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What Are The Pros And Cons Of China's One Child Policy

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Joshua Bayona

Ms. Burchi

Cultural Studies E

29 January 2015

Op-Ed: One-child policy

Not as bad for China as people think

By 1978, The Chinese Communist Party recognized the danger of uncontrollable population growth, and in response to its fears, instigated the one-child policy, which forbade more than one child per family to prevent the population of China from growing burdensomely large. In practice, the policy has gained infamy for its supposed infraction upon human rights and for the demographic problems associated with it, notably in the current male-female sex ratio imbalance in favor of the males. It has (according to the PRC) prevented 400 million births during its several decades of use. Despite proffering prevailing …show more content…

In the case of the one-child policy, the beneficial outcomes are overshadowed by the emotional concerns of female abortion and the gender discrepancy. China embodies an intrinsic preference for male children, and, as the one-child policy restricts families to only one child, parents often use ultrasound technology to detect female fetuses (if they have not yet had a child) and promptly abort them in order to preserve their single-child quota. However, makeshift institutions known as “safe havens” have been established all throughout China to provide foster homes for unwanted or illegal infants. The prospect of a child being forever separated from its biological parents is of course an upsetting one, but is nevertheless a much better alternative than just murdering illegal or unwanted children. China has by no means turned a blind eye to female discrimination either; by the year 2000, the Chinese government recognized persecution of females and sought to rectify the issue (in part) by inducting policies promoting female education and laws and their values in the family, as Yuen Ting Lee of Asian Journal of Women’s Studies points out. Such policies may never have been started to address such underlying issues if the one-child policy had not forcefully brought them to light. As for the issue of the unsupported aging population, in order to compensate for the workers leaving work to care for elderly family members, China may see opening up to migrant workers from around the world as an adequate alternative, especially if it wishes to maintain its attempts at leading global modernization. The one child policy has created an age gap, but in doing so one can see how it has also indirectly provided China with an outlet for economical growth and modernization that may not have otherwise occurred. The one-child policy and its

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