China’s One Child Policy

Jasmine

&

Ashley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP3PIGggVUE

History

China’s one child policy was first introduced by Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-ping) in 1978, and applied to all babies born starting in 1979.

It has been renewed every five years, recently in 2010 Designated a "temporary measure" the one child policy recently had its 30 th anniversary

Why?

• During a century of rebellions, wars, epidemics, and the collapse of imperial authority, the annual population growth was probably no more than 0.3% • • As the result of falling death rates, the population growth rate rose to 2.8%, leading to some 250 million additional people by 1970. Such an expansion was initially seen as part of China’s new strength • Chinese officials say that if it wasn’t for the one child policy there might be 300 million more people in china by today.

What?

• The one-child policy or family-planning policy says that each couple living in the urban areas can have only one child.

Unless:

– one or both parents are from an ethnic minority – Both parents are only children. – In most rural areas, a couple may have a second child after a break of several years.

One Child Policy Propaganda

Penalties

• • • • Fines ($65 - $9,000) Forced abortions, some as late as nine months Seizing or destroying property of families that cannot pay the fines Job loss http:// vodpod.com/watch/4973815-violating-one-child-policy-forced-abortion-at-8-months

Positive Outcome?

• Has reduced the country's population of 1.3 billion by as much as 300 million people over its first twenty years.

•

Effects

The one child policy has had a strong impact on the gender ratio in China.

• Culturally the Chinese people favour having sons over having daughters. - this goes back much further in history than the one child policy :

"When a son is born, Let him sleep on the bed, Clothe him with fine clothes, And give him jade to play... When a daughter is born, Let her sleep on the ground, Wrap her in common wrappings, And give broken tiles to play..." -ancient "Book of Songs" (1000-700 B.C.)

• This strong gender bias has resulted in approximately 117 males for every 100 females among babies from birth through children four years of age. In rural areas it can be as high as 130 males for every 100 females.

Normally, 105 males are naturally born for every 100 females.

• As of 2005, "males under the age of 20 exceeded females by more than 32 million."

• This unbalance in males to females has resulted in increasing pressure on men to find a wife. • “Serious” problems ahead can be seen in the increasing cases of human trafficking as bachelors try to "purchase" their wives.

• Women are being kidnapped from China, as well as surrounding countries to be sold to men who are without a wife.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Cz3XF0EBY

The Ugly Truth

Increased human trafficking and crime rates.

23-year-old Patricia Suarez. A neighbour working for a Hong Kong gang suggested a trip, promising the young mother an escape from part-time work as a domestic servant that paid only US $50 (HK $387) a week. Desperate for money, the former university student left her two-month old baby with her mother and six brothers and sisters —unaware that she was heading for a nightmare trapped in a sleazy underworld. Ms. Suarez speaks no English or Chinese. From there she was sent out to clients who had contacted the escort agency through adverts in pornographic magazines. At one point she became pregnant and an abortion was arranged by the gang.

Patricia, trafficked in China, originally from Bolivia

Heightened suicide rates among women.

At the tiny restaurant where Xinran eats lunch, the waitress tries to kill herself twice, each time after a little girl’s birthday party. The woman is tortured by the happy faces because, thinking it her duty to produce a male heir, she had smothered her baby daughters. She survives because, as well as the bottle of agricultural fertiliser she swallowed, she drank one of washing-up liquid, thinking that any chemical in a bottle was poison. The detergent diluted the fertiliser’s fatal dose. Forced abortions and sterilizations.

QIAN’AN, China — Yang Zhongchen, a small-town businessman, wined and dined three government officials for permission to become a father. But the Peking duck and liquor weren’t enough. One night, a couple of weeks before her date for giving birth, Yang’s wife was dragged from her bed in a north China town and taken to a clinic, where, she says, her baby was killed by injection while still inside her.

“Several people held me down, they ripped my clothes aside and the doctor pushed a large syringe into my stomach,” says Jin Yani, a shy, petite woman with a long ponytail. “It was very painful. ... It was all very rough.” Mass gendercide. Millions of missing baby girls.

“Girl Babies Don’t Count”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ildS6JI2AlM&feature=related • Approximately 16 million Chinese baby girls have disappeared since the one child policy was introduced.

• They are in orphanages, aborted, unregistered, thrown away, sold as prostitutes or killed at birth.

• An average of 90% of children in Chinese orphanages are girls • ‘Doing a baby girl is not a big thing around here,’ [an] older woman said comfortingly. ‘That’s a living child,’ I said in a shaking voice, pointing at the slops pail. ‘It’s not a child ,’ she corrected me. ‘It’s a girl baby, and we can’t keep it. Around these parts, you can’t get by without a son. Girl babies don’t count .’” Xinran

(The Economist)

Where Killing Baby Girls is No Big Sin

In India there is no one child policy, but boys are still favoured over girls. India has lost an estimated 10 million girls in the past 20 years India has the second highest rate of gendercide in the world.

Each year half a million girls have been prevented from being born • • • From 972 females for every 1,000 males in 1901, the gender imbalance has tilted to 929 females per 1,000 males A Daughter is looked at as a liability, and having more then one daughter is too much work.

Thousands of baby girls have been murdered because it is not looked at as a sin to murder a daughter if you already have one.

Hiding The Truth

• When baby girls are murdered they are more then often killed at birth in ways to make it seem like it was from natural causes. • It has been recorded that:

– Some were fed dry, unhulled rice that punctured their windpipes – Some were made to swallow poisonous powdered fertilizer. – Others were smothered with a wet towel, strangled or allowed to starve to death. – Dunking newly born babies in ice cold water is also common, so that the infant will develop pneumonia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PTcO5QFJt4

Lakshmi’s Story

• Lakshmi already had one daughter, so when she gave birth to a second girl, she killed her. For the three days of her second child's short life, Lakshmi admits, she refused to nurse her. To silence the infant's famished cries, the impoverished village woman squeezed the milky sap from an oleander shrub, mixed it with castor oil, and forced the poisonous potion down the newborn's throat. The baby bled from the nose, then died soon afterward. Female neighbours buried her in a small hole near Lakshmi's square thatched hut of sun baked mud. They sympathized with Lakshmi, and in the same circumstances, some would probably have done what she did.

Solutions To Gender Ratio Problems

• Abandoning the one child policy would not help China’s economy or well being. • The real problem is the gender imbalance it is creating • Laws and regulations have made it illegal to determine the sex of your child in China and India • Men and Women should be involved in family planning to reduce unwanted pregnancies which often end in sex selective abortion.

• www.allgirlsallowed.com

Will you be the one to stop it?

• • • • • http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=128&catid=4&subcatid=15 http://www.economist.com/node/15603722?story_id=15603722 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20501549/ns/world_news-asia-pacific/ http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr051833 http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html