China's One-Child Policy: A Primer

What would China's population be today if the government had not stepped in to control the population's growth? In 1979, China faced a problem: With one billion people, the country made up 25% of the world's population. In 1980, to combat this problem, China instituted its population-control program: the one child per family policy, an unprecedented, radical take on population control. Mei Fong's One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment (2016) details the unintended consequences of that policy.

Part memoir and more investigative journalism, Fong does a serviceable job of providing context for understanding the why and how of the policy before examining its short and long-term consequences:

• An estimated 13 million people live as undocumented children because they were born out of "plan."
• China is a bachelor society creating an imbalance of young men who feel aimless, hopeless, sad, and lonely.
• China has more than 40% of the world's sufferers of Parkinson's with that number expected to increase.
• Many nursing homes will not admit couples who lost their only child because they have no progeny to authorize treatment or payment.

The more horrifying aspects of the stories included are those that highlight the hypocrisy, injustices, and corruption that came along with maintaining this program: women and the poor were the ones who suffered the most: Women were fined for living with a man out of wedlock, for not using contraception, or for attempting to have more than one child--to the point where some were forced to have late term abortions. In contrast, those in high government positions or who were more affluent (and could therefore afford the fines) birthed multiple children. Stories of infanticide, late-term abortions, forced sterilization, and child kidnapping abound.

Emphasized throughout is Fong's thesis: This radical experiment has destabilized the social order and family structure of China to the point that long-term growth and productivity are not possible due to an aging population and a decline in fertility rate. Fong, in the end, proposes that the greatest effect of the policy is this:

...[T]he one child policy can be judged as a huge success, for it changed the mindset of Chinese people...[In] demographer Ma's survey on why Chinese parents have one child, 60% said that the one-child policy had nothing to do with their decision... In the end, the greatest damage inflicted by the one-child policy is how it forced people to think rationally--perhaps too rationally--about parenthood, a great leap into the unknown with an infinite capacity to stretch our understanding of what it means to live and love.

Well-researched and related accessibly, One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment is informative and worth reading though it's a bit repetitive.

A CBR8 crossposted review.