Life or Death?
In 1979, Communist China adopted the "one-child policy" in an attempt to limit their population growth. It limited couples to one child. Second or subsequent pregnancies would result in fines, pressures to abort the pregnancy, and even forced sterilization.
Recently, China welcomed its 1.3-billionth citizen -- an 8-lb. boy -- and declared their controversial one-child policy a success. China's population rate has fallen from 5.8 children per family in the 1970s to 1.8 today. The charge has been laid, however, that the policy has led to a huge gender imbalance. Many Chinese favour boys and so couples abort females or give up infant girls to foreign adoption.They may also neglect to give girls proper care, causing many of them to die before their first birthday. In an attempt to counter-balance this trend, China now proposes to make the abortion of female fetuses a criminal offence. Rather ironic, dont you think? I wonder how many innocents died because of them, before they decided on this one-eighty?
Recently, China welcomed its 1.3-billionth citizen -- an 8-lb. boy -- and declared their controversial one-child policy a success. China's population rate has fallen from 5.8 children per family in the 1970s to 1.8 today. The charge has been laid, however, that the policy has led to a huge gender imbalance. Many Chinese favour boys and so couples abort females or give up infant girls to foreign adoption.They may also neglect to give girls proper care, causing many of them to die before their first birthday. In an attempt to counter-balance this trend, China now proposes to make the abortion of female fetuses a criminal offence. Rather ironic, dont you think? I wonder how many innocents died because of them, before they decided on this one-eighty?
5 Comments:
Something that occurred to me about this one-child policy was what the future holds for the Chinese society, given that it is highly male dominated, with a engineered society of higher male to female ratio. Many boys would not be able to find their significant others later on becuase there just wouldn't be enough girls to go around. It's just such a short sighted policy overall. Enjoyed your blog btw-surfed in through BE.
China will be paying for its one-child policy. It's not as successful as the Chinese government that does-no-wrong would have you believe.
China now faces what is known as the "4-2-1 phenomenon." That's four grandparents, to two parents to one child -- one child to support two aging parents and four elderly grandparents. 14% of mainland China's population is over 60-years of age -- a figure that is expected to grow in the coming decades. China is still a relatively poor country, with per capita earnings of $1,000/year (US dollars). Around 80% of the population doesn't have formal pensions, and those that do, primarily state-enterprise employees, aren't expecting much because of mismanagement of pension funds.
Thanks to its one-child policy, China is effectively putting itself into economic danger in the future.
See more at my blog.
There's already been negative implications on the on-child policy. I've read stories about issues of gender imbalances. As Sue pointed out, many males (especially those who grew up in small villages) who are now grown have a hard time finding wives since there are so few females, and some have take to marrying relatives. One young man married his cousin, and another married his sister.
What's so bad about this?
They had a problem, so they came up with a solution. Now they have another problem, so have come up with another solution.
What they are doing is using logic to form sensible, workable solutions.
Areas of India have the same gender-imbalance issue, and now have forbidden the use of ultrasound to determine the sex of a fetus. It has become so bad in some of those areas that girls don't even need dowrys to get married these days! (do you believe it?!)
As for China, the policy had another known bad effect for them: those who were smart enough got out so they could have the kids they wanted. Both my husband and I, who work in highly technical fields, work with Chinese who have come here, in major part, because they wanted to have families.
China's loss, USA's gain.
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