Analysis Of China's Left Behind Children

The freedom that Americans have to raise their children according to their beliefs starkly contradicts the one-child policy implemented in China. The one-child policy was a program designed to restrict Chinese families to only one child, with severe consequences lined up for those who disobeyed. It was met with harsh opposition, from Chinese citizens as well as from other countries. The policy succeeded in creating smaller families, but it unleashed a slew of unintended consequences, including a higher crime rate and an increase in the elderly population, who only have one child to support them. Most significantly, the policy caused a national “gendercide” and an influx of Chinese bachelors, indirectly causing an increase in sex trafficking in and around the country. Did the one-child policy achieve its intended effect, or did it cause many more inadvertent effects that it could not control?

In “Plight of the Little Emperors” by Taylor Clark the article talks about the difficulties of young children growing up in China.

We have all been in a situation where we have immigrated to a new country for different reasons regarding, better future, or education. In the book Jade of Peony, Wayson Choy describes a struggle of a Chinese immigrant family as they settle in Canada, through the perspective of three young children; Liang, Jung, and Sekky. Each child describes his or her struggle, while settling in a new country. The family struggles to keep their children tied to their Chinese customs and traditions as they fit in this new country. The Chinese culture needs to be more open minded as it limits the future generation’s potential. Chinese culture limitations are seen through the relationship expectations, education, gender roles and jobs.

The future of the LBC remains uncertain and worrying. The inappropriate upbringing and scarce education opportunities allow little upward social mobility for the LBC. They are almost destined to follow their parents’ step into the cities when they grow up and perform low-paying jobs. Although their parents contribute much to China’s booming economy, the LBC barely benefit from any of it. From a utilitarian perspective sacrificing the welfare of 1 in 5 children may be acceptable. However, the society is the one to pay a higher price in the future when the generation of LBC comes of age. To abandon these children and let the vicious cycle continue is not sustainable for both economic and societal development. With lower fertility rate and ageing population, the relative impact of the 61 million increases. It is up to the society to decide whether they should contribute to improve or worsen quality of population.

They rebel against the Chinese tradition of pleasing their parents and listening to their elders above all else. The mothers are shocked at their daughters' impertinence. They have this fear that their daughters' aspiration to achieve the ‘American Dream’ will hinder them from learning about or just simply understanding their Chinese

Women’s access to education in China is much more limited than it is to women in the United States and one main reason for this is something called the one-child policy. The one-child policy basically states that families in China are only allowed to have one child. Before the one child policy existed, parents had families with more than one child; this often led to parents favoring the male child (Lee, 2012, p. 41). When parents favor their male child, this is referred to as “son preference” and son preference is something that has continued in China among most parents for centuries (Lee, 2012, p. 41). Male children, therefore, are preferred and more privileged, leaving little or no opportunity for the female children to progress educationally. “This gender bias has resulted in significant gender inequalities in many respects, such as the large gap in the literacy rate or in educational attainment between the genders” (Lee, 2012, p. 41). Both the gender bias and son preference have led to the wide literacy gap as a consequence and this is something that needs to change.

Imagine a twelve year old child getting up every morning going to work in a factory instead of going to school to get an education. Yes this is the reality in China for many young children. While here is the US many children at the age of 12 are in elementary school, children in China are working in factory industries making toys and other goods to export out to the US and other countries. For years, China has engaged in the use of child labor, wage levels below international standards, and unsafe ergonomic conditions.

TIME magazine described this generation in China as “generation of pampered and entitled children who believe they sit at the center of the social universe because that’s exactly how they’ve been treated”(Kluger, 2013). Later on, TIME goes on to say that another magazine, Fortune magazine, interviewed teachers and employers, and one kindergarten teacher claimed, “Kids these days are spoiled rotten. They have no social skills. They expect instant gratification. They’re attended to hand and foot by adults so protective that if the child as much as stumbles, the whole family will curse the ground” (Kluger, 2013). Only children in China seem to be very needy and get whatever they want. This would make it harder in the real world when they grow up because they aren't used to having the life skills to work for what they

In the past, manufacturing has accounted for the bulk of economic growth in China, but this is slowing down so China needs another area of the economy to pick up the slack. This is occurring because labor costs are increasing. In the long term, China lifting the One-Child Policy will help the economy, but many of the kids entering the workforce that is due to this new policy will not enter the workforce until 2030 and 2040 (Clarke). Many Chinese officials are hoping that lifting the One-Child Policy will help keep up the trend of astonishing economic growth China has seen in the last couple of years to give them the second biggest economy in the world. Thus, as the Communist Party is all about their ranking in the Global Village, all they care about is how big the economy is and how much their GDP has

The movie has recorded several poor rural children’s daily lives, as street performers, to earn money in modern cities. The movie is released in 1997, when China is on the cusp of its economic boom, and their reasons for earning money are supporting the family’s financial difficulty and going back to school. I’m surprised about their simple wishes, even though it seems unachievable at that time. As far as I know, in contemporary China, the government provides citizens the free but compulsory education from elementary school to middle school countrywide. Therefore, I wonder if those children will be happier if they live in today’s society, based on the realized dream of going back school.

“Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” by Amy Chua. People always asked Amy Chua the same question “How do Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids.” Chua stated that she had, “thought long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between the Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.”

In “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior”, published in 2011 in The Wall Street Journal, Yale Law School Professor Amy Chua avers that Chinese parents are more authoritarian and austere as compared to the Westerner’s when dealing with their children. On the other hand, Chua claims that Chinese child-rearing methods are effective despite being viewed as being out of the norm; they escaped what the Westerners could not. Overall, my thesis is that Chua establishes her ideology with regards to the parenting methods of Chinese parents and compares it with the Westerners’ to convince the readers that Chinese parenting style is better.

Chen Hong Xia is one of the 250 million migrants in China’s growing economy. These migrant workers are the people that supports China’s whole economy, without them China will not be where it is now. Although they are crucial in China’s growth, migrant workers are treated with disrespect. Chen Hong Xia is one of the ‘luckier’ migrant workers. She was able to work her way out of poverty into a better future. There are many similarities between Chen Hong Xia and most migrants in China, but Chen Hong Xia’s life is significantly better than most migrants. In this essay we will be comparing and contrasting Chen Hong Xia’s expectations, working environment, living environment and children to the migrant workers in China.

5) The Causal Effects of Rural-to-Urban Migration on Children’s Wellbeing in China Hongwei Xu University of Michigan Yu Xie University of Michigan Population Studies Center Research Report 13-798 August 2013

In such a cosmopolitan city as Hong Kong, it is not uncommon to see a number of affluent parents spending a large sum of money on their children, ranging from joining calligraphic class to extra physics tutorial lessons, and from buying the most updated mobile phones for them to sending them to overseas schools. This practice is even becoming increasingly popular due to the economic boom in recent years. By contrast, despite the seemingly prosperity of this city, there still exists a number of people living in destitute, with many