honest, I don’t understand this policy very well. One child policy depends on the type of residence cards and different nations, not different regions. This year, a new policy was published. According to it, if any one of the couple comes from one-child family, they can have two children. That is, I can have two children if I want. The policy is difficult to explain, but I will check it or ask someone who understand well and then explain it to you,” quoted from Lemon.

            As you can see from what Lemon had said the law is slightly vague. I suppose many people don’t even know much about the policy because most people our age or their age, find it completely normal. The law has been around for 4 decades now, so people who have grown up with it may not see how different the law truly is. Once I began my own research the light really began to shine down upon the subject for me. It was mortifying in all honesty.

            The One Child Policy was implemented into their society after the food shortage when Mao’s economic-planning failed. During this time 30 million people died of man-made famine. After such a loss the communist party created the policy that Chinese families could only have one child each. If people broke the law they were punished. The consequences of having a child without a permit would vary throughout each province in China. Some were that fines were forced that reached as high as several times the average annual income. Other punishments are they are often denied the opportunity earn promotions and fired from their jobs. It is said that the policy was only supposed to last 20-30 years, but it still continues to this day.

            The most shocking and ill thing I read came right after this. It says that over the last 4 decades 336 million children were aborted, 196 surgical sterilizations took place, and 403 million IUD’s (intrauterine devices) were placed in women. The policy has created brutal enforcement also. On June 2, 2012, Feng Jianmei’s baby was murdered as a 7-month-old baby. This created uproar around the globe which caused China to outlaw late-term forced abortion. To this day forced abortions still take place. This policy has created a growing demographic crisis for China. It is regularly called the “4-2-1” problem because multiple generations have grown up as only-children. Now 1 child is taking care of 2 parents, and caring for 4 grandparents. They are also getting rid of females and keeping males which is creating a huge gender imbalance. By 2020 China will have 40 million more men than women under the age of 20.

            I personally feel ill about the one-child policy. Although I could see why they initially created it, but now the policy has grown out of control. There are people out their fighting for the policy to be changed and in due time maybe it will be. There are too many women being forced to have abortions due to the policy. They are scared into only having one child so they aren’t punished in their jobs, income, or physically. They shouldn’t have to live in fear of having a child like they are.

One Child Policy Link