Introduction
China is the world’s most populous country. Its population comprises roughly 20 percent of the total world population. It is also a close second to the United States in terms of the size of economy and a close third when it comes to military size and even military technology sophistication. Over the past decades, the People’s Republic of China has slowly but surely gained strength to become a regional superpower, both in terms of economic and military benchmarks, especially when the fact that it is still being considered as one of the fastest growing economies not only in Asia but also in the world economy, and that it is a permanent member of the United Nation’s security council. Given all these credentials, it can be asserted that China has a great status as a country. One aspect of China that will be closely looked into in this paper would be its demographics, particularly its population. As mentioned, China is the world’s most populous country with a population of over 1.35 billion . The country can be divided into 22 provinces, 5 regions that have autonomy, 4 directly-controlled municipalities which include Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Tianjin, and 2 self-governing administrative regions that include the former Great Britain colony of Hong Kong, and Macau. China is not only the world’s most populous country but also the world’s second largest country in terms of land area which measures approximately 9.6 million square kilometers . The main focus of this paper is China’s long-standing population control policy; the One-child Policy or what is more officially and legally known as the family planning policy .
China’s One-child Policy was enforced in an effort of the communist government to control the harmful effects of overpopulation on China’s social and economic system’s growth. The population control policy was allegedly planned and developed sometime in 1977. It was introduced two years after in 1979. According to statistical estimates, the One-child Policy has resulted in over 200 million birth aversions from the time it was first implemented in 1979 to 2009 . Proponents of various ethical and religious views and theories have bombarded the implementation of the One-child Policy because it allegedly implicates or encourages abortions, or even forced abortions , female birth underreporting, and even female infanticide. Some sources also suggest that one of the primary causes of the long-standing and continuously worsening case of gender imbalance (particularly the increasingly high ration of male to females) in China is the One-child Policy . These are just some examples of the negative implications of the population control policy and it would be a biased review to focus on these disadvantages without first enumerating and reviewing the advantages.
The idea behind China’s One-child Policy was first formed during Chairman of the then Communist party of People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong’s leadership during the 60s. Initially, Zedong wanted China to have a significantly larger population as he was guided by his belief that high population growth rates and a larger population can be beneficial to his plans of empowering the country. Therefore, in the first few years of his leadership, he made efforts to prevent the emersion of economic, social, and political policies, mostly family planning programs that could undermine the steady and booming growth in population of the country. Zedong’s interventions indeed bear fruit. China’s population of 694.6 million in 1964 grew by about 313 million to 1.08 billion in 1982, almost two decades after. After another 18 years, that population grew by another 257 million to 1.265 billion people, in 2000. In 2010, China’s population has continued to balloon to 1339 billion people, an increase of roughly 74 billion ten years ago. The population spurt from 1949 to 1976 alone was 400 million, thanks to Mao Zedong’s social interventionist strategies. Exposed to the different environmental, social, and economic implications, both positive and negative, of overpopulation, China’s leaders have decided to turn their pro-fertility rate policies around and be more pro-family planning. From early 1970s, Chinese citizens were encouraged to get married at later stages in their life and limit their children to one or two. The population controlling-strategies during those times (early 1970s) did not have teeth or were not strictly enforced. Nonetheless, the overall fertility rate in the country declined. However, despite the decline in the country’s overall fertility rate, the Chinese population continued to experience significant growth which after a few years overwhelmed the encouragement-based and toothless policies of the Chinese government in early 1970s. Such conditions paved the way for the development and strict implementation of the One-child Policy in 1979.
Effects of the One-child Policy
China’s nationwide computer fertility rate in 1980, approximately a year after the One-child Policy was strictly enforced, was 2.60 births per woman; fell to 1.61 births per woman in 2009, approximately 19 years later. This only shows the effectiveness of the One-child Policy in forcing the Chinese population to do family planning. One can actually see a very sharp fertility rate reduction when the nationwide fertility rate of 5.0 births per woman in the early 1970s is compared to the nationwide fertility rate of 1.61 births per woman obtained in 2009 . Some analytical studies however suggest that the One-child Policy is only partially responsible for the considerable decrease in China’s fertility rate—a factor which has a direct correlation in real population growth. Other factors such as the country’s long practiced tradition of son preference, Confucianism and other social and cultural factors allegedly contributed to the dramatic changes in China’s population growth rate as well.
Gender Disparity
According to a statistical survey conducted in 2005, the sex ratio at birth between male and female babies in mainland China peaked and remained somewhat steady at 117:100—that is 117 males for every 100 females in the years between 2000 and 2013 . The national average or baseline range is somewhere between 103:100 and 108:100 which the country exhibited after a similar survey was conducted in the 80s. If this trend would carry on, there will be approximately 30 million more men than women in China by the year 2020. This issue, if left not addressed, could lead to different social issues that include but are not limited to social instability, and emigration motivated by inability or difficulty in searching for partner and other courtship related scenarios . According to studies, the enforcement of the One-child Policy can be considered as one of the major reasons why there is a continuously increasing sex ration disparity at birth in China. Naturally, this is not a good thing since in an ideal social situation; the number of males should not be too far, not too many and not too few, when compared to the number of females. To be able to have a better grasp of the extent of the gender disparity at birth situation in China, it would be beneficial to compare demographic figures obtained from China with that of other countries. In other Asian countries like Taiwan, the male to female ratio was 110:100; in South Korea, the ratio was 108:100. The gender disparity ratio in China is evidently higher compared to that of these two countries that are also based in the same region. One important thing to take note of about these two countries is that they do not have any outstanding family planning policy. According to studies, there are four main factors that could have led to China’s high gender disparity at birth ratio aside from the One-child policy and such factors are: diseases that are more predominant in females or those that affect females more severely than males, the widespread underreporting of female baby births which is something very prevalent in China, the illegal and unethical practice of sex-selective abortion which has been made more widespread by the availability and increased access to ultrasound, and finally, acts like infanticide and child abandonment which mostly affect female baby populations not only in China but also in other Asian countries .
Advantages of the One-child policy
Healthcare
One of the reasons why China’s administration introduced the One-child family planning policy in 1979 was to enable the country’s leaders and policy makers to make the mobilization of resources easier. One industry that greatly benefited from the One-child policy over the years it was implemented was China’s healthcare industry. It has been reported in numerous academic journals that the population control efforts of the Chinese government has helped in providing higher quality and more accessible healthcare services for women and children, and in reducing pregnancy related injuries, morbidities, and mortalities. In family planning facilities managed and supervised by the National Population and Family Planning Commission for example, pregnant women are given free medical or prenatal checkups and other pregnancy-associated services; non-pregnant women on the other hand receive free contraception and prenatal seminars and education programs, which are some of the programs that greatly contributed to the policy’s success in two ways: first, an average Chinese family would have to spend less time and resources on Children, giving that particular Chinese family more disposable income which they can use for their investments among other things; Second, Chinese people would naturally be more inclined to save for their future since a single child would mean lesser chances that somebody would take care of them in the future in their elderly stages.
Economy
Another sector of China that also greatly benefited from the One-child policy was the economic sector. An overpopulated country would naturally have to work harder because it has more mouths to feed, more citizens to educate and take care of. In general, a country that has a larger population would have more expenses to cover compared to a less dense country in terms of population. China’s One-child policy was one of the reasons why the rapidly growing mainland Chinese population was slowed down to more manageable levels. One of the most significant economic effects of the One-child policy was the improvements in China’s income per capita. This economic indicator has something to do with the quality of citizens that live in a particular country. In most cases, the lesser the number of minds to educate and mouths to feed, the more positive the outcome becomes because the government would have an easier time managing the educational, nutritional, and health requirements of its citizens. This is what happened to China’s economy ever since it started implementing its One-child policy program. The food supply may not have increased too much but the fact that the population growth has been controlled at manageable levels meant that the food situation in the country would at least be stable in the next coming years.
Conclusion
China’s One-child policy has existed for more than 30 years now. Whether it has actually helped the Chinese people or not remains a topic for debate. However, based on the information gathered in this paper, it appears that the development and enforcement of the One-child policy was a good choice because firstly, China would not have been considered as one of the fastest growing economies in Asia and in the world for years if not for the population-stabilizing effects of the One-child policy. It would not have risen as a regional and then later on as a global superpower both in terms of economic, technological, and military advancements if its economy has been crippled with overpopulation and other problems that may come as a result of it. Sure, there are some social, ethical, and even religious repercussions but the decision to hold on to the One-child policy was a risk that the Chinese policy makers had to take. That risky decision evidently led to the country’s economic prosperity.
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