The Dark Side of One Child Policy of China

While the rest of the world appears impressed with the population control measures of China, centered on its One Child State Policy, the manner of its implementation and the distortions it has created remain largely ignored by the world. The one-child policy is an umbrella term for a raft of policies aimed at curbing population growth. Many rural areas were allowed a second child if the first was a girl. Households were given birth quotas, and “above-quota births” were penalized.

Implementation of this notorious policy can be aptly considered another holocaust after Hitler’s attempt to wipe out the Jews from Europe. The One Child Policy has left China with the most distorted male-to-female ration in the world. The 2005 census discovered a surplus of 32 million males under the age of 25. This is equivalent to almost the entire population of Canada. And compare it with the number of Jews disappeared in the holocaust – 6 million.

The estimates of “missing girls” by various demographers and organization range between 25 and 50 millions. The tiny fraction of fortunate girls have entered USA and other countries through adoptions – the rest, no one wants to talk about. The world leaders are busy looking for their share of pie in the awe inspiring economic growth of China.

The world's fastest-growing economy is confronting a self-perpetuated demographic disaster – "gendercide", in terms of many experts. This is a phenomenon caused by millions of couples resorting to abortion, infanticide, or abandoning infant girls to ensure their ONLY child was a boy. Aggravated by the draconian one-child policy imposed in 1979, the age-old preference for male child has produced, what Gu Baochang, a leading Chinese expert on family planning, described as "the largest, the highest, and the longest" gender imbalance in the world.

Adoption of children from China to the United States began in 1992, when the Chinese government began to allow international adoption. In 2009, Americans adopted 3,001 Chinese children, the largest number from any country. During last ten years, the annual US adoption figures varied between 3,000 and 8,000. The average age of children adopted from China is less than one year. Over 90% are girls – a distinctive side effect of China's population control policies. The estimated cost of an adoption is 20,000 – 25,000 US dollars.

There are a number of criteria for eligibility for adoption. It is only for married couples: They must be married a minimum of 2 years if first marriage; 5 years if second or third marriage. No more than 2 previous marriages allowed for either spouse and no more than 4 children living in home. Read the complete Eligibility Criteria for adoption.

You may also like to read The dark side of Chinese adoptions.

After the Communists took power in 1949, Mao Zedong rejected the Malthusian fear of high population devouring limited food supply, and went about building China using people as an asset. In the absence of state’s control on family size, China's sex ratio remained normal up to the 70's. Then the ill founded Malthusian fear gripped the policy makers and the annual birth rate of 3.7% became a symbol of awe.

During late 70’s, this phobia galvanized the Chinese policy makers to embark upon an ambitious demographic engineering venture to limit families to one-child, as part of its strategy to speed up economic modernization. As a result, within 25 years the annual birth rate dropped to 1.29% by 2002, preventing 300 million births.

From a relatively normal boy/girl ratio of 108/100 in the early 80’s, now it is close to 120/100, according to a Chinese think-tank report. Local figures are as worst as 170 male for 100 female. This shortage of something like 30 million women is a "huge societal issue,” warned U.N. resident coordinator Khalid Malik earlier this year. And it is another big challenge along with HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation, he further added. For sure, the enormity of the problem is only going to be bigger in the future.

China's own population experts have been warning about this issue for years, but for the government it has been business as usual.

The shortage of women has led to crimes such as forced marriages, bigamy, prostitution, rape, adultery and is also manifesting as homosexuality and distorted sexual habits. The "seriousness" of the problems is seen in the increasing cases of human trafficking as bachelors try to "purchase" their wives. China's police have freed more than 42,000 kidnapped women and children from 2001 to 2003. According to the United Nations Children's Fund, about 250,000 women and children were victims of trafficking in China last year.

The most immediate and horrifying consequence of China’s “missing girls” phenomenon is that it is fueling human trafficking, especially of girls and women, according to organizations fighting it. They are lured or kidnapped and sold— even multiple times — into forced marriages or the commercial sex trade.

The 2009 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report of the US State Department downgraded China to its Tier 2 watch list, because it is a “source, transit, and destination country for men, women and children being trafficked for forced labor and sexual exploitation.”

In recent years, 36,000 women have been sold and sent to Zhejiang Province to marry local men, according to statistics from the local public security bureau. Most of these women belong to underdeveloped regions like Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hubei.

Women from many neighboring countries are captured or trafficked into China; the most vulnerable being the North Korean women. According to Laura Lederer of Global Centurion, a nonprofit group fighting sex slavery, the sex ratio imbalance in China is leading to a “new tsunami of demand.”

According to authors of the book, Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population, the vast army of surplus males could pose a threat to China's stability. In their analysis, low-status young adult men with little chance of having families of their own are "much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior in a strategy of coalitional aggression." In China, unmarried men are called guang guan, or “bare branches” and are seen as “losers in societal competition.”

The growing crime rate in China, which is often linked to the huge "floating" or transient population, some 80 million of which are low-status males, seems to add weight to their observation.

The imbalance will also aggravate the problem of an aging population in the future. Five years ago, each retiree in China was supported by 10 workers. By 2020 this ratio will have fallen to one to six, and by 2050 to one to three. This has the potential of causing economic crisis.

China should learn from the experience of a tiny Indian State, Kerala, that has about 1 million surplus women.

Worried by the consequences of the disturbed male/female ration, the Chinese family planning authorities launched a “Girl Care Project”. It aims to end pre natal sex selection and involves "attacking the criminal activities of drowning and abandoning baby girls [while] rewarding and assisting families that plan to give birth to baby girls," according to The People's Daily, mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party

While authorities view it as a way to foster more respect and concern for women and girls, critics say that it's being framed just to meet the future needs of men.

According to a top policy maker, China's birth control policy is now "a diversified mechanism" which allows for one-child in the cities, two in the rural areas, and three in ethnic regions, with no limit in Tibet. However, last year the government denied that it is moving away from the One Child Policy.

Whenever people are forced to limit families, they would rather like to have boys than girls. The preference for boys is common in most parts of the world. Coercive family planning practices disrupt the natural male/female ratio by encouraging sex selective abortions. The world can learn from the glaring folly of Communist China and keep the family planning efforts within the boundaries of human rights and human dignity. There is a big distinction between cattle breeding and human fertility -- Communists have failed to know it so far.