NO.

83 WINTER 2014

Chinas One Child Policy: Not yet in the dustbin of history

Kay Johnson
Editors note: The Chinese Government recently relaxed certain aspects of its One Child Policy, leading many to think that the abuses associated with itincluding forced abortion, government seizure of children, fines and coerced child abandonmentwill soon cease. In this DifferenTakes, China scholar Kay Johnson counters this assumption and discusses the deeply embedded coercive practices of the policy that have had grave consequences for womens and childrens rights. These systemic abuses will not go away until the policy is thoroughly abandoned and discredited. Outside of China environmentalists and reproductive rights activists need to take a much stronger stand against the policy. It was never necessary and is one of the gravest violations of basic human rights of the past 34 years. Betsy Hartmann and Anne Hendrixson

There has been a lot of speculation that Chinas One Child Policy is finally on the verge of significant change, that steps have

Think. Act. Connect.

For people, environment and justice.

been taken that signal an end to the 34 year old policy as we know itthe worlds longest, largest and harshest population control program. Although for many years demographers in China have criticized the policy behind closed doors for accelerating the aging of the population structure and exacerbating, if not creating, seriously skewed sex ratios, public criticism of the policy has finally emerged from various corners in the last few years, with a push for its relaxation. Several months ago the Birth Planning Commission was folded into the Ministry of Health, ending its special status that placed its power above the ministerial level.1 More recently a new loosening in the rules was announced, allowing a couple in which one is a singleton to have two children, whereas previously both members had to be

A publication of the

Population and Development Program

CLPP Hampshire College Amherst, MA 01002 413.559.5506 http://popdev.hampshire.edu Opinions expressed in this publication are those of the individual authors unless otherwise specified.

singletons. This is the most significant change to the original one child rule since the mid-1980s when most provincial regulations were revised to allow rural couples to have a second child four or five years after the birth of a daughter.

million additional births, an accomplishment that the government puts forward as an important Chinese contribution to efforts to mitigate global climate change.2 The figure is misleading, as it counts the dramatic 50% decline in fertility that occurred during the decade prior to the imposition While not discounting speculation that recent of the One Child Policy in 1980.3 It further assumes moves will soon lead to more significant change that all of the decline in fertility that has occurred and finally an end to the policy, can be attributed to the policy it is remarkable how little rather than to socio-economic Chinas population policies changes. Regardless of the The demographic have changed over the last 30 validity of the figure, the need distortions that will vex years, especially considering to control population in the China for decades to come how dramatically everything face of massive environmental have been well documented else in the country has changed challenges and the threat and oft-mentioned in the during this period of breakneck of global warming is used current debates inside economic development, to argue for great caution and outside China massive rural-urban migration, in relaxing the population accelerated population and social transformation. policy. This view gains aging, the worlds most These developments have all support from international skewed sex ratios at birth, contributed to drastically lower environmental activists who fertility, which hovers around 1.5 also see population control as the creation of an excess births per woman, according to an important measure in efforts male bachelor population estimates from the 2010 census. to mitigate global warming unable to marry, the decline and combat the problem of of the labor force, and the Yet most Chinese people, overpopulation. 4 creation of conditions rife whether allowed one or two for child trafficking and sex children, continue to live under The experience of Chinas trafficking. policies that impose strict limits population project should on the number and timing of caution strongly against this births, apply extreme pressure to line of thinking. It is unclear abort over-quota pregnancies, and, in many areas, how many births, if any, were averted by these mandate sterilization after a second birth. Ruinously policies, certainly no more than a small fraction high fines, equivalent to many times a households of what is claimed.5 But even if some births were annual earnings, and the loss of jobs in the public averted and Chinas population stabilizes at a sector continue to be imposed on violators. Altering slightly lower level, was it worth the enormous slightly the categories of people who may have an costs incurred by Chinese society and countless additional child does not change this inherently individuals over the last 34 years? coercive approach to peoples reproduction. Nor have any proposed changes yet touched upon the The demographic distortions that will vex China widespread practice of depriving the illegal outfor decades to come have been well documented of-plan children who are born without permission and oft-mentioned in the current debates inside of proper registration and hence their basic rights of and outside Chinaaccelerated population aging, citizenship, a widespread, three decade-old practice the worlds most skewed sex ratios at birth, the that clearly violates established constitutional creation of an excess male bachelor population principles of equality and childrens rights. unable to marry, the decline of the labor force, and the creation of conditions rife for child trafficking To justify this harsh policy, the government claims and sex trafficking.6 In addition to these larger that it has saved China and the world from 400 demographic problems, there are untold individual

DIFFERENTAKES http://popdev.hampshire.edu

No. 83 Winter 2014

human costs of the population project, costs that are less visible and poorly documented, costs borne by relatively powerless and voiceless rural parents and children. Some of the more dramatically brutal actions taken on behalf of birth planning restrictions periodically come to light, such as the forced late abortion of Feng Jianmei that went viral in July 2012.7 But the routine imposition of abortion, mandated sterilization, devastating fines, loss of jobs, and denial of citizenship rights to the children of those who violate birth planning regulations is still underreported. Although the numbers of people affected is no doubt smaller than in the past due to lower fertility desires, these coercive measures continue to affect unknown numbers of people every year. Over the last 30 years, millions of parents have lost children they wanted to raise due to population control pressuresthrough indirectly coerced abandonment and adopting-out to hide illegal births, through concealing children by sending them into hiding for decades, and through local government seizures of unregistered illegal children. Many families have lived on the run from birth planning officials in an effort to keep and live with their illegal children while avoiding unaffordable and fearsome penalties.8 Millions more children have spent their childhood without citizenship and basic entitlements to education and health care.9 Less known are the punishments and legal discrimination that domestic adopters of illegal children have faced in an effort to incorporate homeless out of plan children born to others into their families. My own research over 15 years has focused on those who have abandoned and those who have adopted out of plan children in the era of Chinas One Child Policy. Many of the parents who abandoned children in the wake of the fearful birth planning campaigns of the 1990s continue to suffer from guilt and loss. Fifteen years after her in-laws left her second infant in the dark of night at the gate of a police station, one woman quietly wept as she told us that all these years she has longed to know whether her beautiful baby was alive in this world so that her heart could finally rest. Another birth mother told how

the sky fell down on her the day seven officials descended on her home to seize her unregistered ten-month old baby girl, a hidden over-quota second child. The officials insisted the baby was a foundling who had been illegally adopted by her, an unintended consequence of her hiding her pregnancy, and was therefore subject to seizure. Her horrific experience would serve as a warning to others who might try to hide pregnancies or otherwise deceive authorities. Five years later, the shock and pain of that moment remains with the birthmother and haunts her dreams, although she is at least comforted by the knowledge that her daughter was adopted by a family that loves her, a family nonetheless unwilling to allow her to see her birth child. There must be many millions of unknown heartaches like these resulting from the dynamics created by coercive policy and relentless pressures on local officials to implement the regulations or lose their jobs and salaries, reinforced by financial incentives for meeting population quotas. Among other things, the use of birth planning fines to finance local government has deeply embedded these practices into the fabric of political life and habitual behavior, making many local officials loath to see an end to these policies.10 Despite the suffering and increasing criticism of the policies, there remain strong incentives up and down the 30-year old bureaucracy to resist significant change. These include a threat to political legitimacy long based on the narrative that the Partys One Child Policy, however painful, saved China from poverty and inevitable famine that would have resulted from the imaginary runaway population growth of the 1970s. This runaway population growth allegedly necessitated the One Child Policy. To rebuke the policy, even 34 years later, threatens to unravel that story, revealing the raw wounds and scars borne by so many people. It will take persistence and great determination to bring this population control regime to an end so that it may join the proverbial dustbin of history alongside other horrors such as the North Atlantic slave trade and Chinas Great Leap Forward, a political movement that created the worst famine in recorded history.

DIFFERENTAKES http://popdev.hampshire.edu

No. 83 Winter 2014

Outside of China, the most vocal critics of the One Child Policy have been anti-abortion activists. The failure of the international family planning establishment to take a strong stand against it unfortunately ceded the moral high ground to the Right. It is high time for reproductive rights advocates, environmentalists and all those who support basic human rights to speak out loudly and

clearly against the policy. There is no assurance that this recent reform will lead to its abolition. Moreover, all those who have suffered under the policy deserve that the historical record be set straight: the policy was never needed and it ranks among the worlds most serious human rights violations of the past 34 years.

Kay Johnson is Professor of Asian Studies and Politics and Director of the Hampshire College China

Exchange Program. She is author of Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption and Orphanage Care in China (2004), Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China (1983) and co-author of Chinese Village, Socialist State (1992), as well as numerous articles.

Notes
1. Laurie Burkitt, One Child Policy: Law Still in Effect, but Judges, Police Fired, Wall Street Journal China Real Time, March 12, 2013 http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/03/12/one-child-policy-law-still-in-effect-but-police-and-judges-fired 2. Mara Hvistendahl, Has China Outgrown the One Child Policy? Science, vol. 329, no. 5998 (Sept. 17. 2010), 1458-1461. 3. From 1970 to 1979 the estimated fertility rate fell from around 6 to 2.7, the biggest decline experienced in in China. 4. Betsy Hartmann, The Great Distraction: Overpopulation is back in town, Common Dreams, August 30, 2011, https:// www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/30-1, and The New Population Control Craze: Retro, Racist, Wrong Way to Go, On the Issues, Fall 2009, http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/2009fall/2009fall_hartmann.php. 5. Wang Feng, Yong Cai, and Baochang Gu, Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge Chinas One-Child Policy? Population and Development Review, vol. 38, S1, (2012): 115-129. Yong Cai calculates the figure is no more than 100 million, one-fourth of the oft-repeated government claim. Hvistendahl, Has China Outgrown the One Child Policy? 6. See for example Wang Feng, et. al., Population, Policy, and Politics: How Will History Judge Chinas One-Child Policy? 7. Hannah Beech, China: Forced-Abortion Victim Promised $11,200 but Family Fears for Life, Time World, July 13, 2012. http://world.time.com/2012/07/13/china-forced-abortion-victim-awarded-11200-fears-for-life/ 8. Ma Jian, The Dark Road (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), based on a year of investigative research, provides a fictional account of families on the run from village birth planning officials. 9. A recent example is Ning Hui, I was an illegal second child in China, The Atlantic, November 26, 2013. http://www. theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/i-was-an-illegal-second-child-in-china/281873/ 10. Edward Wong, Population Control is Called Big Revenue Source in China, The New York Times, September 26, 2013.

DIFFERENTAKES http://popdev.hampshire.edu

No. 83 Winter 2014