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China's Former 1-Child Policy Continues To Haunt Families

The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children. Ran Zheng for NPR hide caption

The legacy of China's one-child rule is still painfully felt by many of those who suffered for having more children.

Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that may be disturbing.

LINYI, China — Outside, rain falls. Inside, a middle-school student completes his homework. His mother watches him approvingly.

She is especially protective of him. He's the youngest of three children this mother had under China's one-child policy.

Giving birth to him was a huge risk — and she took no chances. She carried her son to term while hiding in a relative's house. She wanted to avoid the "family planning officials" in her home village, just outside Linyi, a city of 11 million in China's northern Shandong province, where the policy's enforcement was especially violent.

What was she hiding from? What could the family planning officials have done to her? She demurs, her voice growing quiet. "All we can do is go on living," she says. "There is no use in trying to make sense of society."

A mother and a grandmother take care of a child in Beijing on Jan. 1, 2016. Married couples in China in 2016, were allowed to have two children, after concerns over an aging population and shrinking workforce ushered in an end to the country's controversial one-child policy. Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Her son is part of the last generation of children in China whose births were ruled illegal at the time. Anxious that rapid population growth would strain the country's welfare systems and state-planned economy, the Chinese state began limiting how many children families could have in the late 1970s.

The limit in most cases was just one child. Then in 2016, the state allowed two children. And in May, after a new census showed the birth rate had slowed, China raised the cap to three children. State media celebrated the news.

But the legacy of the one-child rule is still painfully felt by many parents who suffered for having multiple children. For some, the pain is still too much to bear.

"It has been so many years, and I have let the pain go," the mother of three says, eyes downcast. "If you carry it with you all the time, it gets too tiring."

A mother's quandary

One night in August 2008, the mother made a fateful decision. Her body was giving her all the telltale signs that she was pregnant — again.

She already had two children and had gone through four abortions afterward, to avoid paying the ruinously high "social maintenance fee" demanded from families as penalty when they contravened birth limits.

Medical staff massage babies at an infant care center in Yongquan, in Chongqing municipality, in southwest China, on Dec. 15, 2016. China had 1 million more births in 2016 than in 2015, following the end of the one-child policy. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

But this time she felt differently.

"I had already had two children but my heart just did not feel right," says the woman, now in her 50s, who works part time in a canning factory. NPR isn't using her name to protect her identity because of the trauma she suffered. "I thought this is it — if I do not have this child, my body will not be able to have any more."

Officials in her village were actively policing families under the one-child policy. Enforcement of the policy had begun to loosen by the early 2000s, as horrific stories of forced abortions and botched sterilizations caused policymakers to rethink the rule. But starting in 2005, the authorities began enforcing the policy with a renewed ferocity in Linyi.

So the mother went into hiding to carry her son to term. One night, family planning officials approached her husband, intending to pressure him and his wife into ending the pregnancy. He used a pickax to drive them off and was imprisoned for that for half a year.

An old friend of hers, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng , knows full well what she and tens of thousands of other women in Linyi city went through.

Chinese parents, who have children born outside the country's one-child policy, protest outside the family planning commission in an attempt to have their fines canceled in Beijing, on Jan. 5, 2016. For decades, China's family planning policy limited most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two if their first was a girl. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption

"The doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it," Chen says, drawing on recordings he made of interviews with hundreds of women and their families in Linyi. "Other doctors would artificially induce labor. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies."

The terror of such enforcement of birth limits was widespread in Linyi, even if residents were not themselves planning on giving birth.

"Officials would kidnap you if you tried to have two children. If you were hiding and they could not find you, they would kidnap your elder relatives and make them stand in cold water, in the winter," remembers Lu Bilun, a resident.

Lu says the harassment became so savage that elderly residents of Linyi became afraid to leave their homes out of fear they might be kidnapped. Lu says he paid a 4,000 yuan fine to have his second son in 2006 (about $500 at the time), after hiding his wife for months. "This was not your average level of policy enforcement. It was vicious," he says.

Chen, the lawyer, mounted a class action lawsuit on behalf of Linyi's women. The suit led to an apology from the authorities in Linyi and a reduction in the kidnappings, beatings and forced abortions.

Children ride a toy train at a shopping mall in Beijing, on Oct. 30, 2015. China's decision to abolish its one-child policy offered some relief to couples and to sellers of baby-related goods, but the government hasn't lifted birth limits entirely. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

But the Chinese government punished Chen for his activism by imprisoning him, then trapping him for nearly three years in his home , in a village just outside Linyi.

In 2012, Chen escaped by scaling a wall and running to the next village, despite being blind and having broken his foot during the escape. There, he was picked up by supporters and driven to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He was able to fly to the U.S . after weeks of tense negotiation. Today, he lives in Maryland with his family.

The price of defiance

"The policy was wrong and what we did with Chen was right," says a neighbor of Chen, the lawyer who sued the city of Linyi. The man wants to remain unnamed because he believes he could be harassed again for speaking of that time.

In the 1990s, he says, family planning officials ambushed him in his home at night and beat him with sticks in an effort to convince his wife to abort their third son.

Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng attends a rally to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre June 4, 2019, at the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Chen had been persecuted and detained in China after his work advising villagers and speaking out official abuses under the one-child rule. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

"Our country's leaders did not want us to have children and I didn't know why, but we could not do anything about it," he sighs.

He and his wife persevered and had three sons. They did not officially register the last two to avoid paying a fine, but the father says he still paid a bribe to family planning officials to avoid further harassment. These economic penalties depleted his life savings, a financial impact that compounded over the ensuing years.

The policy permeates through Chinese society in other, sometimes unexpected ways. Because many prioritized having a son over a daughter, orphanages experienced a surge in baby girls who were abandoned or put up for adoption. Single's Day, China's biggest online shopping holiday — akin to Black Friday in the U.S. — is a recognition of the many bachelors who are unable to find partners in a gender-skewed society.

"A very unbalanced population gender-wise has also led to a rise in property prices in major cities because families of men have bought apartments to make their sons eligible in a marriage market where there are millions of missing women," says Mei Fong , who wrote a book on the one-child rule. "These effects will be felt in the generation ahead."

A child walks near government propaganda one of which reads "1.3 billion people united" on the streets of Beijing, China, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. Ng Han Guan/AP hide caption

According to the census conducted last year, the population is aging and there are fewer young children and working-age people, a major demographic shift that comes with its own economic strains. That's pushing policymakers to consider raising the official retirement age — currently 60 for men and 55 for women — for the first time in 40 years.

Yet the authorities still only allow couples to have three children. Why won't China remove all caps?

"Despite all the overwhelming demographic evidence, they're saying, 'We need to control you,'" says the author, Fong. Anxious about already strained public education and health care systems, China's leadership is reportedly considering ditching limits entirely. It has been slow to completely dismantle its massive family planning bureaucracy built up over the past four decades. And according to an Associated Press investigation , it continues to impose stricter controls over births — including forced sterilizations — among ethnic minorities, like the Turkic Uyghurs.

Some demographers in China argue that instituting birth limits was necessary for keeping birth rates low. But Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cautions there is no definitive answer. "There is only one China and there is only one one-child policy, so it is kind of impossible to say the real effect of that was [of the policy]," he says.

Families were already having fewer children in the 1970s, before the policy took force in 1979. "The one-child policy was not the only thing that happened in China in the 1980s and 1990s," Gietel-Basten says. "There was also rapid urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, female emancipation and more female labor force participation."

A man and a child are reflected on a glass panel displaying a tiger at the Museum of Natural History in Beijing, Dec. 2, 2016. Andy Wong/AP hide caption

It was worth the cost

The fact that the children are alive at all makes Chen, the lawyer, feel his seven years in prison and house arrest were all worth it.

"I really feel happy. Even if I had to go to prison and endure beatings, in the end, these children were able to survive. They must be in middle school or high school by now."

The mother of one of these middle schoolers holds her son close. Part of the reason she demurred when first speaking to NPR was because of how dearly her family fought for his birth.

Her worries these days are more mundane. She wants to start preparing for her son's marriage — a costly endeavor as rural families expect the husband to provide a material guarantee for any future wife.

"That requires buying them a car, an apartment. No one can afford that," she complains.

Her job at a nearby canning factory refuses to hire her full time, she says, because she is a mother of three and needs to leave every afternoon to pick up her son from school.

And so, ironically, now that people are allowed to have more children, they are increasingly reluctant to, because of the high cost of child care and education.

"Women have it all figured out now — they won't have more kids even when they're told to have more!" the mother laughs helplessly.

"People act in funny ways," she says. "There is no point in controlling them."

• one-child policy
• Chinese society
• Chinese law
• Chinese population

Was the One-Child Policy Ever a Good Idea?

China’s “one-child” policy has been relaxed, and now married couples may have two children. But according to scholars, the damage is already done.

China’s infamous “one-child policy” came to an end in 2016, when family limits in the nation were raised to two children.

The policy was always controversial. Back in 2016, sociology scholars Wang Feng, Baochang Gu, and Yong Cai reported on  drastic measures that had been taken to enforce the former policy , including an alleged 14 million abortions, 20.7 million sterilizations, and 17.8 million IUD insertions, many of which may have been involuntary.

The greatest irony of this is that the policy may have been a misguided measure from the start.

The restriction on family sizes was introduced in the 1980s. According to Feng et al., the policy was meant to be a temporary way to slow population expansion and facilitate economic growth at a time when the nation “faced severe shortages of capital, natural resources, and consumer goods.”

But many say China may have seen its much-desired decline in fertility happen naturally. Feng et al. note that “the answer to China’s underdevelopment did not come from its extreme birth control measures, but from reform policies that loosened state control over the economy.” They continue:

China’s economic boom over the last few decades has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, sent almost 100 million young men and women to college, and inspired generations of Chinese, both young and old, to purse their economic goals…Contrary to the claims of some Chinese officials, much of China’s fertility decline to date was realized prior to the launch of the one-child policy, under a much less strict policy in the 1970s calling for later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer births (Whyte, Wang, and Cai 2015). In countries that had similar levels of fertility in the early 1970s without extreme measures such as the one-child policy, fertility also declined, and some achieved a level similar to China’s today.

A decline in fertility rates often accompanies these cultural shifts, as families focus on careers, invest in education and gain access to family planning services.

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Moreover, according to the scholars, the harmful one-child policy lingered too long. The one-child policy became a part of a larger social conversation that “erroneously blamed population growth for virtually all of the country’s social and economic problems.” This is a cultural psychological belief that will take much more than a government act to reverse.

Additionally, The Guardian reports myriad negative reactions to the removal of the policy. According to the article, exhausted mothers can’t imagine enduring the pressures of having more than one child in China’s fast-paced, high-pressure environment. Some women who had their child and then went back to work are suddenly now seen as a liability in their workplaces again because they might now leave to have an additional child. Sociologist Ye Liu told The Guardian that women she had interviewed in China “feel like they were experiments of the state. They were the experiments [under the one-child policy] and now they are another experiment. They feel like they are forever being used by the state laboratory.” Plus, a struggling economy has some parents wondering what the point of bringing another child into the world would be. One parent is quoted as saying, “It’s not that I’m worried about [my son’s] future. I have no hope for it at all.”

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The end of China’s one-child policy

Subscribe to this week in foreign policy, feng wang , feng wang former brookings expert, professor - sociology, university of california, irvine, professor - fudan university in shanghai baochang gu , and bg baochang gu yong cai yc yong cai.

March 30, 2016

Content from the Brookings-Tsinghua Public Policy Center is now archived . Since October 1, 2020, Brookings has maintained a limited partnership with Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management that is intended to facilitate jointly organized dialogues, meetings, and/or events.

Starting on January 1, 2016, all Chinese couples are allowed to have two children. This marks the end of China’s one-child policy, which has restricted themajority of Chinese families to only one child for the last 35 years. The process of ending the one-child policy occurred in three steps over the past three years. It began inMarch 2013, when China merged the National Population and Family Planning Commission with the Ministry of Health to create a new National Health and Family Planning Commission. Eight months later, in November 2013, China announced a partial policy relaxation that allowed couples to have two children if one parent is an only child. Surprisingly, among the estimated more than 11 million couples who were eligible to have a second child under the new rule, only 1.69 million had applied as of August 2015, accounting for 15.4 percent of such couples. The third and final step took place in October 2015 to allow all couples to have two children in 2016.

With this latest change, the Chinese state has begun to withdrawits hand fromcontrolling couples’ reproductive decisions. An even more significant change that was announced as part of the third step is that couples are no longer required to seek approval from the government to have a child, whether the first or second, but only to register the birth afterward.While the announcement stops short of lifting all restrictions, and the official language still contains the rhetoric of “continuing the basic state policy of birth control,” it would appear to be only a matter of time before Chinese families will be free to choose when and how many children to have.

The one-child policy was designed in 1980 as a temporary measure to put a brake on China’s population growth and to facilitate economic growth under a planned economy that faced severe shortages of capital, natural resources, and consumer goods. However, the answer to China’s underdevelopment did not come from its extreme birth control measures, but from reform policies that loosened state control over the economy. China’s economic boom over the last few decades has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, sent almost 100 million young men and women to college, and inspired generations of Chinese, both young and old, to purse their economic goals. As observed in many other countries and societies, socioeconomic and cultural transformations accelerated the pace of fertility decline. By the turn of the new century, China’s fertility was well below the replacement level, and China began to face the mounting pressures associated with continued low fertility. To continue the one-child policy within such a demographic context was clearly no longer defensible.

Unlike the rushed launch of the one-child policy in 1980, which was primarily a political decision based on little understanding of demography and society, researchers have played amuchmore active and meaningful role in calling for changes to end the policy. Scholars from leading institutions of population research in China formed an academic team in 2001. Their studies of China’s new demographic realities and the harmful consequences of continuing the ill-conceived one-child policy, and their three collective appeals to Chinese policymakers to relax and to end the one-child policy, in April 2004, January 2009, and most recently in January 2015, served as the basis for policy debates in China. Their efforts, along with efforts from many other sectors of society, informed the public of China’s new demographics and corrected the many misconceptions about population growth and the rationale for the one-child policy.

Yet, China’s policy change came at least a decade later than it should have. Changes to phase out the policy have been delayed because of leaderswho havemade population control part of their political legitimacy and a bureaucracy that has grown increasingly entrenched in the course of policy enforcement. In addition, the Chinese public has been thoroughly indoctrinated by the Malthusian fear of unchecked population growth and by a social discourse that has erroneously blamed population growth for virtually all of the country’s social and economic problems.

China’s one-child policy will be remembered as one of the costliest lessons of misguided public policymaking. Contrary to the claims of some Chinese officials, much of China’s fertility decline to date was realized prior to the launch of the one-child policy, under a much less strict policy in the 1970s calling for later marriage, longer birth intervals, and fewer births. In countries that had similar levels of fertility in the early 1970s without extreme measures such as the one-child policy, fertility also declined, and some achieved a level similar to China’s today. While playing a limited role in reducing China’s population growth, the one-child policy in the 35 years of its existence has created tens of millions, perhaps as many as 100 million, of China’s 150 million one-child families today. For these families, the harm caused by the policy is long-termand irreparable. Population aging in China is a burden not only for Chinese society as the support ratio between the working-age population and the elderly declines, but also for many of working age who are only children. Furthermore, China has had three decades of abnormal sex As a result, China now has a large pool of surplus men estimated at between 20 and 40 million.

The lukewarm response of couples to the partial relaxation in the second step largely confirmed findings from a pilot study in Jiangsu Province in 2007–2009 that very low fertility in China is more the result of choice than of policy restrictions. Other societies in EastAsia, like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, andHong Kong, have had little success in boosting their lowfertility evenwith pronatalist and pro-family policies. The end ofChina’s one-child policy therefore is unlikely to increase births in China by a significant number in the years to come.

What China has practiced under the one-child policy is clearly not voluntary family planning. To enforce the policy, China carried out massive sterilization and abortion campaigns. In 1983 alone, a year with about 21 million births in China, 14.4 million abortions, 20.7 million (predominantly female) sterilizations, and 17.8 million IUD insertions were performed. A large proportion of these procedures were involuntary.

Future generations will likely look back at China’s one-child policy with bewilderment and disbelief. To many it will be incomprehensible why, of all countries that faced the challenge of rapid populationgrowth inthe second half of the twentieth century, onlyChinawent to such an extreme; incomprehensible why in a society based on respect for the family, kin, and filial piety, the government enforced a policy that effectively terminated many kin ties for at least a generation; incomprehensible why China instituted such a policy after the country had already experienced substantial fertility decline; and incomprehensible why China waited so long to end such a harmful policy. The costly lessons to be learned are not only in politics and public policymaking, but also in how parts of the academic community informed and misinformed public policymaking.

While there are lessons to be learned from the misadventure of the one-child policy, it is worthwhile to recognize the importance of voluntary family planning services in reducing and averting unplanned childbearing and especially in improving the lives of women and children and in increasing gender equality. Access to safe, voluntary family planning services is a basic human right. The rapid fertility decline in China and around the world over the last half century would not have been possible without family planning services. Even in China, the government began to realize the central role of women in reproductive decisions and started to pay attention to the quality of family planning services in the 1990s. With the ending of the one-child policy, there is a clear and urgent need for re-education of China’s family planning and health service apparatus toward empowering couples to make informed choices about their fertility. China should continue providing free and safe access to voluntary family planning services and keep its focus on quality and on women’s reproductive health.

This piece was originally published in the journal of Studies in Family Planning .

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What Was China's One-Child Policy? Its Implications and Importance

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What Was China's One-Child Policy?

Introduced by the Chinese government in 1979 and formally ending in 2016, the one-child policy was a method of controlling the population. The policy mandated that the vast majority of couples in the country could have only one child. The phrase “one-child policy” was used often outside China but it can be a bit misleading. The rule didn't apply to all. Exceptions were frequently made and local officials had discretion over how population limits were achieved.

These collective efforts were nevertheless intended to alleviate the social, economic, and environmental problems associated with the country's rapidly growing population. The rule was phased out beginning in 2015.

Key Takeaways

• The Chinese government imposed its one-child policy in 1979 as a method of controlling the population.
• The one-child policy prevented about 400 million births in China according to estimates.
• The policy was enforced through a mix of incentives and sanctions.
• It was introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 2015, formally ending in 2016.
• The one-child policy had important consequences for China's demographics.

Understanding China's One-Child Policy

The one-child policy refers to a set of laws implemented in China beginning in 1979 in response to explosive population growth that government officials feared would lead to a demographic disaster. China has a long history of encouraging birth control and family planning. The government began promoting birth control in the 1950s when population growth started to outpace the food supply.

China’s population was quickly approaching one billion by the late 1970s, however, and the Chinese government considered ways to curb population growth. This effort began in 1979 with mixed results but was implemented more seriously and uniformly in 1980 when the government standardized the practice nationwide.

There were exceptions, however, including ethnic minorities, for those whose firstborn was labeled as disabled, and for rural families whose firstborn was not a boy.

The policy was most effective in urban areas because those in China’s agrarian communities resisted it to a greater extent.

The one-child policy was initially meant to be a temporary measure but it may have prevented up to 400 million births in the end. China ultimately ended its one-child policy after it became apparent that it might have been too effective. Many Chinese were heading into retirement and the nation’s population had too few young people to provide for the older population’s retirement and healthcare while sustaining continued economic growth .

The Chinese government announced on Oct. 29, 2015 that the mandated policy was ended. Its rules were slowly relaxed to allow more couples fitting certain criteria to have a second child. All couples are permitted to have two children as of 2024.

Several methods of enforcement were used, including incentives and sanctions that varied across China. There were financial incentives and preferential employment opportunities for those who complied. Those who violated the policy faced economic and other sanctions. The government employed more draconian measures at times, including forced abortions and sterilization.

The one-child policy was officially discontinued in 2015. The efficacy of the policy itself has been challenged, however, because population growth generally slows as societies gain in income as happened in China during this time. The death rate declined, too, as the birth rate declined in China and life expectancy increased.

One-Child Policy Implications

The one-child policy had serious implications for China's demographic and economic future. China's fertility rate stands at 1.6 in the early 2020s and it's among the lowest in the world. The U.S. is at 1.7.

China has a considerable gender skew in the 2020s. Its population includes roughly 3% to 4% more males than females. China had a rise in the abortion of female fetuses, the number of baby girls left in orphanages, and even infanticides of baby girls with the implementation of the one-child policy and the preference for male children.

This continues to affect marriage and birth rates around the country with fewer women of childbearing age in China. The drop in birth rates meant fewer children, which occurred as death rates dropped and longevity rates rose. It's estimated that the share of adults ages 65 and older will have risen from just 12% to a projected 26% by 2050.

Older parents will be relying on their children to support them and they'll have fewer children to do so. This is compounded by the massive urbanization of China since 1980 with those living in urban areas increasing from 19% in 1980 to 60% in the 2020s. China is also facing a potential labor shortage and will have trouble supporting this aging population through its state services.

The policy led to the proliferation of undocumented, non-first-born children. Their undocumented status makes it impossible for them to legally leave China. They can't register for a passport and they have no access to public education. Their parents were fined or removed from their jobs.

Does China Still Have the One-Child Policy?

No. China reverted to a two-child policy after its one-child policy was terminated in 2015 and its restrictions were gradually loosened before it officially ended in 2016.

Did China's One-Child Policy Increase Its Economic Growth?

China's one-child policy could have contributed to economic gains by initially reducing population growth and creating a larger working-age population relative to children. This would have boosted productivity and savings.

Countries with increases in national wealth tend to have population growth that slows down, however. The increase in economic growth in China may have helped reduce the number of Chinese newborns over this time, not the other way around.

The long-term effects of these demographic shifts that occurred from about 1979 to 2015 include a shrinking labor force and a greater proportion of the population that's retired. This posed challenges for continued economic growth and the social safety net.

Is China Now Encouraging the Birth Rate?

Yes. China has implemented or increased parental tax deductions, family leave, housing subsidies for families, and spending on reproductive health and childcare services to increase the national birth rate since ending the policy. The Chinese government also promotes flexible work hours and work-from-home options for parents.

Most interesting are policies one wouldn't consider to be related to the birth rate at first glance. They include banning private tutoring companies from profiting off teaching core subjects during weekends or holidays. China is attempting to reduce the burdens of parenting by lowering educational pressure on children and this often costly financial load on parents.

Parents may feel better able to handle additional children when they have greater financial security. Families can spend more time together, fostering greater family connections by reducing pressure academically, especially on weekends and holidays.

What Happened If You Broke the One-Child Policy?

Violators of China's one-child policy could be fined, forced to have abortions or sterilizations or lose their jobs.

China's one-child policy was implemented as a method of controlling the population. It was a set of laws related to population growth that were implemented in 1979, representing one of the more draconian modern attempts to intervene in a country's rising demographics.

The Chinese population did slow but the policy also resulted in unintended consequences such as an aging population , gender imbalance, and a shrinking workforce. Its discontinuation in 2015 and subsequent measures to encourage higher birth rates reflect China's complex challenges in balancing population control with sustainable economic and social development.

Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. " China’s One Child Policy ." Page 1. 

National Library of Medicine. " The Effects of China’s Universal Two-Child Policy ."

Library of Congress. " China’s One Child Policy. "

Howden, David and Zhou, Yang. “ China’s One-Child Policy: Some Unintended Consequences .” Economic Affairs, 34/3, pp. 353-69.

The New York Times. " China Ends One-Child Policy, Allowing Families Two Children ."

Wasserstrom, J.N. "China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 81-84.

The World Bank. " Fertility Rate, Total (Births per Woman) - China ."

Pew Research Center. " Without One-child Policy, China Still Might Not See Baby Boom, Gender Balance ."

Gao, Fang and Li, Xia. " From One to Three: China’s Motherhood Dilemma and Obstacle to Gender Equality ." Women, 2021, pp. 252-266. 

Population Reference Bureau. " Aging and Health in China: What Can We Learn From the World’s Largest Population of Older People? "

United Nations. " Revision of World Urbanization Prospects ."

World Health Organization. " Ageing and Health in China ."

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Good Argumentative Essay On Chinas One Child Policy

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: Government , Policy , Countries , Children , Economics , China , India , Population

Words: 1500

Published: 02/21/2020

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One child policy in China was formulated in 1979 and took effect on the same year. Officially known as the ‘family planning policy’, one child policy requires couples who stay in urban areas to have only one child. This restriction does not, however, extend to persons who live in the rural areas of China. Other exceptions to the one child policy include persons who are from ethnic minorities as well as twins. Recent research indicates that as at 2010, approximately thirty six percent of the Chinese population lived in urban areas and were thus subject to the one child policy. It is instructive to note that Hong Kong and Macau which are special administrative regions of the Peoples’ Republic of China are exempted from the one child policy rule. Foreigners who are live in China are also not subject to the rule. The policy was initially formulated with the aim of ultimately reducing or even eliminating various challenges that China faced. These included socio-economic and environmental problems. In other words, the regime at the time was concerned that China’s runaway population growth would stifle growth in other spheres such as the economy. This was because China was already a country with a high population whose needs it could not adequately cater for. Thus, the regime identified the one child policy as one the useful measures that would go long a way in containing China’s population growth and in the process allow room for development in other spheres of the Chinese society. Opinion is divided as to the success of China’s one child policy. Indeed, scholars have advanced arguments both in support of and against the one child policy. Some of the arguments that have been advanced against the one child policy include the fact that it has led to human rights violations as it restricts a couple’s right to exercise their freedom of choice as far determining the optimum size of their family is concerned. Another argument that has been advanced against the one child policy is that it has led to an increase in the number of abortions and infanticides. The increase in the number of abortions has been significantly attributable to unplanned or unwanted pregnancies where the couples already had one child and were thus barred by the policy from having a second child. Such couples resorted to abortion so as not to face the sanctions that would have arisen as a result of the violation of the policy. Infanticide, as the name suggests, refers to the crime of killing an infant. Scholars have argued that the one child policy contributed to increased cases of infanticide in China. This is because as research as shown, there is preference for the boy child in the Chinese society. Thus, with only one attempt at getting a boy child, couples who instead got a girl at times resorted to killing the girl. This would avail them an opportunity to try and get a boy and still remain within the purview of the one child policy. The above highlighted examples are among some of the arguments that have been advanced against China’s one child policy. There are equally positive aspects of the one child policy restriction. Indeed, this submission contends that a juxtaposition of the advantages and disadvantages of the one child policy which is accompanied by a careful analysis of the arguments put forth in either side will reveal that its benefits outweigh its disadvantages. Succeeding sections of this submission will seek to illustrate this point by highlighting arguments that have been advanced in support of the one child policy in China. The submission is thus generally in support of the one child policy rule. One of the arguments that has been advanced in support of the one child policy is that it has helped to contain population growth in China. Government authorities and independent scholars have differed on the exact number of births that have been prevented as a result of the one child policy. While government figures put the figure at over 400 million births between the years 1979 to 2011, independent scholars quote a much lower figure of 100 million births. However, it must not be lost that the common strand that runs along both the position advanced by the independent scholars and the government authorities in China is that the one child policy has gone a significant deal in reducing the number of births in China. In essence, it has been an efficient tool in controlling population growth in urban centers in China. This has in turn enabled better planning in these urban centers as the authorities are able to forecast the population growth and plan accordingly. Amenities in such areas are also not overstretched as is the case in other countries with large populations that did not take decisive measures such as the one child policy in order to contain population growth. China is one of the countries that have experienced phenomenal economic growth over the past thirty years. Indeed, some scholars and economists have argued that it will overtake the United States in the next couple of years to become the most significant economy in the world. Research has shown that there is a correlation between China’s economic growth over the years and the one child policy rule. According to the research, countries that have high birth rate tend to have slower economic growth while countries that have a low birth rate tend to have a higher economic growth. China’s one child policy led to reduction in the birth rate from 2.63 births per woman in 1980 to 1.61 births per woman in 2009. The reasons that have been attributed to higher economic growth as a result of the one child policy include the fact that the lower birth rates have led to higher levels of schooling per child and the fact that by having fewer children, parents are able to spend more of their time providing labour and thus generating revenue and income. Perhaps a more clear illustration of the effect of the one child policy on economic growth could be attained by making a juxtaposition of India and China. Both India and China are members of the BRICS, countries which are touted to be the next global economic powers as a result of the high growth rates of their economies. While both China and India have high populations, China has been able to consistently attain higher economic growth rates than India. One of the differences between the two countries that has contributed to China’s relatively better economic performance is the fact that China, through the one child policy, adopted measures to control population growth. India did not adopt such measures and although it continues to register economic growth, such growth is not in the same range as that which is experienced in China. This is a clear illustration of the effect of containing population growth on positive economic growth. One of the remarkable achievements of the one child policy is that it has helped to prevent overpopulation in China. As indicated in earlier sections of this submission, China is already country with a high population, thus, compared with other countries which have a smaller population; it stands a great risk of being over populated. The one child policy has come in hand to prevent population and all its attendant challenges. As various scholars have rightly argued, challenges that accompany overpopulation in any given country have gravely detrimental effects to the well-being of such a country. Apart from being a serious impediment to economic growth, overpopulation is associated with such challenges as epidemics, poor housing conditions characterized by the mushrooming of slums, overstretching of social services and pressure on the environment due to reduced land that is available for use per person. While China faces some of these problems, the one child policy has significantly aided in reducing their magnitude. Subsequently, people have a better quality of life. This is arguably better than situations where there is high population but the citizens have a low quality of life. It is clear that the one child policy has benefitted both the state and the individual citizen. The state is able to plan better and implement such plans while the individual is able to live a much more comfortable life. In conclusion, this submission contends that although controversial, the one child policy has proved its worth over time. Adoption of the policy was step in the right direction.

Works Cited

Hesketh, Therese, Li Lu and Zhu Wei Xing. "The Effect of China's One-Child Family Policy after 25 Years." New England Journal of Medicine (2010): 1171-1176. Putten, Jann Chrsitoph von der. Moral Issues and Concerns about China's One-Child Policy. Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2010. Rosenzweig, Mark R. "Do Population Control Policies Induce More Human Capital Investment? Twins, Birth Weight and China's “One-Child” Policy." The Review of Economic Studies (2009): 1149-1174.

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