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ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA1. ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA 2. Success of the One-Child Policy in China 3. Bureaucracy and Population Control in China 4. Family Planning Officials 5. Rewards for One Child and Punishments for Extra Children 6. Problems with the One-Child Policy 7. Undocumented Children in China 8. Skirting the One Child Policy 9. Kidnapped Children and the One Child Policy 10.Victims of Kidnapped Children and the One Child Policy 11.Abandoned Children or Kidnapped Children? 12.Riots Against the One-Child Policy 13.People Allowed to Have Additional Children 14.Easing the One-Child Policy in China 15.Ending the One Child Policy in Shanghai 16.Two-Child Policy? 17.Maintaining One-Child Policy in China

ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA In 1979, three years after Mao’s death, a one-child policy was introduced to reduce

China’s burgeoning population. According to the policy as it was most commonly enforced, a couple was allowed to have one child. If that child turned out be a girl, they were allowed to have a second child. After the second child, they were not allowed to have any more children. In some places though couples were only allowed to have one child regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl. This policy is still in effect today.

 Posters promoting China's one-child policy can be seen all over China. One, with the slogan "China Needs Family Planning" shows a Communist official praising the proud parents of one baby girl. Another one, with the slogan "Late Marriage and Childbirth Are Worthy," shows an old gray-haired woman with a newborn baby. Another reads: “Have Fewer, Better Children to Create Prosperity for the Next Generation.”

 Slogans such as “Have Fewer Children Live Better Lives”, "Stabilize Family Planning and Create a Brighter Future” are painted on roadside buildings in rural areas. Some crude family planning slogans such “Raise Fewer Babies, But More Piggies” and “One More Baby Means One More Tomb” and "If you give birth to extra children, your family will be ruined" were banned in August 2007 because of rural anger about the slogans and the policy behind them.

 The conventional wisdom in China has been that controlling China's population serves the interest of the whole society and that sacrificing individual interests for those of the masses is justifiable. The one-child policy was introduced around the same time as the Deng economic reforms. An unexpected result of these reforms has been the creation of demand for more children to isupply labor to increase food production and make more profit.

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 Good Websites and Sources: Wikipedia article Wikipedia   ; Family Planning in Chinachina.org.cn   ; New England Journal of Medicine article nejm.org   ; One Child policy articlesharker.org   Links in this Website: POPULATION IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China   ; BIRTH CONTROL IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China   ; PREFERENCE FOR BOYSFactsanddetails.com/China   ; THE BRIDE SHORTAGE IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/ChinaSuccess of the One-Child Policy in China The one-child policy has been spectacularly successful in reducing population growth,

particularly in the cities (reliable figures are harder to come by in the countryside).

 In 1970 the average woman in China had almost six (5.8) children, now she has about two. The most dramatic changes took place between 1970 and 1980 when the birthrate dropped from 44 per 1000 to 18 per 1,000. Demographers have stated that the ideal birthrate for China is 16.7 per 1,000, or 1.7 children per family.

 One way the government records progress in its birth control programs is by monitoring the "first baby" rate—the proportion of first babies among total births. In the city of Chengdu in Sichuan for a while the first baby rate was reportedly 97 percent.

 One Chinese official said the one-child policy has prevented 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of Europe. The reduction of population has helped pull people out of poverty and been a factor in China’s phenomenal economic growth.

 Some argue that economic prosperity has done as much as the one-child policy to shrink population growth. As costs and the expense of having children in urban areas rise, and the benefits of children as labor sources shrink many couples opt not to have children. Susan Greenhalgh, a China policy expert at the University of California in Irvine, told Reuters, “Rapid socioeconomic development has largely taken care of the problem of rapid population.”

Bureaucracy and Population Control in China The Family Planning Association, the bureaucracy that monitors the child bearing

habits of the Chinese masses, is comprised of 300,000 full-time paid family-planning workers and 80 million volunteers, who are notorious for being nosey, intrusive and using social pressure to meet its goals and quotas. Chinese women have to obtain a permit to have a child. If a woman is pregnant and she already has children she is often pressured into having an abortion. Special bonuses are given to men and women that have their tubes tied. Local officials are often evaluated in how well they meet their population quotas.

 At the bottom of the bureaucracy are millions of neighborhood committees which have to answer to the next level up, the street or village committees. In the cities, several street committees make up a district committee which in turn is under the jurisdiction of the Municipal People's government or the Regional People's government. All of these committees follow birth control guidelines laid out by the Central Chinese government.

 If neighborhood, street or village committees are unsuccessful in dissuading a couple from having a child, community "units" at the husband's and wife's work place are called in to pressure the couple, sometimes by reducing wages, taking away bonuses or

threatening unemployment. Community units are also called in if a couple is thinking about getting divorced.

Family Planning OfficialsThe officials who work in the local family offices are often members of the Communist

Party. They have broad powers to order abortions and sterilizations and impose heavy fines euphemistically called “social service expenditures,” which are often important sources of income for local governments in rural areas.

Couples are supposed to get a permit before they even conceive a child. To be eligible couples must have a marriage certificates and have their residency permits in order. Women must be at least 20 and men 24.

Old legal scholar in Beijing told the Los Angeles Times, “the family planning people are even more powerful than the Ministry of Public Security.”

Villagers who can’t pay the fines complain that family planning officials confiscate their pigs and cattle and ransack their homes and even seize their children. Sometimes officials make regular visits looking for illegal children. “We were always terrified of them,” one villager told the Los Angeles Times.

Rewards for One Child and Punishments for Extra Children Parents who have only one child get a "one-child glory certificate," which entitles them

to economic benefits such as an extra month's salary every year until the child is 14. Among the other benefits for one child families are higher wages, interest-free loans, retirement funds, cheap fertilizer, better housing, better health care, and priority in school enrollment. Women who delay marriage until after they are 25 receive benefits such as an extended maternity leave when they finally get pregnant. These privileges are taken away if the couple decides to have an extra child. Promises for new housing often are not kept because of housing shortages.

 The one-child program theoretically is voluntary, but the government imposes punishments and heavy fines on people who don't follow the rules. Parents with extra children can be fined, depending on the region, from $370 to $12,800 (many times the average annual income for many ordinary Chinese). If the fine is not paid sometimes the couples land is taken away, their house is destroyed, they lose their jobs or the child is not allowed to attend school.

 Sometimes the punishments seem more than a little over the top. In the 1980s a woman from Shanghai named Mao Hengfeng, who got pregnant with her second child, was fired from her job, forced to undergo an abortion and was sent to a psychiatric hospital and was still in a labor camp the early 2000s, There were reports that she had been tortured.

 Into the mid 2000s, authorities in Shandong raided the homes of families with extra children, demanding that parents with second children get sterilized and women pregnant with their third children get abortions. If a family tried to hide their relatives were thrown in jail until the escapees surrendered. One woman who said she had permission for a second child told the Washington Post she was hustled into a white van, taken to clinic, physically forced to sign a form and was given a sterilization operation that took only 10 minutes.

 Another woman told the Washington Post several of her relatives were thrown in jail when she was seven months pregnant and were denied food and threatened with torture and told they wouldn’t be released until the woman had an abortion. After she turned herself in, a doctor inserted a needle into her uterus. Twenty-four hours later she delivered a dead fetus. Another woman was forced to undergo a botched sterilization that left her with difficulty walking.

 Even high level officials are not immune from the policies. In April 2007, a Communist Party official in Yulin in Shanxi was fired for having too many children—three daughters with his wife and a son and daughter with his mistress.

Some parents who broke the one child policy have were required to pay their fine with grain: 200 kilograms of unmilled rice

Problems with the One-Child Policy The one-child policy clashes with local traditions. One farmer in Guangxi told the New

York Times, “Last year, I had a son, so now we can’t have any more. But the tradition here is big families and lots of sons. So no one is very happy.” In Guanxi friction over the one child policy has resulted in violence. Newspaper has reported several clashes between peasants and family planning officials.

 As the government has taken rice bowl benefits away from people, children are the only safety net they have.

 Files are kept on every woman of child-bearing age by the local councils, who are assisted by networks of informants. Women who have children without permission—and are found out—are often forced to have abortions or sterilizations. If they refuse to cooperate, thugs are sometimes sent to destroy their houses or beat them up. If they run away sometimes their parents or relatives are imprisoned.

 In some cases the basis for raises and promotions of local officials is based on how well they meet their population targets. This policy encourages officials to push forced sterilizations and forced abortion and mete out tough punishments to meet their quotas. In some places enforcement has been so harsh that the Family Planning Association has had to give out brochure that list the "seven don't" of population policy (don't beat up people who have an unplanned birth; don't burn their house down, etc.)

 Birth control policies vary a great deal from place and place, and the way the policy carried out can be quite arbitrary. When a peasant woman in Guizhou got pregnant with a third child, according to one report, the local authorities took her cow. When she bowed to pressure and had an abortion, she was charged half a year's income to get her cow back.

 Enforcement of one-child policies also varies greatly from place to place. In Guangdong Province many families have four or five children. They can get away with it because either the one-child policy is ignored of they can raise the money to pay the modest fines. In Guangxi, the policy is more strictly enforced. Family planning boards keep strict tabs on families. Rule bending is minmal. Families fear the consequences of breaking the rules because they are poor and have a hard time coming up with money for the fines.

Undocumented Children in China Additional children born to parents that have reached their one-child limit often have a

rough ride. Some are denied a birth certificate and proper documentation. This affects them for the rest of their life. Without proper papers these children cannot enter school, find work as adults or do most of anything legally.

 Parents involved in illegal political or religious activities are sometimes punished by denying their children birth certificates and documentation, even if they have only one child.

 Many parents with more than two children don’t declare all their children. A mother of three in a suburb of Beijing told the Independent she only declared her oldest child. "If I tell them the truth, are they going to reward me with a bonus?" she said. "Why invite trouble.”

 Undocumented children (also called "black permit" children) are children who are born and raised in secret and never registered with the government. To avoid detection by the Family Planning Association the children are shuffled around among uncles, aunts and siblings. Pregnant women who chose to hide in the countryside until they give birth are sometimes called "birth guerrillas."

 According to some estimated there are 6 million undocumented children in China. Most of them are believed to be girls. Many are the third of three daughters, who are sometimes referred to as "excess" children, and are secretly shuffled off to relatives.

Skirting the One Child Policy Families in rural areas, where children are needed to work family farms, are more

likely to break family planning rules than urban families. Migrants to the cities are 13 times more likely to break family planning rules than urban residents.

 To get around the one child policy, parents give birth abroad or pretend their first child is handicapped (loopholes allow them to have another legally) or get divorced and remarried. One entrepreneur had three successive “wives” in order to have more children.

 Some parents bribe doctors to document a second child as a twin to the first even though the second child was born years after the first one. There are stories about twins who were born 10 years apart. The practice is so common in the Guangzhou area that pregnant women are asked, “Is it you are first child or are you having twins?” Others get approval for a “second first child” by giving birth in a hospital that has no record of their first child. Others “park” second children with childless relatives or friends.

 Extra children are often tolerated and documented as long as parents pay the fine, which has become viewed more as a fee than a fine. Depending on the place and the situation the fine can vary between $370 and $12,800. One man who raised $1,200 from his family to pay teh fine for his second child told the New York Times, the authorities "didn't try to talk us out of it. They just wanted to be sure we would pay the fine."

 While the rules remained strictly enforced in large cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the rules were eased in medium-size cities and towns. By the mid 2000s, so many children had been born outside the rules, only one child in five was an only child.

Kidnapped Children and the One Child PolicySome of the children that end up in orphanages are believed to have been seized by

family planning officials and sold to orphanages, who in turn sell the babies to adopting parents, many from the United States, for around $3,000 in $100 bills. [Source: Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times, September 28. 2009]

A migrant worker from Hunan Province whose daughter taken in 2005 and later found to be living in the United States said, “Our children were exported abroad like they were factory products.” Orphanages that receive the money say the money goes for food, clothing, medicine and building upkeep but in most cases the babies are taken by foster parents who receive $30 month and the orphanages are grim places that look as if little money has been spent on them or their occupants.

Family planning officials may be able to impose fines and force abortions but they don’t have the right to seize children even though they tell villagers they do have the right and villagers believe them. In some cases the officials trick barely literate villagers into signing paperwork that hands over their children to orphanages. In other cases officials switched from seizing animals to seizing babies after they became aware that orphanages sold babies to adopting parents for $3,000.

The remote village of Tianxi in undeveloped Guizhou Province has been a target for family planning officials in search of children, There officials often showed up at least once a week—even though reaching the villages require a two hour trip on difficult mountains road and a hike into the mountains—keeping an ear out for crying babies and looking for diapers on cloth lines and other evidence of babies.

Victims of Kidnapped Children and the One Child PolicyThe mother of a four-month-old girl in Tianxi told the Los Angeles Times that one day in

2004 an official showed up at her doorstep, demanding that she “bring out the baby.” The woman was alone and unable to resist. As he walked to his car with baby the official told her, “I’m going to sell the baby for foreign adoption. I can get a lot of money for her.” In return he told her the family wouldn’t have to pay any fines for breaking the one child policy but warned her: “Don’t tell anyone.”

The grandmother of a four-month-old girl who was taken in 2003 in Huangxin village in Hunan Province by a dozen officer who raided her house told the Los Angeles Times, “they grabbed the baby and dragged me out of the house. I was screaming—I thought they were going to knock me over.”

A construction worker told the Los Angeles Times he knew his six-month-old daughter was taken to the Changsha Social Welfare Institute in Hunan Province. “They wouldn’t even let me in the door,” he said, For three year he tried to get in. Finally one day he told him, “It’s too late. Your daughter has already gone to America.”

The Tianxi cases were revealed by a teacher with relatives in Tianxi, He reported the seizing of babies to the police and a disciplinary agency, When he got no response he posted complaints on the Internet that were picked up by the national media.

Afterwards the teacher went into hiding out of fear of retaliation. The officials were based in the town of Zhenyuan, where orphanages had sent 60 children to the United States. The U.S. Embassy reported that the implicated officials were arrested but the officials involved told the Los Angeles Times no one was arrested or fired.

Other cases of child seizure have been reported in the village of Gaoping in Hunan Province by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. Some of officials there were relocated but none were arrested. None of the 15 sets of parents that lost babies got their children back. In some cases the victims have been migrant workers with only one child whose residency permits were not in order. One such worker described by the Los Angeles Times had his only child taken by men who raided his house when the child was being taken care of by grandparents.

Abandoned Children or Kidnapped Children?The practice of child seizure has raised questions about whether the children in

orphanages said to have been abandoned were really taken by authorities. Among the flags that something is not right are the fact that parents were said to have given up their children after taking long trek through the mountains in the winter and the fact that the suspicious children tend to be several month old. Brian Stuy, and American man researching the origin of adopted Chinese children, told the Los Angeles Times, “If you don’t want a girl, you give her up as soon as she is born.”

Ina Hut, the head of a Dutch adoption agency, told the Los Angeles Times, “In the beginning, I think adoption from China was a very good thing because there were so many abandoned girls. But then it became a supply-and-demand-driven market and a lot of people at the local level were making too much money.”

Stuy told the Los Angeles Times, “International adoption is creating the suction that causes family planning to take the kids to make money. If there was no international adoption and the state had to raise the kids until they turned 18, you would be sure family planning would not confiscate them.” People familiar with the issue say the best way to clampdown on the practice is to scrutinize where the money from the adopted parents goes.

One woman who had her baby seized and found out she was in America told the Los Angeles Times, “Everybody in the village adored her. She had big eyes like saucers and a smile for everybody she saw. I think of her all the time. I wonder if she looks like an American now.” Like others in her situation she realized it would be next to impossible for her Americanized daughter to come back and live with her in a poor Chinese village but she said she would like to know how her daughter was doing and maybe get a picture. “We’d like to know where she is...And we’d like her to know that we miss her and that we didn’t throw her away.”

Riots Against the One-Child Policy In May 2007, riots broke out in Bobai and Shabei counties in an “:autonomous” region

of Guangxi over attempt to enforce strict family-planning policies. Villagers protesting heavy fines for having extra children burned cars, damaged buildings and fought with police armed with guns and cattle prods. Between 300 and 3,000 people participated in demonstrations and attacks against government offices in four townships. Twenty-eight people were detained

 The riots were prompted by a campaign by government work teams who went from town to town and village to village fining anyone believed to have violated the one child policy. Tension did not abate until officials retreated and admitted possible wrongdoing.

 Members of the government work teams carried cattle prods and sledge hammers and imposes heavy fines on the spot and looted and ransacked home of people that could not pay and seized their farm tools, furniture and other valuables, even taking the windows and doors off their homes. In some cases men and women of childbearing age were forced to undergo forced sterilizations and pregnant women that already had children were forced to have abortions.

 Reuters interviewed one Bobai farmer who had six children with two wives had thought he was off the hook when he paid 2,000 yuan ($260) in fines to his townships government in 2004. He was shocked was given a one-page notice that he owed $15,500 —45 times the region’s annual income—in fines. “I already cleared this by paying 2,000,’ he said. “‘I told them ‘This government now wants 120,000 from me. Where am I supposed to get it?

People Allowed to Have Additional Children in China In 17 provinces, rural couples are allowed to have a second child if their first is a girl.

In the wealthy southern provinces of Guangdong and Hainan, rural couples are allowed two children regardless of the sex of the first. Minority groups such as Tibetans, Miao and Mongols are generally permitted to have three children if their first two are girls.

 Urban couples, who are generally satisfied with small families, are generally restricted to one child. Officials softened the one child policy in rural area where children are needed in the fields and infanticide appears widespread as a result of the preference for boys.

 In the Yunnan, where many minorities live, the birth rate was 17 per 1,000 residents, compared to four per 1,000 in Shanghai and five Beijing, and 12 for the country as a whole. So many children are being born in Yunnan that the government is offering cash for school tuition and higher pensions to those who stick with the one child policy.

 Parents of a child certified by a doctor as handicapped and couples with both members from single-child homes are also allowed to have an additional child. As children of single-child grow up they will be allowed to have more children.

Urban parents are permitted to have two children if the husband and wife were only children . The number of marriages made up of only children is increasing but many are not taking up the option of having a second child. One Beijing couple with a two-year-old son told the Times of London, “It cost more than 35,000 yuan ($5,125) a year just to leave our baby in a kindergarten. Why spend this amount of money on a second?”

Easing the One-Child Policy in China In the mid-1980s a rumor that the Chinese government was going to change its one

child policy caused the birthrate to skyrocket.

 By the late 1990s the draconian aspects of the one-child policy had largely ended. Second children were no longer banned from hospitals and schools. Reports of forced abortions, infanticide and forced sterilization which much fewer in number. The

government took a softer approach to convincing women to have one child: expanding health services, offering a choice of contraceptives. The unstated rule was that couples have two chances to get a son and third chance can be obtained by paying a bribe or a fine.

 In the early 2000s, couple with extra children was no longer forced to pay “fines”: they paid “social compensation fees.” Forced sterilizations and abortions were banned. In Shanghai, 11exemptions were added to the one-child policy, including easy approval for a second child and removal of long waiting periods and financial rewards for having one child. In some places rules have been changed to make it easier for married couples to have children. In other places the penalties having second children have been sharply reduced. The introduction of private schools has made rules preventing second children from obtaining places in school no longer such a dire threat.

 By the mid 2000s many upper class and nouveau riche families were routinely having two or even three children. The trend verged on becoming a fashion as a number of celebrities were photographed with two or three children. Even fines of $65,000 for extra children that exist in some cities are no problem for parents with lots of cash.

 There has been some discussion of publically shaming and creating “bad credit” files for rich and famous people who mock the one-child policy. One multimillionaire businessman in Beijing, with three children, said he wasm't worried about such threats. He told the Times of London: “I have plenty of money, and if I want to spend that money on having more children I can afford to.”

 A trend in rural areas is also producing more children. As farmers make more money they are marrying sooner and producing more children and giving birth to more daughters as the try to harder to have sons.

In December 2008, China announced it would raise the payments to one-child families in rural areas to $105 a year for $84 a year. The payments are given to parents who reach the age of 60 with either only one child or two daughters.

Ending the One Child Policy in ShanghaiBeginning in 2009, eligible couples in Shanghai were encouraged to have two children

in part to address concerns about taking care of an aging population. In Shanghai, people over 60 already make 21.6 percent of the population, and are expected to make up 34 percent in 2020, while the birthrate is less than one child per couple.

 In Shanghai, one-child policy posters were torn down and replaced with details about the new regulations and how to apply for permits. Xie Linli, director of Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, said, “We advocate eligible couples to have two kids because it can help reduce the proportion of the ageing people and alleviate the workforce shortage in the future.

 The response has been very disappointing. Few people have registered for the program and few additional babies have been born. Officials in Shanghai told the Washington Post they think that financial considerations are probably the main reason couples don’t want more children.

 Many attribute the lack of interest in having additional children to selfishness. A human resources manager and single child told the Washington Post, “We were at the

center of our families and used to everyone taking care of us. We are not used to taking care of others and don’t really want to take care of others.” The owner of a translation company said, “Ours is the first generation with higher living standards. We do not want to make too many sacrifices.”

Two-Child Policy? By the mid 2000s, most couples were eligible to have two children, either because

they lived in rural areas or were offspring from single-child homes. There was discussion of moving towards a two-child policy, seen by many as a sign that the Chinese were worrying more about the consequences of too few births than too many births.

 There were concerns that Chinese parents had become happy with the one-child policy and didn’t want to have extra children. A survey in Shanghai in 2004, found that 80 percent of the young people interviewed preferred to have just one child and 5 percent didn’t want any children at all. A 30-year-old editor told the Los Angeles Times, that she didn’t want to have any children because wanted to focus on her career and enjoy her free time. “Of course I may feel lonely when I’m old and be envious of people with children. But I will have earned much more happiness when I was young.”

Maintaining One-Child Policy in China In December 2006, the Chinese government said it had no plans to change its one-

child policy. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said that keeping the policy intact was critical to China’s modernization plans and improving the lives of people living in the countryside. In April 2007, the government said it would not loosen the one-child policy despite the problem of too many baby boys and not enough girls.

 The one-child policy is still taken very seriously. In January 2008, 500 Communist Party members were expelled from the party for violating the one-child policy. The officials came from Hubei Province, where 93,000 people, including hundreds of lawmakers and officials, were recorded as violating the policy.

 In March 2008, China’s top population official—Zhang Weiqing, minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission—said the one-child policy will remain in place at least until 2018. In a front page article in the People’s Daily he was quoted as saying, “The current family planning policy, a result of gradual changes in the past two decades, has proved compatible with national conditions. So it has to be kept unchanged at this time to ensure stable and balanced population growth...Given such a large population base, there might be major fluctuations in population growth if we abandoned the one-child policy now and it would cause serious problems and add extra pressure in social and economic development.” There had been some speculation the policy might be relaxed because of demographic pressures such as labor shortages and a graying population increasingly becoming a burden for the labor force.

Image Sources: Landsberger Posters http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/ Beifanhttp://www.beifan.com/Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

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Last updated April 2010

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