The Imbalance of Gender in China

China One Child Policy was a policy that told everybody instead for a handful of families that they were only allowed to have one child or face consequences. The policy was put forth to try and dumb down the population numbers as it was becoming a problem because China could not feed or supply their population with water for a while. The policy was enacted 1979 and taken away in 2015 due to acceptable numbers.

Since 1980, China has made its people the subject of an intrusive and unfair, One Child Policy. This policy was the result of Chinese officials becoming worried of the countries jump in population from 1960 to 1980 causing a widespread lack of resources, so they decided to induct a law that would make force Chinese citizens to be limited to one child. Because of this controversial policy the question has been raised, did the one child policy positively or negatively effect China? The one child policy did negatively effect China and its people, because it resulted in gender discrimination, unjust punishments and was unnecessary due to the already declining fertility rate.

The Chinese take their cultural beliefs very seriously and will do anything to keep their ancestors happy. The fact of carrying the family name on to their next generation should not determine whether a child should live or die. The bottom line is that girls in China receive far less attention and resources than boys and are deemed in-superior in society. (Fitzpatrick)

The final reason that the one-child policy was a bad idea is because of the fact that China’s fertility rate was already decreasing and was one of the lowest rates compared to Brazil, South Korea, and Thailand in 1979 making the policy pointless and unnecessary. “The claim by the Chinese officials that the one child policy has helped avert over 400 million births simply cannot be substantiated by

However, China’s one child policy has been effective in some ways. Although, it is true that the

There has been a long history of China’s one child policy, since it was first introduces in 1979 by a Chinese Leader Deng Xiaoping (Rosenberg n.p). The law was meant to be temporary and used to control the population; however it is still in use today (Rosenberg n.p). When the policy was first enforced, it only

The one child policy only hurt China more due to its lowering fertility rate prior to the policy. “China had already achieved a remarkable fertility reduction, halving the number of children per women from 5.8 in 1970 to 2.7 in 1979.” (Document B) The facts shown here show that the policy was not necessary. In addition, since the population was already going

What is important to understand the One Child Policy is the reasoning behind it and what spurred the Chinese government to do something so drastic. When Mao Zedong’s communist rule was in full

In 1980 the Chinese government became intently terrified of the current population of their country. China housed over 950 million citizens and growing. To stop the increasing rates of fertility the government created a proposal to keep citizenry rates down. The one-child policy stated that every household of china could only give birth to one child. The conspiracy of the policy has said to have had positive and negative out views of the only child. In final analysis the making of the one-child policy left China prosperous in educational value, conserving land as well as pollution and limiting the overdevelopment of citizenry.

The one child policy is a horrible law. The one child policy was instituted on September 25, 1980 in China a little more than 34 years ago. The one child policy limits every family to having one child only, to reduce population growth. There are endless reasons on why the one child policy is a very negative law. Gender inequalities, forced abortions, and not enough young people to take care of the elderly are just some of the many problems with the one child policy. The one child policy is one of the most ridiculous things that has ever happened.

With the One Child Policy, families were either forced to put their children up for adoption or were forced to have an abortion. Sometimes, people even put their children up for adoption because of their gender. “In the beginning when the policy came around in 1980, at that time they did not have scanning machines that could determine the gender of the fetus at an early stage, so people who delivered girls, for example, and wanted to keep their quota for that one boy — because if you used up your quota for a girl and then you gave birth to another girl and you would lose that — so people would either abandon their daughters or there would be infanticide, or they would give them away…”(NPR). The Chinese thought that having sons was the way

China’s one-child policy was implemented in 1979 by Deng Xiaoping to limit China’s population growth, under the belief that overpopulation would inhibit its economic growth (History of the One-Child Policy). The policy restricted couples to only have one child, unless they were of an ethnic minority (Pong, 168). It was later amended in 2002 to include allowing two only-child parents to have two children, and allowed rural families to have another child if the first was a daughter (China’s One-Child Policy). On October 25, 2015, the Chinese government repealed the one-child policy in favor of a two-child policy because of the massive gender imbalance that it had caused (Taylor). Principally led by the much reviled establishment of the one-child policy, China’s abundance of males compared to females dramatically altered the demographics of the country, leaving millions of men unable to have a family, damaging the traditional cultural aspect of the Chinese family (Brooks). The disproportion originated from a traditionally boy-favoring Chinese culture and the future economic support a boy promised, while widespread use of ultrasound technology caused a decrease in births of girls (Brooks). Although successful in its goals of limiting population growth, the one-child policy, because of the Chinese cultural and economic support boys provided, had the unintended consequence of creating a gender imbalance, resulting in

While it seems somewhat reasonable for a government to encourage family planning, and to provide the population with access to birth control, it seems a bit out of line for them to ask a family to have only one child. The pressure of only having one child, in combination with a cultural favoritism toward males is what makes the one-child policy so gravely concerning. It is clear that the excess female infant mortality is directly attributable to the birth-control policy, which caused the pre-existing prevalence of son preference to escalate. In China, son preference is the product of ingrained social norms. Girls and women still occupy a lower social status in society (Zilberberg, 2007). The one-child policy requires authorization for each birth- children are required to be reported to receive documentation that allows them to be part of society- to attend school, to hold a job in adulthood, and to marry. Women are consistently

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.

The one-child policy has also created a generation of “missing girls”. Examining China’s census data from 1980 to 2000 counted approximately 12.8 million fewer females in the cohorts born between those years than would be expected if China had experienced normal sex ratios at birth. Another estimated 50 million Chinese women have gone unaccounted for in birth rate and mortality data. The “missing girls” phenomenon is another unintended consequence that arose out the one-child policy. These “missing girls” are missing in several ways. The 12.8 million fewer females were likely never born or victims of infanticide. The other millions of “missing girls” are girls who do not exist in the figurative sense. They are very much alive and living in