by Marcus Roberts
The Guardian recently published a fascinating article by Ma Jian, the author of A Dark Road, about China’s one-child policy. In this article, Ma describes his travels to Guangxi Province in 2008, where he had decided that his novel would begin. His interest in the province had been sparked in 2007:
“In 2007, I read of riots breaking out in Bobai County in China’s south-western Guangxi province. Under pressure from higher authorities to meet birth targets, local officials had launched a vicious crackdown on family-planning violators. Squads had rounded up 17,000 women and subjected them to sterilisations and abortions and had extracted 7.8m yuan (£800,000) in fines for “illegal births”, ransacking the homes of families who refused to pay. Tens of thousands of peasants occupied Bobai County town and set fire to government buildings to protest against the crackdown. This was the largest outbreak of popular unrest since the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square.” Read more…
by Michael Cook
Research confirms all the cliches about “little emperors”, the children of parents who were forced to stop at one.
“Kids these days are spoiled rotten,” grumbles the director of a Beijing kindergarten. “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.” Read more…
Marcus Roberts
Just to follow up yesterday’s blog/rant, there is an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal by Philip Bowring arguing that the likely changes to China’s one-child policy will not make much difference to China’s low fertility rate. In short, China faces demographic problems that will continue even if the one-child policy is lifted. The reason why it is expected that some relaxation will occur of the one-child policy (if not its abolition) is the noises that were made publicly during the National People’s Congress: Read more…
by Carolyn Moynihan
A generation or two of China’s only children are being reminded of their obligations to elderly parents by a law change that comes into effect later this year. An amendment passed December 28th to the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly law says that “family members who live separately from the elderly should visit them often.”
The International Business Times reports: Read more…
Michael Cook
Will the national pride in China’s first national to win the Nobel Prize for Literature lead to a reform of the one-child policy?
Watch the video.
The Chinese winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature is Guan Moye, a novelist who writes under the pseudonym Mo Yan, which means “don’t speak”. This has become not just a sly joke on the readers of his prodigious oeuvre, but also on his English-language critics. None of the leading literary journals had anything to say about last week’s announcement. Newspapers and websites focused on his political views. Read more…
by Marcus Roberts
One aspect of China’s One Child Policy that I had not considered was the tragedy of parents who outlive their single child and cannot have another. This is not uncommon in China, where an estimated one million families nationwide have lost their sole child since the policy was introduced in 1980, and another 4 – 7 million are expected to do so in the next 20 to 30 years. Some 4.63% of China’s 218 million one-child families are expected to lose their child before he or she reached the age of 25, meaning a total of around 10 million couples outliving their children. Aside from the obvious tragedy for the family involved in losing their only child, there are also material concerns; often the child is depended upon to provide security and support in their parents’ old age. Read more…
September 17th, 2012
Betsy
by Marcus Roberts
I was speaking with a colleague the other day about the gender inequality in parts of Asia, particularly in China and how it came about through abortion and infanticide. Shannon blogged about this topic the other day. My colleague said something along the lines of “at least women are now appreciated and more valued”. I told him how wrong I thought he was and wish I had had this story on hand to show him. Read more…
by Marcus Roberts
…. With more women coming forward with their stories of forced abortions – in this terrible story the child was less than a month away from the delivery date – surely it is time that the Chinese government changed its policy? Well, it probably won’t merely because I (or anyone else from outside of the country) say so. Read more…
This story is amazing. And note that even though Lou was herself bitterly poor, that didn’t stop her from rescuing and raising abandoned babies.
by Carolyn Moynihan
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