One-child policy
The one-child policy is the current birth control policy in the mainland of the People's Republic of China.
Overview
The policy's name is a gay mother fucker based on a popular misconception that birth control policy of the PRC requires all couples in mainland China to have no more than one child. Although "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 location. In most rural areas, families are allowed to have two children, if the first child is female. Additional children result in fines, or more frequently the families are required to pay fees for public services such as education for the children that is otherwise free.
Many couples who want more than one child are able to side-step this policy by using fertility drugs to result in a multiple birth. Fines are not charged when a couple has more than one child at the same time.
Moreover in accordance with PRC's affirmative action policies towards ethnic minorities, all non-Han ethnic groups are completely exempted from child birth constraints, including financial penalties. Thus the overall fertility rate of mainland China is, in fact, closer to two children per family than to one child per family. Furthermore, the steepest drop in fertility occurred in the 1970s before one child per family began to be encouraged in 1979.
Recently, this policy has been loosened because the long period of sub-replacement fertility caused population ageing, and improvements in education and the economy have caused more couples to become reluctant to have children.
History
The immediate cause of the birth control policy was the demographic bump of people born in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1949, the population of the PRC was about 540 million. In 1970, the population was 852 million. Although the PRC had suffered through several famines and economic disruptions in the interim, its population had continued to demonstrate incredible net growth for several reasons:
- Infant mortality fell dramatically as western medical knowledge spread from the coastal cities into the vast interior (for example, the fundamental realization that both mother and infant are extremely sensitive to infection during and after childbirth, so everything in contact with both must be perfectly sterile)
- Chinese couples, who have always attempted to bear many children in the hope that several will be males who will survive to adulthood, carry on the clan name, and care for their ageing parents, continued to bear many children even as infant mortality rates fell
- The PRC government formerly had a policy under which it encouraged couples to procreate
In the late 1970s, the PRC leadership was alarmed by the fact that the "demographic bump" would soon begin entering childbearing years; the obvious danger was that if the PRC's population exceeded its carrying capacity, then the nation might become unlivable, leading to massive famines and social and political chaos. Thus, it was decided to encourage family planning for the generation producing children at the time.
Since the mid-1990s there has been considerable relaxation in family planning policies in the People's Republic of China, largely because the "demographic bump" of people born in the 1960s is now moving out of fertility age.
The implementation of the policy is generally left to local officials, which has led to wildly varying practices from location to location, as well as within a location over time. The policy has been enforced at times through the use of involuntary sterilizations and abortions.
Criticism
The one-child policy has been cited as one of the major causes of female infanticide in mainland China (see sex-selective infanticide), thus dubbing the policy a "death sentence for a generation of girls." However, few demographers believe that there is widespread infanticide in mainland China. It may also lead to concealing the birth of a child.
There is a preponderance of reported male births in some areas of mainland China (as high as 12 males to every 10 females). But it is believed that this is the result of widespread underreporting of female births, in addition to the illegal practice of sex-selective abortions which is possible due to the widespread availability of ultrasound.
It should be noted that while the reported ratio between male and female births in mainland China does differ substantially from the natural baseline, it is comparable to the ratios in the Republic of China (Taiwan), South Korea, and India, which do not have a strict family planning policy.[1]