1. Tuesday,September 28, 2010
One-Child Policy in China: No End in Sight
By Matthew Robertson
Epoch Times StaffCreated:Sep 28, 2010LastUpdated: Sep 28, 2010
Related articles: China > Democracy and Human Rights
One-Child Policy Victim: Ke Chengping (R),a woman from Shanghai,was forced to have an abortion and be
sterilized as a resultof the Chinese regime's one-child policy.(Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)
As the one-child policyin China approached its 30-year anniversaryon Sept. 25, an internal debate could be seen
playing out in the Chinese media:was the policy a good or bad thing for the country? Should or should itnot be
rescinded?
That was put to rest over the weekend,when population czar Li Bin gave the one-child policythe Chinese Communist
Party's stamp ofapproval by thanking the people of China “for their supportofthe national course.”
“So we will stick to the family-planning policyin the coming decades,” she said.
For Reggie Littlejohn,the announcementthatthe policy would continue came as no surprise.
Littlejohn is presidentofthe NGO Women’s Rights WithoutFrontiers and a longtime campaigner againstthe policy, in
particular againstthe often coercive and cruel means used to forcefully implementit.
Official Distraction
“It…confirm[ed]what I've said all along—China will stick with its One Child Policy for the indefinite future," Littlejohn
wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
“I mentioned atthe time, and I continue to believe, that the Chinese governmentstrategicallyfloated the rumor that
China is loosening up on the policy to coincide with the release ofChen Guangcheng and his continuing house
arrest,in order to distractfrom that situation.”
Chen Guangcheng is a blind activist who campaigned on behalf ofwomen who were forcefully sterilized and had their
children forcefully aborted.After years of harassmenthe was putthrough a kangaroo court and jailed for four years.
On Sept. 8 he was released after serving the sentence,and then put under house arrest.
Prior to the announcementto continue the policy, Xinhua, the official news agencyof the Chinese CommunistParty
(CCP), published a piece thatlavished praise on the one-child policy. It stated that the Central Committee’s letter
announcing the policy30 years ago “became a milestone in China’s population control and birth control,” and that the
birth control policy “effectively curbed the overly rapid population growth,and in turn promoted economic
development,societal progress and improvementofpeople’s livelihood.”
The People’s Daily,another state mouthpiece,struck a different tone, arguing that China’s population growth is facing
an unprecedentedlycomplexsituation.It said the country’s population remains huge,its demographic profile needs to
be improved,and the gender ratio of newborns is highlyunbalanced.

2. One-Child Policy Crusader:US Congressman Chris Smith holds a press conference in frontof the Capitol building in
Washington,DC,criticizing the one-child policy,on September 24,2010.(Lisa Fan/The Epoch Times)
Reflecting on Damage Done
The 30-year anniversaryof the one-child policywas an opportunity for foreign observers to look back at the legacy it
has wroughtover the years.
On Sept. 24, outside the Capitol building in Washington,D.C., Congressman Chris Smith led a news conference to
that end.
Congressman Smith described itas “a cruel and inhumane policy,a human rights violation that is,in scope and
seriousness,the worsthuman rights abuse in the world today.”
Ke Chengping,a woman from Shanghai and victim of the policy, spoke at the event. During her factory’s annual
physical exam, Ke had found that she was pregnant.She had begged the staff at the Birth Control Office to allow her
to keep the baby, but instead she was immediatelyhospitalized for a forced abortion.
A doctor performed the operation with no anesthetic,and sterilized her via inserting a sterilization device without
seeking her permission.Ke said she was deeplytraumatized by the experience.
Apart from individual harm,the policy and its coercive implementation have created numerous social problems,critics
say. They point to the badly skewed ratio of males and females,the 500 female suicides in China per day, and the
rise in sex-trafficking because Chinese males lack female partners.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/43327/
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/features/fong09012004.html
China's One-Child Policy Comes of Age
The Research of Assistant Professor Vanessa Fong
Harvard Graduate School of Education
September 1, 2004
by Leslie Brokaw
The Chinese government initiated an aggressive and experimental policy in 1979, requiring that urban families
limit themselves to one child each. This was a huge change: Chinese women averaged six births a piece in
1970, and parents traditionally relied on a large number of offspring to provide an economic security blanket.
The purpose of the initiative, says HGSE assistant professorVanessa Fong, was to help the country leapfrog
from a Third-World economy into the First-World economy by mimicking First-World fertility and education
patterns.
Assistant Professor
Vanessa Fong

3. Now, 25 years later, China has its first generation of what Fong calls "singletons," or
only-children. These teens and young adults have had both education and the attentions
of their parents lavished upon them, and, in urban areas, they have nearly universally
been primed for good, white-collar jobs. The challenge, however, is that the economic opportunities in the
country have not kept pace. As a result, the weight of expectation—both the expectations of the 20-somethings
and the expectations of their parents—is, Fong says, nearly crushing.
"In a way, the country wanted to have their cake and eat it, too," Fong says. They wanted children with
traditional assumptions about their responsibilities to the family, humility, and self-sacrifice, in addition to
modernized ambitions—an unrelenting drive to become the elite. As this generation enters the work force, few
are getting what they were promised, Fong explains. "Once they imagined themselves as part of the First
World, thinking 'I'm going to go to the best university, sacrifice all my leisure time and friendships, and
become really wealthy,' there is no way they are also going to think 'but, if I don't get it, oh well, I'll just be
happy and won't complain.'"
An anthropologist born in Taiwan and raised in California, Fong began her
research in 1997, working with 107 families in the coastal city of Dalian as a
tutor. In 1999, she surveyed 2,273 Dalian teens. The results of her study will
be published in a forthcoming book, Only Hope: Coming of Age Under
China's One-Child Policy.
Fong found a generation that has had countless family dollars poured into its education. Students in Dalian, for
instance, pay as much as $4,375 for private school. This in a city, Fong says, where most families are on tight
budgets. Poor families, she estimates, have annual incomes of about $900, and families identifying themselves
as wealthy make just $3,750. Many parents sacrifice their diets for their children’s education, trimming down
to two meals a day in order to provide their children with snacks during the schoolday. Add to that books,
computers, semi-mandatory night classes, and tutors. Jockeying for the best private tutor, Fong says, is
perceived as immensely important to a student’s academic success; tutors and teachers who develop strong
track records in helping children pass important entrance exams earn a lifetime network of connections that are
unheard of in the U.S.
Schoolis mandatory only through junior high, and, in previous generations, only the most talented son—or, in
rare cases, daughter—was sent to high schooland college. Today, however, nearly all urban singletons stay in
school. The result is nationwide diploma inflation; jobs that a young adult secured only ten years ago with a
vocational degree, such as a bank teller, now require four years of college. This is confusing to young adults,
says Fong, and it's not any easier on their parents.
In just 30 years, people aged 65 or older are projected to make up 22 percent of China’s population. These
older adults will have been counting on the fortune from their children's hard-earned schooling to provide for
their retirement. With only one child and no national social security plan, this responsibility will likely fall on
the shoulders of a generation unable to fulfill it. In addition to borrowing the First World’s most profitable
fertility and education patterns, China may find itself inheriting the First World’s inequalities, frustrated
aspirations, and social welfare struggles.
(© 2004 Andrew
Brilliant / Brilliant
Pictures, Inc.)
"In a way, the
country wanted
to have their
cake and eat it,
too," Fong says.