In 1979, China passed a law that allowed for just one child per family. On October 30, 2015, thirty-six years after it was implemented, this law was changed.
In 1970, the Chinese government had a plan to open the country up for foreign investments, give permission to entrepreneurs to start businesses, and to transfer ownership of many state owned industries. Babies were the one thing that stood in its way. At that time, China’s population was around one billion. The Chinese government became concerned regarding the effect that the large population would have on its economic growth plans. Therefore the leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping, implemented the one-child plan.
This law prohibited families in China from having more than one child. Violating this law entailed a fine equivalent to six times a family’s income, beatings and imprisoning other family members. Once the child was born, he or she was not allowed to be officially registered with the government, preventing that child from receiving health care and educational benefits.
Many times, if a woman was found pregnant with a second child, she was kidnapped and forced to have an abortion. There are many stories that have surfaced on this topic. One such example is an account of a woman who was abducted and forced to abort her child after being pregnant for seven months. If the baby would have been delivered at the time it was aborted, chances are that it would have survived.
Since the law was implemented there have been a few changes. In 2013, the Chinese government said that families who live in rural areas or that are part of an ethnic minority were allowed to have two children. Additionally, a family in which the parent was a single child was also allowed to have two children.
The new two-child policy introduced this year allows all families to have two children. A major factor for employing this change is the aging Chinese population. The growth in the labor force is high and the average age in China’s population is increasing. In other words, in about twenty years the Chinese population will be too old to work, causing a large number of jobs to have an insufficient number of workers.
The second reason for this change of policy is the large disparity between the male and female population in China. Out of a total population of approximately 1.4 billion, 720 million are men while only 670 million are women. Because of this, over twenty to thirty million men will be unable to find wives.
In order to keep women from having more children than they are allowed, China has made contraceptives widely available and women are often forced to get sterilized. In fact, over 33% of women are sterilized, many against their will. Statistics have shown that this policy has prevented over 400 million births since it was implemented.
When a child is born to a family which lacks the means to afford properly caring the baby, the options are slim. One is to abandon the infant. More than 10,000 children are abandoned in China each year. There are close to one million orphans in China at the moment, many of them female. These children are left in hospitals, buildings and street corners simply because they are ‘child number two.’ One of the most horrific things that parents do to get rid of the ‘unwanted’ child is infanticide or murdering the child. This act– though difficult to imagine–is unfortunately common.
One might think that the people of China would rejoice about this change of policy and celebrate the possibility to have more than one child. However, this isn’t the case. Having a second child is an expense that many families can’t afford. And there are still the same problems that existed before. Women are still at risk of being kidnapped and forced to have abortions. Furthermore, ‘third’ or ‘fourth’ children are still going to be abandoned and killed.
Some say that the change from allowing one to two children is a step towards personal freedom. Yet others argue that this law is still a violation of human rights and reproduction freedom, believing instead that China should get rid of this law completely. Time will tell what the fate of China’s children will be in the wake of this new resolution.