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The Chinese one-child policy can easily find itself labelled as ‘barbaric’, ‘inhumane’, or ‘a mistake’. Yet little is known about the details of the policy and how much impact it actually had on individual lives. Despite the policy recently becoming history, its effects are just about to unveil. The state now seems to want to turn the tides. It has yet to realise that population is not an issue to be dealt with on its own.

After years of downward trends in fertility rates, the policies were loosened up in 2009 and transitioned to a two-child policy in 2015. Recently, state media published articles to test out public opinion on surrogate babies. This may be a sign of state willingness to elevate the fertility rate before society is thrown into an era of ageing. Societies in more advanced stages of development often find themselves trapped within low fertility rates and an ageing population. Yet China’s case is difficult in another way, as unlike Germany and Japan who also struggle to have more babies, the state is not as ready to take care of her elderly while fighting numerous issues on other fronts.

To provide some background context, the policy came into force in the late 1970s, when market reform designs were ambitiously drawn up. The new regime saw the baby boom as an obstacle to economic take-off. The actual enforcement, however, differs considerably between cities and villages as well as between individual cases. Rooted sexism in rural areas led to a second child allowed for couples if the first-born was a girl, while ethnic minorities could have up to 3 children in some cases. Those actually regulated by the ‘one-child policy’ were confined to the urban dwellers and civil servants. And normally you are allowed to have more babies at the expense of your wallet.

Source: World Bank
Source: World Bank

Although China did see her fertility rate (births per woman) go down from 5.8 in the 60s to 1.6 currently, it is hard to attribute most of the work to the family planning bureau. Some say that the rate would have kept declining without the policy, like many societies experienced during their economic modernisation. The rapid development of the 80s and 90s would see a natural fertility decline, as people’s preferences also shifted to smaller families. As convincing as this argument may seem, the regime was still quite content with the policy in the early 2000s. It was not until academics strongly advised a retreat in 2015 that situation shifted. Indeed, even if the policy did its job to reduce population by 2 billion or more, it has lasted too long that now the society has too much to bear.

The first major issue is ageing. The fertility rate of 1.6 is simply too low, given that a figure of 2.1 is normally deemed the replacement rate in developed countries. If the one-child policy had stayed, a stalled economy would come much sooner. Population ageing is no new talk among more developed countries, some of which worry themselves over a sub-replacement fertility rate. We see Germany desperately trying to turn more women into mothers, and Japan awarding their new babies with state benefits. Unlike the developed nations who mostly have their welfare states in place, paying pensions for the elderly in China in a few decades can be a problem, when the young labour force will make up less than half of the population. It is also a matter of doubt whether the economy then will have undergone a transformation to not be reliant on labour-intensive work.

Another implication is a shameful sex ratio as a result of the policy as well as deep-rooted sexism in rural parts of China. Due to the restriction, some families of strong sexist preferences would seek secret abortions after they knew it would be a girl. The difficulty of regulation and enforcement in rural areas made the issue an ungoverned mess – thus a sharp sex ratio of 1.2 men for every woman today, a stark contrast to Western countries like the UK where there is 1.05 men for every woman. I’m left wondering how the family planning bureau is going to deal with the inevitably leftover men, especially as more Chinese women become economically secure and more resistant to patrilineal norms.

chinese women

That being said, I want to point out that the one-child policy has had unintended (or intended, who knows) positive repercussions for girls. Many girls were able to take over the capital and attention of their parents, who were forced to put away patrilineal ideals that they might have upheld. Surely it differs between individual cases – better-off families can always pay a fine to get around. Yet being the only child did inadvertently empower certain girls. If they had brothers, they might have to work instead of study while the family concentrates resources on the boy. Women’s rights are not an easy path to walk. Most of the time states do not take initiatives in promoting them, especially for those like China, the picture would be bleak if we are to rely solely on civilian discourse and campaigning.

Looking at recent media trends, the regime may have recognised the severity of population issues and the wrongful decision of insisting on a restrictive policy for so long. At the same time, the way out it is seeking can be unenlightened. For China, the nature of a not so transparent policy-making process determines that the result can be self-satisfied and blind to reality. The much-delayed decision to withdraw from the one-child policy is exemplary of such myopia.

Even Germany has not been much successful in its long fight to elevate fertility rates despite years of trying. Many mothers are still struggling between part-time work and families, and the government is urged to invest in pre-schools and to ease financial burdens for couples. It would be far-fetched to talk about giving benefits for new birth in China. Even longer maternity leave is not yet in the picture. Fundamentally, the regime cannot stand idly by on women’s rights and urge them to have babies again after years of contradictory rhetoric. It may not have realised that fertility rate is very, very difficult to reverse at this stage. Young people are right now struggling with skyrocketed housing prices in cities and serious pollution (nothing like the West has seen in recent times). Getting them to bring new lives to the world is not so possible if they don’t see it as an agreeable place to let kids grow up in. There will be a price to pay when balance is broken between individual agenda and state goal-setting.

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