Research Paper on "China's One Child Policy"

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This era saw the first of the government's modern attempts to promote birth control. For the next decade, an informal campaign to slow the growth rate succeeded, but not to the degree the government felt necessary to solve the problem. Finally, in 1979, Chinese officials approved a policy limiting the Han peoples (China's ethnic majority) to having only one child.

Present Effects and Impact of the Policy

Current Enforcement

There are some signs which suggest that the Policy might be coming to an end in the near future. According to the available public figures, a little more than one-third of the country's population was still subject to the law in 2007.

However, it is also believed that even fewer adhere to the One-Child rule. There is a litany of exceptions which presently apply and allow families to have more than one child. These exceptions often apply in rural families (the rule is generally enforced in Beijing more strictly than elsewhere in China), to ethnic minorities, and families "where both parents are themselves only children,"

and many other cases.

Punishment for violations of the Policy, where it is enforced, also vary greatly. Violation of the One-Child Policy in Beijing usually results only in a fine or a loss of public benefits to the offenders. Therefore, there is no criminal punishment or oppressive economic sanction for the having a second child, another sign that the era of the One-Child policy might be ending. Some Chinese nationals report that the second child in Beijing only costs the parents a small fee to obtain state 'registration papers' and that travelling to Hong Kong to give birth eliminates even the need for that.

One of the heavily populated southern provinces imposes much stiffer fines, as much as six times the annual income of the offending parents. The penalties are not regularly enforced, however, and many high-income families merely elect to pay fines when deciding to have a second or third child.

Despite the lack of stiff and regularly enforced punishments, Chinese officials are sure to remind all Chinese nationals that the One-Child policy is still the official policy of China.

Drawbacks and Criticisms

The Policy has had the much unwanted effect of creating a large disparity between male and female births. This has happened for several reasons. First, the male child has long been more coveted than the female child in China. The male child is one that can be the productive worker and can better support the parents during their old age.

After 1986, Chinese families began using ultrasound tests and abortions, which were more readily available than ever before to control the sex of their baby. China tried to eradicate this problem by banning prenatal sex screening in 1994. Still, as of 2009, the British Medical Journal determined that China still counted 32 million more boys than girls under the age of 20. Also these young people do not have the skills to work in the factories, causing a labor shortage in the factories.

Female infants and fetuses have suffered atrocities since the Policy was implemented. Steven Mosher, the president of the Population Research Institute in Washington, D.C., believes that the Policy has created an obsession among the Chinese to have a boy, and this obsession in turn, has led to Chinese parents using abortion and infanticide to prevent or kill female births. Mosher also links the growing disparity of the young men to women to the rise in China's sex trade.

Many human rights activists and organizations have taken China to task for its government sanctioned actions in support of the Policy. Chinese officials stand accused of a long list of crimes against humanity on way they have allegedly treated women who have violated the Policy. According to one international human rights organization, just a this month (April 2010), Chinese officials have launched a campaign to perform forced sterilizations on nearly 10,000 people in southern China, after last year's alleged campaign to perform forced abortions on those mothers who would not consent to.

The activist group, Women's Rights Without Frontiers, handed down a scathing indictment of the Chinese government last week after it learned of the alleged forced sterilization campaign. According to the group's president Reggie Littlejohn, the One-Child Policy is responsible for the alarming disparity between male and female segments of the young adult population, China's female suicide rate (the highest in the world), and a rapidly growing sex-slave and human trafficking trade. Littlejohn believes that the forced sterilizations and abortions should be prosecuted by the Hague as crimes against humanity.

Future Projections as a Result of the Policy

According to one report by China's State Population and Family Planning Commission, the next ten years will see an already serious disparity grow much larger between men and women of 'marriageable age' in China. The disparity is expected reach as high as 30 million.

This is attributed to the continuing of the 2005 trend of their being 118 male births to every 100 female births, a difference of approximately 8%. This disparity, which is suspected to be much higher in certain areas of the country, will make it increasingly difficult for men to find a wife in 21st century China.

These and other trends indicate that one-child policy may create more problems than it solves over the next 50 years. For instance, according to the Commission's report, China will pass the 1.5 billion mark by the year 2033, an increase of a staggering 200 million people. The number of elderly citizens (over 60) is expected to triple to 430 million.

As it presently stands, the report doubts the ability of the country's social security system, retirement system and education system to sustain that many people. Thus, according to the Chinese culture of the children caring for the aged relatives, one child could be responsible for maintaining two parents and four grandparents.

The Commission Report also suggested a program of embracing the birth of girls as a means of improving the situation. The gender imbalance appears to be caused by the drawbacks perceived of having a daughter. But the report warns that the imbalance could also directly lead to the social incongruities discussed above.

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