China's One Child Policy

Has China's one-child policy been successful? Not so, according to Wang Feng's 2005 article titled Can China Afford Its One-Child Policy?

Not only had the policy led to a downward spiralling birth rate, a growing number of elderly with inadequate family support, a widening gender imbalance, it had also resulted in increased female infant and child mortality rates, and the collapse of a credible government birth reporting system.

So much so that China had been singled out as the country "that has become old before it has become rich."

As Wang pointed out, in the 1990s alone, the budget allocated to birth control programs increased 3.6 times - from 1.34 billion yuan in 1990 to 4.82 billion yuan in 1998 - an increase that is said to be faster than economic construction or national defense. By the 1990s, population control had become so complex and multi-faceted, "where further modifications at local levels continued to produce numerous categories of exception, such that the policy's complexity had come to resemble that of the U.S. tax code."

Indeed, the wide range of concessions extended over the years meant that an estimated 37 per cent of the population are currently exempted from the one-child policy. The effect of the various policies had resulted in a Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of 1.47 - well below the 2.1 needed to keep the population at a stable level.

Wang argued that a policy more consistent with the wishes of the population would be easier to implement and drastically reduce organizational costs. It would also cut down the critical and increasing clamor for change from international human rights groups, as well as increase China's moral standing within the global community.

As Nicholas Eberstadt noted, it is unlikely that a gradual departure from the one-child policy over the next decade will lead to uncontrollable population growth. He argued in his article China's One-Child Mistake (2007) that like people elsewhere, the Chinese are rational people who seek to improve their circumstances, "not heedless beasts who procreate without thoughts of the future."

In Richard Jackson and Neil Howe's The Graying of the Middle Kingdom: The Demographics and Economics of Retirement Policy in China (2004), the shortage of brides had resulted in a growing market in foreign brides from North Korea and Vietnam, and a growing traffic in kidnapped ones.

North Korea? I guess this makes better sense in northeast China where large groups of ethnic Korean Chinese reside.

Jackson and Howe also added that historically, gender imbalance had played a role in igniting social unrest, for instance during the mid-1800s Nien Rebellion, where bands of surplus bachelors "turned to brigandage and insurrection."

And what happened to the countless fetuses that were aborted? According to Lucinda Richards Controlling China's Baby Boom (1996), some were, at least in the mid-90s, consumed by those (mainly women) who wanted to preserve their complexion. In the words of a fetuses-eater, "they are wasted if we do not eat them ... making soup is best." But an international furor in 1996 forced Hong Kong to ban the profitable trade in fetuses imported from China for use in traditional remedies and health foods.

If only Mao Zedong had known, he would perhaps turn in his grave! After all, he was the one who dismissed the Malthusian fear of runaway population growth as "bourgeois propaganda." Mao also maintained that people was the most precious resource because "every stomach comes with two hands attached."