Kirsten Higgins | Politics Editor
Britain today is largely a liberal country. We are all free, within reason, to express ourselves. So it is difficult, in our way of life today, to imagine having something as important and personal as the number of children we have controlled by the government.
Yet, this is exactly what has been happening in China since 1980 when the Communist Party of China issued an open letter to the country, calling for a policy of one child per couple. The policy was introduced to curb the effects of overpopulation which had exceeded 800 million by 1970. Ever since then it has caused controversy, being labelled as an infringement on human rights, although surprisingly a 2008 survey found that 76% of the Chinese people supported the policy.
The effectiveness of the policy is also called into question. There are many exceptions to the rule and in 2007 only 36% of the population was subject to the restriction and an additional 53% were permitted to have a second child if the first child was a girl. Also exempt were ethnic minorities, families in rural areas and parent who were only children themselves.
The One Child Policy could be seen as a just but harsh solution to the problem of overpopulation, but there is a very sinister underside. We probably all remember the heart-breaking story of last year when in December, a baby boy was rescued from a sewer pipe in China after his mother flushed him down the toilet. Miraculously he survived the ordeal unscathed, but many other infants are not so lucky. As the police started their search for his mother, they declared that it was not the first time an infant had been abandoned in such a way.
Also causing concerns were the measures taken against those who violated the policy. These could range from simple fines to, horrifically, forced abortions and sterilisations. Yet between 2000 and 2005, as many as 1,968 officials in central China’s Hunan province were found to be violating the policy, not all of whom faced fines. Instead, the Chinese government responded by raising fines, causing questions about the probity and equality of the policy to be asked.
China is now eradicating the policy as of March 2016, citing concerns over an aging population and economy. In Britain, this sounds like wonderful news, for we cannot imagine such a policy being implemented. But we also cannot imagine the situation that would necessitate such a policy. Whether the One Child policy affected China for the better or the worse will divide opinion, but it is difficult to see the evident negatives outweighing any possible positives. According to a 1968 proclamation of the International Conference on Human Rights, “Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children.” A response to the problem of overpopulation may have been needed, but was the Chinese government’s supposed solution really worth violating the human rights of the Chinese people?
