One way to gauge the enormity of China’s one-child-per-family policy — which is now being terminated after more than 35 years — is to consider the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. A large number of the quake’s estimated 90,000 victims were children, many of whom were destined — through the state’s draconian restrictions — to be their parents’ only offspring. Reporters who visited the scene of the catastrophe remarked on the disabling grief that had enveloped entire communities who had lost their future with the disappearance of these children. And yet, of the 623 children officially orphaned by the quake, all but a handful were still waiting in “welfare homes” a year later, even though the government had agreed to a generous monthly stipend for the orphans, and to waive penalties for couples who adopted them and subsequently had a child of their own.
Imposed a generation ago, when the state feared that runaway population growth would undermine economic development, the policy has always been one of the most telling examples of China’s relative lack of freedom. The social cost of preventing 400 million births — the official estimate — was an unwholesome mix of intimidation, forced abortions and sterilizations, often with a predictable bias against the production of girl children. The dreadful suffering produced by the policy is usually thought to belong to the distant past, but just three years ago there was international outrage when authorities forced a 23-year-old woman to abort — killing the foetus by injection, seven months into her pregnancy — because her family could not raise a US$6,000 fine for violating the policy.
When the policy was first relaxed, two years ago, officials were baffled that more couples didn’t want a second child. Less than ten percent of the 11m eligible couples applied for an exemption. That shouldn’t have come as a surprise, however, for all over the world economic development has been one of the most effective ways to control population growth, especially when it produces educated women who have to balance careers with families. In fact the low fertility rate now presents a problem as China starts to grey. Even with two children per family, the society is producing nothing close to the number of citizens needed to sustain its aging population. Paradoxically, this acts as a further disincentive for couples — who often share responsibility for the welfare of four parents and eight grandparents — to have more children.
Far from being a progressive step towards individual freedom, the change in policy can be seen as an attempt by the Communist Party to retain its social control. For China’s remarkable economic record in recent decades has come at a steep price in terms of basic rights and freedoms. The lack of reproductive freedom has always been a piece of Beijing’s authoritarian attitude towards freedom of assembly, free speech and religion. Its decision to tweak a bad policy rather than abolish it altogether is indicative of the party’s muddled thinking on the relationship between social, political and economic freedoms.
Last month a letter to President Obama from the human rights group Freedom House noted that under President Xi the Chinese government ”has launched an assault against [China’s independent and increasingly vocal civil society] with a ferocity unseen in the past two decades, perceiving and treating them and their efforts as fundamental threats to the state.” Sadly, this is the context in which China’s tentative steps towards greater social freedom, transparency and accountability are taking place. Until there is a fundamental shift in Beijing’s attitude to these matters, the 20 million extra children which the new policy should produce by 2050, will likely face many of the same restrictions and frustrations as their parents.
