China's one-child policy - success or failure?

[nimo_cn]

How can a policy be a success when it is restricting a personal freedom and right given by nature?? This is a dismal communist failure. Chinese were so proud when they came up with policy but no other nation has adopted this idiotic policy.

LF, you should understand no one in China is proud of this policy, as you have pointed out it strips people of their rights to give birth. In many ways, such a policy is inhuman, so we are not proud that we had to come up with a policy like this to control the population of China.

You are totally right that no other nation has adopted such an idiotic policy, because no other country has ever faced a serious population explosion like the one in China.

I know many people condemn the birth control policy in China, criticising it is violating human rights.
Well, i agree with people on this one, abortion and sterilization, two methods commonly adopted in China in oder to control birth rate, are inhuman, disgusting, uncivilized, or whatever big words you want to use.

This is simply a truth, the good ends we try to achieve can not jutify the evil means we are employing.

But i am offering another perspective to look at this story, if people want to control the population, then certain actions have to be taken.
Anyone can come up with some other human but effective ways to curb the population explosion?

 

[nimo_cn]

Just imagine, with one child policy, there is only 1 grand kid for 4 grand parents and therefore stress on the grand kid to support the 4 grand parents and 2 parents will be that much more, talking in simplistic terms.

It is a little inaccurate to call it one child policy.

That one couple can only give birth to one child is confined to urban area.
In rural area, a couple is allowd to have two children if their first one is a girl, but an interval of several years is required between the two births.

And even in urban area there are exceptions, as long as both sides of the couple are only child, they are allowed to have a second baby.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Nimo this is a issue which is also a priority for India,there is no easy answer but this shows the pain and endurance of the Chinese people to adopt and implement such a stringent policy and follow it thru.

 

[amoy]

Always pros and cons. In fact no one likes to be deprived of the right in personal life.

Again that birth-control policy (or euphemism - family planning) has to be reviewed in the context of a monster developing country. u may say, in a certain period individual freedom has been depressed, discounted, or sacrificed for the sake of a bigger 'good' in China.

In addition to the downside pointed out , there're more social problems arising out of it , including -

1) Money talks - Parents (in some places) may pay a fine equivalent to income of a period (a year?) for the extra kid when having his/her hukou registered
(It's politically incorrect to say "the poor shall not have more children" but that seems true)

2) More boys than girls as a consequence of discrimination esp. in rural areas.

Wish to see it being abolished someday when it loses its ground...

 

[Rahul92]

In India we have a sharp fall in girls population during Independence in 1950's it was 978 women for 1000 men now it is 854 for 1000

 

[LETHALFORCE]

I have a friend who visited china recently and he says the gender gap has wealthy parents arranging contracts with parents of infant girls to be future wives for their sons,this practice is not confined to china but Chinese are also looking abroad. This is just one angle which many people do not even know about so there are social repercussions that are starting to ripple.

 

[gogbot]

It is a success in the Short term in that it has reduced Population growth.
Given our Current Technology , Capabilities and Production capacity their Population may now be more sustainable.

It is failure in the long term in that it has
-Lead to a Gender Imbalance 2:!(M:F)
-Left China with a largely aging population and too few Young people to support them.
It has also altered The social Structures in Such a manner that Generation will grow up without Brothers Or Sister. With Future Generations not Having Cousins , Uncles or Aunts.

India needs Population Control but One Child policy is not an option.
Family planning education , Social awareness and Other Schemes are available.
Liberty should not be so easily abandoned.

The Earths population will grow, not matter what we do or do not do. We are only prolonging the inevitable outcome with Thing's like the One child policy.
We will Outgrow the Earth Soon enough , technology presents the only long term Answer.

 

[nimo_cn]

Nimo this is a issue which is also a priority for India,there is no easy answer but this shows the pain and endurance of the Chinese people to adopt and implement such a stringent policy and follow it thru.

When confronting a population explosion, there are two options.
One is to sit tight and do nothing, hoping someday in the future it finally will dawn on people that they are having too many kids.
The other is to take forceful measures to make sure people do not have more children than necessary.
We all know the answer, China has taken the second option.

Without a doubt, it is painful to adopt and implement such a drastic policy. The pain lies not only in the process of the policy implementation (abortion and sterilization, and crackdown on people who refused to follow through), but also in the side effects caused by this policy (an aging demographic structure, imbalance sex ratio). And the latter ones raise more concerns.

There is a Chinese saying "长痛不如短痛", which can literally translate into "Instead of enduring a long pain, i would rather choose the short one"
If the does is nasty, swallow it fast. That is what we are doing. Certain generations have to endure the pain to save their offsprings from suffering more.

 

[nimo_cn]

I have a friend who visited china recently and he says the gender gap has wealthy parents arranging contracts with parents of infant girls to be future wives for their sons,this practice is not confined to china but Chinese are also looking abroad. This is just one angle which many people do not even know about so there are social repercussions that are starting to ripple.

I have never heard such thing. If someone is born in a rich family, he does not have to worry about his marriage at all.
There are plenty of "剩女"( lady who reaches the marriage age but does not get married) in the town.

 

[Rage]

Overall, a success.

There are some issues they have to resolve, but not demographically-deleterious enough to make them explosive just yet.

 

[tony4562]

Vietnamese brides are quite popular these days in China.

 

[tony4562]

The current population in China at 1.3 Billion is still way too high, it should be brought down to a level similar to America. Compared with US, China is similar in landmass, but has much less usable land, water, and lacks the easy access to the oceans America has. Yes, aging will be a problem, and future generations will have a heavy burden, that's the price to pay for Mao's mistakes. There is no way around it. Further more people are often surprised at how much modern industries as well as agriculture can produce with so little labour.

India's population is closely trailing China's. It has more arable land, but being in the tropics the land is not as fertile as China's (China churns out twice as much grain from less land), and indian women still have a fertility rate at around 3, on on top of that indian women tend to stay at home after marriage. So if you think India does not have a population problem, you are badly mistaken. India could easily see its population touching 2 Billion in 50 years, and still growing from there.

 

[tony4562]

Life expectancy is currently low in India, but it is reasonably to assume that with better food, hygine, medicin, its life expectancy will grudually raise, so aging will be a huge problem in India too. Low life expectancy has so far helped India to contain population growth, but for how long?

 

[luke]

Though I don't like this policy，but it is successful.My mother's family have 7 children，so does my father's family..Now almost all the families in my hometown have 2 children：1 son and 1 daughter.I come from rural area，it's impossible to force people just born one child.But ，frankly speaking，nobody plans to born more children.The pressure mainly come from the price to bring up the child，rather than the power of government.It's easy to get the 准生证（getting it means you can legally born child） ，you just need spend some money on it.To me，it's time to cancel it，because it has become one way for the government to collect money，rather than population control .

 

[luke]

As for India，I know many people care about freedom.But I think you guys need take some actions.Maybe it just needn't so radical like China.After all，your land is limited.