Review: One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment

One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment by Mei Fong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Thoughts

There was a time, long back, when in high school, I was asked to present an elocution in regards to the population control in India, its benefits vs shortcomings. Coming off the last vestiges of Indira Gandhi’s form of forced sterilization a few decades prior, as well as the renewed government campaign of family planning, the general consensus was that an increase in population is detrimental to the nation’s burgeoning economy. 

China’s one child policy, as taught to us in school, through the rose tinted lenses of social studies, was a major achievement implemented by the communist government to control their population. India, with its myriad of religious, cultural and socioeconomic restraints was not a place where a similar system could be implemented. 

The fledgling naïve political observer in me, had lamented how India was unable to implement such decisive and successful programs aimed towards a better future. If I happen to find that little twerp today, I’d pick him up, put him over my lap, and beat his ass black and blue. 

India might’ve dodged a bullet in regards to this one, if the current Frankenstein monster that is China's population pyramid and its gender imbalance is anything to go by. A good example of what happens, when the leadership are a bunch of ill informed buffoons blind to their faults. Those who got that position by mere vice of sycophancy and cronyism, and are put in charge of determining the lives of a billion people. With no accountability, no checks & balances to concern themselves with, If I may add. 

Regarding the Book:

One child, The Story of China's most radical experiment, by Mei Fong, is as the title indicates detailing the One child policy enacted by ccp in the 1980s as a means of population control. The problem arose, because this policy, which affected the lives of over a billion people, was put into place with little forethought or research, not by sociologists, economists or other experts in the field of anthropology. But rather by politicians and rocket scientists, who didn’t know a damn about the subject, but had the arrogance to assume they did. 

And that was just the beginning. The book details the ramifications of this ill begotten nationwide programme, including the forced sterilization and abortion of millions of women, sometimes as late as 9 months into their pregnancy. Then there is the infant (mostly female) feticide committed by families desperate for a male child. As well as the expected corruption and exploitation of vulnerable groups of parents by government officials, who often inflict inhumane punishments on them, in form of penalties and unsafe abortions, either due to their fanatical adherence, to the dictates of the party, or trying to extort money in form of fines and bribes. 

The ccp often proudly quotes that through the implementation of the policy, they had caused the death of over 400 million infants (Not their exact words, but might as well be). Independent sources call this figure vastly exaggerated, but even taking a realistic matrix, it is estimated that close to 200 million births were prevented in china thanks to this policy. 

Ramifications of such a radical measure, is being felt by the generation of chinese alive today, most of whom live in a one child household. A skewed system which places an immense burden on the current adult generation of china, needing them to take care of both their parents and grandparents, twice that number in case of couples. All of this resulted in a dangerously skewed population pyramid, and one that is aging fast, and a nation that is looking to a bleak future, where the number of retirees outnumber the viable working populace. 

Other consequences are not as apparent. Growing up in a one child household, chinese children grow up pampered and utterly ill equipped to face the competitive adult world. Colloquially referred to as china’s ‘Little Emperors’, the individuals of this generation have an inordinate amount of familial expectations placed on them, in terms of marriage and career, and many often wilt under the pressure. 

Further complicating their life is china’s drastic gender imbalance with too few women of marriageable age. It is estimated that, in the near future, tens of millions of chinese men will be forced to a life of bachelorhood, unable to marry and carry on their genetic line, they are referred to as the ‘Bare branches’ of society. 

Not that the demand for brides has empowered chinese women to any end. In an increasingly patriarchal system, women are valuable like rare commodities, but are rarely valued as individuals, often expected to play second fiddle to their husbands, and play the housewife. This isn’t helped by the popular directives from the ccp women’s association who have come to call unmarried women in their late twenties, by the derogatory term of ‘leftover women’ (剩女)

Some more fatalistic ramifications of the policy come into play in times of natural disasters. During the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which claimed the lives of thousands, including a large number of children, a number of families found themselves facing the prospect of extinction, as well as an old age with no one to support them, as well as the social stigma of being childless couples. All the while, their government was more concerned with covering up the structurally unstable ‘tofu-dreg’ constructions which exacerbated the deaths, especially in badly built schools. 2008 was if one remembers the year of the chinese Olympics, and the party wouldn’t allow something as trivial as the death of children to taint their grand ceremony in beijing. 

One child, forced abortions, and sterilizations, have left the chinese people a shortfall in terms of viable progeny. Today, with advances in personalized fertility medicine, the affluent sections of the populace, can avail to have surrogate pregnancies outside of china, with the added caveat of being able to choose desirable traits in their progeny. So in china, not only do the rich have more money, resources and comforts, they can also push out the poor in terms of having better children, or any children at all. 

While for those who belong to the middle class and lower strata of society, bar a few exceptions, they are the ones who have to adhere to the draconian measures and consequences of the one child policy. Even adoption is denied for them, as ill befitting of a so called communist regime, china has managed to commercialize even infant adoptions. With a large number of wealthy foreign parents looking to adopt children from china, it has resulted in the growth of child kidnap and trafficking rings, centered around orphanages, and local officials. As if to aid such criminals, china’s adoption laws are exceedingly discriminating against domestic couples, favoring the richer foreign couples. 

Even though it has been mentioned ad nauseum at this point, current day china is increasingly shaping up to be an abominable Frankenstein cross, between 1984 & The Brave new world. What the future holds, with an increasingly belligerent chinese regime, with its litany of burgeoning problems, is anyone’s speculation. 

But, the book is definitely worth your while, to be more knowledgeable about the inner workings of the chinese society, at least through the lens of the one child policy.