One Child Policy and Gendercide in China

As we know, there is a huge population, which is 1.3 million in China. The huge population not only reduced the average income and made the cities more crowed. For this reason, Chinese government passed the One Child Policy to strictly limit the growth of the population.

In fact, Chinese government did not limit the growth of the population at the begining; on the contrary, Chairman Mao believed more population meant more power, soldiers and labor. It should be good for the country as he thought. Therefore, Mao encouraged families to reproduce more to contribute for the country. As a result, one family usually had born seven to eight children. For instance, my grandma, who was 80 year-old, had eight kids. My father is her fifth child. At the period of Mao, one expert, Yinchu Ma already suggested Mao that according to the trend of growth, the population would be a serious problem in the future; however, Mao did not accept his idea because Mao ignored that the resource in a country was limited. 

Until now, one child policy has already executed for about 30 years. We cannot say this policy is totally wrong as general opinion because all the countries criticizing it will not share the pressure of the growth of population. One American president told Deng Xiaoping, one prior leader of China that one child policy violated human rights. Deng asked him, “If I gave you 0.2 billion Chinese immigrants, do you accept?” The president kept silence.This strict policy does work on reducing the population growth rate. According to the statistics, in 2030, the population will reach 1.5 billion, and start negative growth. At the same time, this policy also caused a series of problems.

It violated the reproductive right of families. At the initial stage of one child policy, women were forced to do abortion although now they are not allowed to do that in law. Sometimes, the fetuses might live if they were delivered. People who violated the policy would face huge amount fine. In case of my family, my parents have three boys because they expected to have a girl. They paid about four years’ average income at the time for me, and three years income for my old brother. To pay the fine, they borrowed a lot of money from relatives and friends. Moreover, my father was forced to do sterilization as the requirement.

In addition, this policy also caused the unbalance in sex. In China, boys will tanditionally live with parents and finically support them after marriage ; however, girls will leave their families and move to husband families although more and more younger urban couples do not follow thistrandition anymore. All the children the couple born are seen as the descendants of husbands’ family. For this reason, if a couple only have one chance, they would value more boys than girls. Although the government forbids hospitals tell the sex of the fetuses while examination; however, people still can get many illegal channels to know that. In avoiding the huge fine, some families prefer to do abortion or send their daughters to abroad families (like the U.S.) when they knew they are having a girl inside. Now, the proportion between males and females in China is 117: 100, which means there will be 17 males cannot get wives or have to wait for longtime. This situation is more serious in rural area because of the tradition. For this reason, the government changed the policy that giving one more reproductive chance to the rural families who had a girl for the first birth in order to persuade them not to do gendercide.

            Because of unbalance of gender, girls are becoming more valuable in China.  In China, parents will purchase house for their sons. Hence, some girls set high material and surface conditions for marriage such as large houses, luxury cars, and remarkable income although their economy condition may not good and they probably do not know how to do housework. For instance, the brother of my sister-in-law has gotten a girlfriend for long time, but the girl require him purchase a house in full price without mortgage in a city. For his family income, they cannot afford the urban house price at once.

Since one child policy, whatever girls or boys, they are the only one in the whole family, six family members including four grandparents and parents will do everything for their only kid. For me, although the economic condition is good, my ex-girlfriend does not want do and do not know how to do housework because she is the only one kid so-called “little emperor” in his family.  As a result, I often cooked food and cleaned apartment for both of us by myself. She also tried to cook, the result, as you know. 

Further more, prostitution is becoming popular beacase more single males cannot get girlfriends or wives. Prostitution has created a “better way” for some girls for earning money quickly.