Deng Xiaoping's One-Child Policy In China

"The one-child policy had unquestionably caused fertility to decline more rapidly than it otherwise would have...and has therefore played a significant role in China's demographic transition...explaining up to a quarter of its per capita GDP growth in the last 3 decades (Document E). " The policy succeeded in curbing population growth and is shown to have improved job opportunities for many young women in China. " Indeed, some of the hottest and best paying jobs in today's globalizing social service economy...are open exclusively to young women... For these young women, the one-child policy seems to be a real blessing (Document

The Chinese government thought that the population was getting too high so they limited the amount of Chinese kids families and couples can have to one which given that the fertility rates right before the policy has already been cut from 5.8 to 2.7 it became very dangerous to lower it even more. " China had already achieved a remarkable fertility reduction, halving the number of children per woman from 5.8 in 1970 to 2.7 in 1979" (Document B). With low fertility rates, the government claims to have averted 400 million births that simply cannot be undone.

This causes the older population to be neglected and there to be fewer workers. Another problem in the population caused by the one child policy is the gender disproportion. China faced sex discrimination because boys were considered more culturally preferable than girls. In Document E, it also says that people practiced “...female infanticide...” Now, there are “...still 32 million more boys than girls under the age of 20...”

In 1979, China decided to establish a one child policy which states that couples are only allowed to have one child, unless they meet certain exceptions[1].In order to understand what social impacts the one child policy has created in China it important to evaluate the history of this law. China’s decision to implement a Child policy has caused possible corruption, an abuse of women’s rights, has led to high rates of female feticide, has created a gender ratio problem for China, and has led to specific problems associated with both the elderly and younger generation. Finally, an assessment of why China’s one child policy is important to the United States allows for a full evaluation of the policy.

China is the world’s most populated country with the population of 1.3 billion people. Since there were so many people in China they had to think about a way to control population so this is where the one-child policy was made. It officially restricts married, urban couples to having only one child, while allowing exemptions for several cases, including twins. This policy was introduced in 1978 and initially applied to first-born children from 1979. The policy is enforced at the local level through fines that are imposed based on the income of the family and other factors.

The one-child policy decreases the value of girls in China. In “How Chinese Art Explores Its One- child policy,” Sebag-Montefiore states, “China has the most uneven sex ration in the world, with 117 boys born for every 100 girls. In a culture that traditionally favours male offspring, girls have been abandoned, murdered and aborted” (Sebag- Montefiore). In “China’s One- Child Policy Turns 33 as Forced Abortions, Female Infanticides Continue,” Littlejohn claims: “The one child

In 1979, China, faced with an overwhelming population growth, implemented a policy limiting family to only having one child. This policy started out by being a voluntary program and within 2 years became a government mandated policy. This policy was intended to be applied evenly throughout all of china, however exceptions were quickly made.

In 1948, China banned birth control and contraceptives because it wanted a larger population. In1930s-1960s, China’s population was growing faster than the food supply, which reached a population of more than 800 million in 1970s. In 1973, China started to promote birth control with the slogan, “Late, Long, Few” and introduced the one-child policy six years later. Forced abortion was the punishment to punish the ones who did not obey the policy and often, families chose to pay the local officials to “set them (the second child) free”. However, one-child policy is very

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Chinese government put in place the One Child Policy in order to limit the majority of families to one child each and reduce China’s population growth rate. In reality, China’s One Child Policy consisted of many one child policies, which were generally better implemented and stricter in urban areas than in rural areas. Variations of the general one child policy included allowing the rural families in some areas, families of some ethnic minority groups, families with handicapped firstborn children, and families with

The One-Child Policy also known as the “official program initiated in the late 1970s and early ’80s by the central government of China” which “limit[ed] the great majority of family units in the country to one child each” (Pletcher 1) was a strict policy that limited the childbirth of families in China as a countermeasure to the explosive population growth. However,

China began promoting the use of birth control and family planning with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. This was a great way to decrease the population

One reasonable solution to control the human population mass is the one-child policy that was first implemented in 1979 due to the rapid concerns about the social and economic issues China was facing. Penny Kane, a professor of the Office for Gender and Health, reports, Since the beginning of [China’s One-Child Policy] it has prevented over 400 million births and helped ease the overpopulation issue (Kane 2). Since this new policy suggested that every couple or family should only possess one child, it is evident that the efficiency of this new law clearly regulated and managed to lower the number of children each woman had. As the number of expected births decreases then the number of food sources, government resources, and educational

The Chinese government says that the policy prevented 400 million births, but demographers are pretty skeptical. In fact, it’s looking more and more like the one child policy was completely unnecessary. Well the biggest drop in China’s birth rate happened before the one child policy. IN 1970 , the government started running a propaganda campaign to encourage people to get married later and have fewer children. Family size dropped by half in just 10 years. Researchers now think that the birth rate would have continued to drop naturally as China’s economy improved. That was even confirmed by a secret government experiment. So are officials changing the one-child policy now because it’s clear it’s not necessary? well, there changing it because the one child policy is causing a demographic disaster. China is now dealing with not having enough young workers to support the elderly. Due to the preference for boys over girls, there are now 30 million more men than women. so how is the one child policy enforced anyway?it s unevenly implemented through a massive bureaucracy quotas are set by the central government and enforced by local family planning commissions.So what happened to people who violet the

The one-child policy began in in China in 1978 and recently, in 2009, China adopted a two-child policy that encourages families to have two children (BBC News, 2015). The purpose for imposing these ethical restrictions on a population is to sustain a population level so that future generations will not have to suffer from overpopulation levels, environmental damage, and a decrease in living standards (HowMany.org, 2014). The one-child policy helps to ease overpopulation problems since two parents having one child leads to a 50% reduction in that generation. Since China’s introduction of the one-child policy, there have been 400 million births prevented, which means that there is going to be more food sources, fewer housing needs, more jobs, and a better health care environment (BBC News,

Under the new policy, Chinese citizens are still required to apply for permits in order to have children, and the specter of enforcement of a two-child rule raises many of the same human rights concerns that animated opponents of the one-child policy. And while a two-child policy may decrease the imbalance in the sex ratio, this policy change could lead to more baby girls without a concomitant shift in the cultural norms that privilege boys. As economist Amartya Sen noted decades ago while documenting the 100 million missing women worldwide, bias against female children is not unique to China. Witness, for example, the skewed sex ratios in India or the Caucasus region that intensified, even in the absence of restrictions on family size, due to the low status society placed on birthing